The domestic politics of the reign of Anne turned upon this difference. The history is a history of the gradual shifting of government to the Whig side, and the growing alienation of the clergy and squires, accelerated by a system which caused the fiscal burden of the war to fall chiefly upon the land. Bearing this in mind, Swift’s conduct is perfectly intelligible. His first plunge into politics was in 1701. Poor King William was in the thick of the perplexities caused by the mysterious perverseness of English politicians. The king’s ministers, supported by the House of Lords, had lost the command of the House of Commons. It had not yet come to be understood that the Cabinet was to be a mere committee of the House of Commons. The personal wishes of the sovereign, and the alliances and jealousies of great courtiers, were still highly important factors in the political situation; as indeed both the composition and the subsequent behaviour of the Commons could be controlled to a considerable extent by legitimate and other influences of the Crown. The Commons, unable to make their will obeyed, proceeded to impeach Somers and other ministers. A bitter struggle took place between the two Houses, which was suspended by the summer recess. At this crisis Swift published his Discourse on the Dissensions in Athens and Rome. The abstract political argument is as good or as bad as nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand political treatises—that is to say, a repetition of familiar commonplaces; and the mode of applying precedents from ancient politics would now strike us as pedantic. The pamphlet, however, is dignified and well-written, and the application to the immediate difficulty is pointed. His argument is, briefly, that the House of Commons is showing a factious, tyrannical temper, identical in its nature with that of a single tyrant and as dangerous in its consequences, that it has therefore ceased to reflect the opinions of its constituents, and has endangered the sacred balance between the three primary elements of our constitution, upon which its safe working depends.
The pamphlet was from beginning to end a remonstrance against the impeachments, and therefore a defence of the Whig lords; for whom sufficiently satisfactory parallels are vaguely indicated in Pericles, Aristides, and so forth. It was “greedily bought;” it was attributed to Somers and to the great Whig bishop, Burnet, who had to disown it for fear of an impeachment. An Irish bishop, it is said, called Swift a “very positive young man” for doubting Burnet’s authorship; whereupon Swift had to claim it for himself. Youthful vanity, according to his own account, induced him to make the admission, which would certainly not have been withheld by adult discretion. For the result was that Somers, Halifax, and Sunderland, three of the great Whig junto, took him up, often admitted him to their intimacy, and were liberal in promising him “the greatest preferments” should they come into power. Before long Swift had another opportunity which was also a temptation. The Tory House of Commons had passed the bill against occasional conformity. Ardent partisans generally approved this bill, as it was clearly annoying to dissenters. It was directed against the practice of qualifying for office by taking the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England without permanently conforming. It might be fairly argued—as Defoe argued, though with questionable sincerity—that such a temporary compliance would be really injurious to dissent. The Church would profit by such an exhibition of the flexibility of its opponents’ principles. Passions were too much heated for such arguments; and in the winter of 1703-4, people, says Swift, talked of nothing else. He was “mightily urged by some great people” to publish his opinion. An argument from a powerful writer, and a clergyman, against the bill would be very useful to his Whig friends. But Swift’s high church prejudices made him hesitate. The Whig leaders assured him that nothing should induce them to vote against the bill if they expected its rejection to hurt the church or “do kindness to the dissenters.” But it is precarious to argue from the professed intentions of statesmen to their real motives, and yet more precarious to argue to the consequences of their actions. Swift knew not what to think. He resolved to think no more. At last he made up his mind to write against the bill, but he made it up too late. The bill failed to pass; and Swift felt a relief in dismissing this delicate subject. He might still call himself a Whig, and exult in the growth of Whiggism. Meanwhile he persuaded himself that the dissenters and their troubles were beneath his notice.
