22. Brihuega and Villa Viciosa. 1710. The Tories had no wish to keep up the war except so far as it would serve special English interests, and, in the course of 1710, the danger of being engaged in an endless war in Spain appeared greater than ever. In the summer, indeed, the combined English and Austrian armies defeated the Spaniards at Saragossa, and Charles once more entered Madrid as a conqueror; but, before the end of the year, one of Louis's best generals, Vendôme, was sent to Spain to lead the French and Spanish armies. On December 9 he compelled Stanhope, the English commander, to surrender at Brihuega, and though a battle which he fought on the 10th with the Austrian Staremberg at Villa Viciosa was indecisive, Staremberg was obliged to retreat to Barcelona, leaving all Spain, except Catalonia, in the hands of Philip.

23. Overtures to France. 1710-1711.-Even before this bad news reached England, Harley and St. John, without troubling themselves about the interests of their allies, had opened secret negotiations for peace, on the basis of leaving Spain to Philip, and of acquiring for England separately as many advantages as possible. The Tory party had never had much inclination to defend the interests of Europe as a whole, and, at the end of 1710, it might reasonably be doubted whether the interests of Europe as a whole were to be served by prolonging the struggle to place the Archduke Charles on the throne of Spain. The real objection against the conduct of the new ministers was not that they opened negotiations for peace, but that they negotiated after the fashion of conspirators. Not only did they, in 1711, send secret emissaries, first Gautier and afterwards the poet Prior, to treat privately with Louis, but when, in the September of that year, preliminaries were agreed to as a basis for a private understanding between England and France, they actually communicated a false copy of them to the Dutch. By this time, indeed, there was a fresh reason for making peace. The Emperor Joseph I. had died in April without leaving a son, and was succeeded in his hereditary dominions by his brother, the Archduke Charles. It might fairly be argued that it was at least as dangerous in 1711 to give the whole of the Spanish dominions to the ruler of the Austrian territories, as it had been in 1702 to give them to the grandson of the king of France.

24. Literature and Politics. 1710.-In order to defend their policy the Tory ministers had, on their first accession to power, looked about for literary supporters. In the reign of Anne a literature had arisen in prose and verse which may fairly be de

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scribed as prosaic. It had nothing of the high imagination which illuminated the pages of the great Elizabethan writers. It was sensible and intelligent, aiming not at rousing the feelings, but at being plainly understood. Addison, in his writings, for instance, mingled criticism with attractive arguments in favour of a morality of common sense, which he addressed to that numerous class which shrank from the high demands of Milton. Addison, like most other writers of the day, was a Whig, the political views of the Whigs having, at that time, a strong hold upon men of intelligence. Writers like Addison exercised considerable influence over the frequenters of the London coffee-houses, where political affairs were discussed. The support of this class, usually spoken of as 'the Town,' was at that time more worth winning than either before or since. As there were no Parliamentary reports, and no speeches on politics delivered in public, only those who lived near the place in which Parliament met could have any knowledge of the details of political action. They gained this knowledge from the lips of the actors, and were able, by their personal conversation, to influence in turn the conduct of the actors themselves. The services of a persuasive writer who had the ear of the Town' was therefore coveted by every body of ministers.

6

25. Jonathan Swift.-The writer won over by the Tory ministers was Jonathan Swift. He was unequalled in satirical power, arising from a combination of lucid expression with a habit of regarding the actions of men as springing from the lowest motives. He was a clergyman, and he wished to be a bishop. At first he attached himself to the Whigs. The Whigs, however, were unwilling, or perhaps unable, to give him what he wanted, his writings being of too unclerical a nature; and all that they procured for him was a living in Ireland, which he seldom visited. With personal motives were mingled more creditable reasons for disliking the Whigs. He was devoted to the interests of the Church of England, not as a fosterer of spiritual life, but as a bulwark against what he regarded as the extravagance of the Roman Catholics on the one hand, and of the Dissenters on the other. In the beginning of the reign Anne had made over the tenths and first-fruits of the English clergy, annexed to the Crown by Henry VIII. (see p. 390), to a body of commissioners, who were to use them for the increase of the means of the poorer clergy. Swift wanted to see this grant, usually known as Queen Anne's Bounty, extended to Ireland. The Whig ministers had not only refused this, but had shown signs of intending to give the Dissenters

a share of political power. Swift was afraid that, if Parliament and public offices were thrown open to Dissenters, there would be again a government as fanatical as that which popular imagina

tion believed Cromwell's to have been, and it was partly in consequence of this fear that he deserted the Whigs and joined the Tories. His first article in defence of his new allies was written in November 1710. A year later in November 1711, shortly after

