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of thwarting and insulting. That an unprincipled man should be followed by a majority of the House of Commons is no doubt an evil. But, when this is the case, he will nowhere be so harmless as at the head of affairs. As he already possesses the power to do boundless mischief, it is desirable to give him a strong motive to abstain from doing mischief; and such a motive he has from the moment that he is intrusted with the administration. Office of itself does much to equalize politicians. It by no means brings all characters to a level, but it does bring high characters down, and low characters up toward a common standard. lu power the most patriotic and enlightened statesman finds that he must disappoint the expectations of his admirers; that, if he effects any good, he must effect it by compromise; that he must relinquish many favorite schemes; that he must bear with many abuses. On the other hand, power turns the very vices of the most worthless adventurer, his selfish ambition, his sordid cupidity, his vanity, his cowardice, into a sort of public spirit. The most greedy and cruel wrecker that ever put up false lights to lure mariners to their destruction will do his best to preserve a ship from going to pieces on the rocks if he is taken on board of her and made pilot, and so the most profligate Chancellor of the Exchequer must wish that trade may flourish, that the revenue may come in well, and that he may be able to take taxes off instead of putting them on. The most profligate First Lord of the Admiralty must wish to receive news of a victory like that of the Nile rather than of a mutiny like that at the Nore. There is, therefore, a limit to the evil which is to be apprehended from the worst ministry that is likely ever to exist in England. But to the evil of having no ministry, to the evil of having a House of Commons. permanently at war with the executive government, there is absolutely no limit. This was signally proved in 1699 and 1700. Had the statesmen of the Junto, as soon as they had ascertained the temper of the new Parliament, acted as statesmen similarly situated would now act, great calamities would have been averted. The chiefs of the opposition must then have been called upon to form a government. With the power of the late ministry the responsibility of the late ministry would have been transferred to them, and that responsibility would at once have sobered them. The orator whose eloquence had been the delight

of the Country party would have had to exert his ingenuity on a new set of topics. There would have been an end of his invectives against courtiers and placemen, of piteous moanings about the intolerable weight of the land tax, of his boasts that the militia of Kent and Sussex, without the help of a single regular soldier, would turn the conquerors of Landen to the right about. He would himself have been a courtier; he would himself have been a placeman; he would have known that he should be held accountable for all the misery which a national bankruptcy or a French invasion might produce; and, instead of laboring to get up a clamor for the reduction of imposts and the disbanding of regiments, he would have employed all his talents and influence for the purpose of obtaining from Parliament the means of supporting public credit, and of putting the country in a good posture of defense. Meanwhile the statesmen who were out might have watched the new men, might have checked them when they were wrong, might have come to their help when, by doing right, they had raised a mutiny in their own absurd and perverse faction. In this way Montague and Somers might, in opposition, have been really far more powerful than they could be while they filled the highest posts in the executive government, and were outvoted every day in the House of Commons. Their retirement would have mitigated envy; their abilities would have been missed and regretted; their unpopularity would have passed to their successors, who would have grievously disappointed vulgar expectation, and would have been under the necessity of eating their own words in every debate. The league between the Tories and the discontented Whigs would have been dissolved, and it is probable that, in a session or two, the public voice would have loudly demanded the recall of the best Keeper of the Great Seal and of the best First Lord of the Treasury the oldest man living could remember.

But these lessons, the fruits of the experience of five generations, had never been taught to the politicians of the seventeenth century. Notions imbibed before the Revolution still kept possession of the public mind. Not even Somers, the foremost man of his age in civil wisdom, thought it strange that one party should be in possession of the executive administration while the other predominated in the Legislature. Thus, at the beginning of 1699, there ceased

to be a ministry, and years elapsed before the servants of the crown and the representatives of the people were again joined in a union as harmonious as that which had existed from the general election of 1695 to the general election of 1698. The anarchy lasted, with some short intervals of composedness, till the general election of 1705. No portion of our Parliamentary history is less pleasing or more instructive. It will be seen that the House of Commons became altogether ungovernable, abused its gigantic power with unjust and insolent caprice, browbeat king and lords, the courts of common law and the constituent bodies, violated rights guaranteed by the Great Charter, and at length made itself so odious that the people were glad to take shelter under the protection of the throne and of the hereditary aristocracy from the tyranny of the assembly which had been chosen by themselves.