They were soon to come again to the front. Swift came to London at the end of 1707, charged with a mission on behalf of his church. Queen Anne’s Bounty was founded in 1704. The crown restored to the church the first-fruits and tenths which Henry VIII. had diverted from the papal into his own treasury, and appropriated them to the augmentation of small livings. It was proposed to get the same boon for the Church of Ireland. The whole sum amounted to about 1000l. a year, with a possibility of an additional 2000l. Swift, who had spoken of this to King, the Archbishop of Dublin, was now to act as solicitor on behalf of the Irish clergy, and hoped to make use of his influence with Somers and Sunderland. The negotiation was to give him more trouble than he foresaw, and initiate him, before he had done with it, into certain secrets of cabinets and councils which he as yet very imperfectly appreciated. His letters to King, continued over a long period, throw much light on his motives. Swift was in England from November, 1707, till March, 1709. The year 1708 was for him, as he says, a year of suspense, a year of vast importance to his career, and marked by some characteristic utterances. He hoped to use his influence with Somers. Somers, though still out of office, was the great oracle of the Whigs, whilst Sunderland was already Secretary of State. In January, 1708, the bishopric of Waterford was vacant, and Somers tried to obtain the see for Swift. The attempt failed, but the political catastrophe of the next month gave hopes that the influence of Somers would soon be paramount. Harley, the prince of wire-pulling and back-stair intrigue, had exploded the famous Masham plot. Though this project failed, it was “reckoned,” says Swift, “the greatest piece of court skill that has been acted many years.” Queen Anne was to take advantage of the growing alienation of the church party to break her bondage to the Marlboroughs, and change her ministers. But the attempt was premature, and discomfited its devisers. Harley was turned out of office; Marlborough and Godolphin came into alliance with the Whig junto; and the queen’s bondage seemed more complete than ever. A cabinet crisis in those days, however, took a long time. It was not till October, 1708, that the Whigs, backed by a new Parliament and strengthened by the victory of Oudenarde, were in full enjoyment of power. Somers at last became President of the Council and Wharton Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Wharton’s appointment was specially significant for Swift. He was, as even Whigs admitted, a man of infamous character, redeemed only by energy and unflinching fidelity to his party. He was licentious and a freethinker; his infidelity showed itself in the grossest outrages against common decency. If he had any religious principle it was a preference of Presbyterians, as sharing his antipathy to the church. No man could be more radically antipathetic to Swift. Meanwhile, the success of the Whigs meant in the first instance the success of the men from whom Swift had promises of preferment. He tried to use his influence as he had proposed. In June he had an interview about the first-fruits with Godolphin, to whom he had been recommended by Somers and Sunderland. Godolphin replied in vague officialisms, suggesting with studied vagueness that the Irish clergy must show themselves more grateful than the English. His meaning, as Swift thought, was that the Irish clergy should consent to a repeal of the Test Act, regarded by them and by him as the essential bulwark of the Church. Nothing definite, however, was said; and meanwhile Swift, though he gave no signs of compliance, continued to hope for his own preferment. When the final triumph of the Whigs came he was still hoping, though with obvious qualms as to his position. He begged King (in Nov. 1708) to believe in his fidelity to the church. Offers might be made to him, but “no prospect of making my fortune shall ever prevail on me to go against what becomes a man of conscience and truth, and an entire friend to the established church.” He hoped that he might be appointed secretary to a projected embassy to Vienna, a position which would put him beyond the region of domestic politics.
Meanwhile he had published certain tracts which may be taken as the manifesto of his faith at the time when his principles were being most severely tested. Would he or would he not sacrifice his churchmanship to the interests of the party with which he was still allied? There can be no doubt that by an open declaration of Whig principles in church matters—such a declaration, say, as would have satisfied Burnet—he would have qualified himself for preferment, and have been in a position to command the fulfilment of the promises made by Somers and Sunderland.
The writings in question were the Argument to prove the inconvenience of abolishing Christianity; a Project for the Advancement of Religion; and the Sentiments of a Church of England Man. The first, as I have said, was meant to show that the satirical powers which had given offence in the Tale of a Tub, could be applied without equivocation in defence of Christianity. The Project is a very forcible exposition of a text which is common enough in all ages—namely, that the particular age of the writer is one of unprecedented corruption. It shares, however, with Swift’s other writings, the merit of downright sincerity, which convinces us that the author is not repeating platitudes, but giving his own experience and speaking from conviction. His proposals for a reform, though he must have felt them to be chimerical, are conceived in the spirit common in the days before people had begun to talk about the State and the individual. He assumes throughout that a vigorous action of the court and the government will reform the nation. He does not contemplate the now commonplace objection that such a revival of the Puritanical system might simply stimulate hypocrisy. He expressly declares that religion may be brought into fashion “by the power of the administration,” and assumes that to bring religion into fashion is the same thing as to make men religious. This view—suitable enough to Swift’s imperious temper—was also the general assumption of the time. A suggestion thrown out in his pamphlet is generally said to have led to the scheme soon afterwards carried out under Harley’s administration for building fifty new churches in London. A more personal touch is Swift’s complaint that the clergy sacrifice their influence by “sequestering themselves” too much, and forming a separate caste. This reads a little like an implied defence of himself for frequenting London coffee-houses, when cavillers might have argued that he should be at Laracor. But like all Swift’s utterances, it covered a settled principle. I have already noticed this peculiarity, which he shows elsewhere when describing himself as
A clergyman of special note
For shunning others of his coat;
Which made his brethren of the gown
Take care betimes to run him down.