The evil which had brought so much discredit on representative institutions was of gradual, though of rapid growth, and did not, in the first session of the Parliament of 1698, take the most alarming form. The lead of the House of Commons had, however, entirely passed away from Montague, who was still the first minister of finance, to the chiefs of the turbulent and discordant opposition. Among those chiefs the most powerful was Harley, who, while almost constantly acting with the Tories and HighChurchmen, continued to use, on occasions cunningly selected, the political and religious phraseology which he had learned in his youth among the Roundheads. He thus, while high in the esteem of the country gentlemen, and even of his hereditary enemies, the country parsons, retained a portion of the favor with which he and his ancestors had long been regarded by Whigs and Nonconformists. He was therefore peculiarly well qualified to act as mediator between the two sections of the majority.

The bill for the disbanding of the army passed with little opposition through the House till it reached the last stage. Then, at length, a stand was made, but in vain. Vernon wrote the next day to Shrewsbury that the ministers had had a division which they need not be ashamed of, for that they had mustered a hundred and fifty-four against two hundred and twenty-one. Such a division would not be considered as matter of boast by a secretary of state in our time.

The bill went up to the House of Lords, where it was regarded with no great favor. But this was not one of those occasions on which the House of Lords can act effectually as a check on the popular branch of the Legislature. No good would have been done by rejecting the bill for disbanding the troops unless the king could have been furnished with the means of maintaining them; and with such means he could be furnished only by the House of Commons. Somers, in a speech of which both the eloquence and the wisdom were greatly admired, placed the question in the true light. He set forth strongly the dangers to which the jealousy and parsimony of the representatives of the people. exposed the country. But any thing, he said, was better than that the king and the Peers should engage, without hope of success, in an acrimonious conflict with the Commons. Tankerville spoke with his usual ability on the same side. Nottingham and the other Tories remained silent, and the bill passed without a division.

By this time the king's strong understanding had mastered, as it seldom failed, after a struggle, to master, his rebellious temper. He had made up his mind to fulfil his great mission to the end. It was with no common pain that he admitted it to be necessary for him to give his assent to the Disbanding Bill. But in this case it would have been worse than useless to resort to his veto. For, if the bill had been rejected, the army would have been dissolved, and he would have been left without even the seven thousand men whom the Commons were willing to allow him.

He determined, therefore, to comply with the wish of his people, and at the same time to give them a weighty and serious, but friendly admonition. Never had he succeeded better in suppressing the outward signs of his emotions than on the day on which he carried this determination into effect. The public mind was much excited. The crowds in the parks and streets were immense. The Jacobites came in troops, hoping to enjoy the pleasure of reading shame and rage on the face of him whom they most hated and dreaded. The hope was disappointed. The Prussian minister, a discerning observer, free from the passions which distracted English society, accompanied the royal procession from St. James's Palace to Westminster Hall. He well knew how bitterly William had been mortified, and was astonished to see him present himself to the public gaze with a serene and cheerful aspect.

The speech delivered from the throne was much admired, and the correspondent of the States-General acknowledged that he despaired of exhibiting in a French translation the graces of style which distinguished the original. Indeed, that weighty, simple, and dignified eloquence which becomes the lips of a sovereign was seldom wanting in any composition of which the plan was furnished by William and the language by Somers. The king informed the Lords and Commons that he had come down to pass their bill as soon as it was ready for him. He could not, indeed, but think that they had carried the reduction of the army to a dangerous extent. He could not but feel that they had treated him unkindly in requiring him to part with those guards who had come over with him to deliver England, and who had since been near him on every field of battle. But it was his fixed opinion that nothing could be so pernicious to the state as that he should be regarded by his people with distrust distrust of which he had not expected

to be the object, after what he had endeavored, ventured, and acted to restore and to secure their liberties. He had now, he said, told the houses plainly the reason, the only reason, which had induced him to pass their bill; and it was his duty to tell them plainly, in discharge of his high trust, and in order that none might hold him accountable for the evils which he had vainly endeavored to avert, that, in his judgment, the nation was left too much exposed.

When the Commons had returned to their chamber, and the king's speech had been read from the chair, Howe attempted to raise a storm. A gross insult had been offered to the House. The king ought to be asked who had put such words into his mouth. But the spiteful agitator found no support. The majority were so much pleased with the king for promptly passing the bill that they were not disposed to quarrel with him for frankly declaring that he disliked it. It was resolved without a division that an address should be presented, thanking him for his gracious speech and for his ready compliance with the wishes of his people, and assuring him that his grateful Commons would never forget the great things which he had done for the country, would never give him cause to think them unkind or undutiful, and would, on all occasions, stand by hito against all enemies.

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