The Sentiments of a Church of England Man is more significant. It is a summary of his unvarying creed. In politics he is a good Whig. He interprets the theory of passive obedience as meaning obedience to the “legislative power;” not therefore to the king specially; and he deliberately accepts the revolution on the plain ground of the salus populi. His leading maxim is that the “administration cannot be placed in too few hands nor the legislature in too many.” But this political liberality is associated with unhesitating churchmanship. Sects are mischievous: to say that they are mischievous is to say that they ought to be checked in their beginning; where they exist they should be tolerated, but not to the injury of the church. And hence he reaches his leading principle that a “government cannot give them (sects) too much ease, nor trust them with too little power.” Such doctrines clearly and tersely laid down were little to the taste of the Whigs, who were more anxious than ever to conciliate the dissenters. But it was not till the end of the year that Swift applied his abstract theory to a special case. There had been various symptoms of a disposition to relax the Test Acts in Ireland. The appointment of Wharton to be Lord Lieutenant was enough to alarm Swift, even though his friend Addison was to be Wharton’s secretary. In December, 1708, he published a pamphlet, ostensibly a letter from a member of the Irish to a member of the English House of Commons, in which the necessity of keeping up the Test was vigorously enforced. It is the first of Swift’s political writings in which we see his true power. In those just noticed he is forced to take an impartial tone. He is trying to reconcile himself to his alliance with the Whigs, or to reconcile the Whigs to their protection of himself. He speaks as a moderator, and poses as the dignified moralist above all party-feeling. But in this letter he throws the reins upon his humour, and strikes his opponents full in the face. From his own point of view the pamphlet is admirable. He quotes Cowley’s verse,
Forbid it, heaven, my life should be
Weighed with thy least conveniency.
The Irish, by which he means the English, and the English exclusively of the Scotch, in Ireland, represent this enthusiastic lover, and are called upon to sacrifice themselves to the political conveniency of the Whig party. Swift expresses his usual wrath against the Scots, who are eating up the land, boasts of the loyalty of the Irish Church, and taunts the Presbyterians with their tyranny in former days. Am I to be forced, he asks, “to keep my chaplain disguised like my butler, and steal to prayers in a back room, as my grandfather used in those times when the Church of England was malignant?” Is not this a ripping up of old quarrels? Ought not all Protestants to unite against Papists? No, the enemy is the same as ever. “It is agreed among naturalists that a lion is a larger, a stronger, and more dangerous enemy than a cat; yet if a man were to have his choice, either a lion at his foot fast bound with three or four chains, his teeth drawn out, and his claws pared to the quick, or an angry cat in full liberty at his throat, he would take no long time to determine.” The bound lion means the Catholic natives, whom Swift declares to be as “inconsiderable as the women and children.”
Meanwhile the long first-fruits negotiation was languidly proceeding. At last it seemed to be achieved. Lord Pembroke, the outgoing Lord Lieutenant, sent Swift word that the grant had been made. Swift reported his success to Archbishop King with a very pardonable touch of complacency at his “very little” merit in the matter. But a bitter disappointment followed. The promise made had never been fulfilled. In March, 1709, Swift had again to write to the Archbishop, recounting his failure, his attempt to remonstrate with Wharton, the new Lord Lieutenant, and the too certain collapse of the whole business. The failure was complete; the promised boon was not granted, and Swift’s chance of a bishopric had pretty well vanished. Halifax, the great Whig Mæcenas, and the Bufo of Pope, wrote to him in his retirement at Dublin, declaring that he had “entered into a confederacy with Mr. Addison” to urge Swift’s claims upon Government, and speaking of the declining health of South, then a Prebendary of Westminster. Swift endorsed this “I lock up this letter as a true original of courtiers and court promises,” and wrote in a volume he had begged from the same person that it was the only favour “he ever received from him or his party.” In the last months of his stay he had suffered cruelly from his old giddiness, and he went to Ireland, after a visit to his mother in Leicester, in sufficiently gloomy mood; retired to Laracor, and avoided any intercourse with the authorities at the Castle, excepting always Addison.