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the preliminaries of peace had been signed, appeared The Conduct of the Allies. Every action of the Dutch and of the Austrians was traced to mean cupidity, in order that England might be urged to look upon the war as a mere scramble for wealth and power, in which she was entitled to the largest share of the plunder.

26. The Imperial Election. 1711. The English ministers, at least, could not lay claim to any superior morality. In the spring of 1711, although engaged in a secret negotiation with Louis, which led before the end of the year to the signature of preliminaries (see p. 692), they had sent Marlborough to Flanders with loud professions of intending to carry on the war vigorously, and Marlborough, though his wife had just been dismissed from all her posts at Court, set out with the full expectation of striking a decisive blow against the French. In this he failed, mainly for want of proper support from his own Government. On the other hand, the Archduke, now a candidate for the empire, justified Swift's contention by recalling his own troops under Eugene to support his personal claims. In October 1711 he was chosen emperor as Charles VI., after leaving Marlborough with forces quite inadequate to the accomplishment of anything of import

ance.

27. The Occasional Conformity Act and the Creation of Peers. 1711. When Parliament met on December 7, the Whigs, who at this time had very nearly a majority in the House of Lords, secured one by an unprincipled coalition with Nottingham, one of the strictest of Tories, who was discontented because he was excluded from office. They agreed to vote for the Occasional Conformity Bill (see p. 680), to please him, and he agreed to vote for a warlike policy on the Continent, to please them. The Occasional Conformity Bill therefore became law, whilst the ministerial foreign policy was condemned by the House of Lords. The credit of that House stood high, and, though the ministers had the House of Commons at their back, most of them thought that it would be impossible to defy its censures. Harley, however, who was not easily frightened, persuaded the queen first to dismiss Marlborough from all his offices, and then to create twelve new Tory peers. By this means the ministry secured a majority in that House which had alone opposed them. Apart from the immediate questions of the day, this creation of peers had a wide constitutional significance. Just as the deposition of James II. had made it evident that if king and Parliament pulled different ways it was for the king to give way, so the creation of peers in 1711 made it evident that if the

two Houses pulled different ways, it was for the House of Lords

to give way.

28. The Armistice and the Treaty of Utrecht. 1712 1713 In 1712 the Duke of Ormond, a strong Tory, was sent to command in the Netherlands. After operations had commenced, he received a despatch from St. John not only restraining him from fighting, in consequence of an understanding with France, but directing him to conceal these orders from his Dutch allies. If Ormond had obeyed these orders, he would have exposed the Dutch to inevitable defeat; but he was too much of a gentleman to let his allies attack the enemy in the false belief that they would be assisted by the English, and he therefore saved their army by disclosing his secret instructions. The negotiations with France were now pushed on. Shabby as the conduct of the ministers was, they had now the full confidence of the queen, who in 1711 made Harley Lord High Treasurer and Earl of Oxford, and, in 1712, made St. John Viscount Bolingbroke. In July the French fell upon Eugene and defcated him at Denain, and the Dutch, seeing the difficulty of carrying on war without English support, agreed to make peace on the terms proposed by England. On March 31, 1713, a treaty of peace, in which, for the present, the Emperor declined to share, was signed at Utrecht.

29. Terms of the Treaty of Utrecht. 1713. As far as the continental Powers were concerned the main conditions of the Treaty of Utrecht were that Spain and the Indies should remain under Philip V., and that Sicily was to go to the Duke of Savoy, who was to bear the title of king of Sicily; whilst Naples, the duchy of Milan, and the Spanish Netherlands were given to Charles VI., though the last-named territory was to be retained by the Dutch till he agreed to sign the Treaty. The Dutch were to be allowed to place garrisons in certain towns of the so-called barrier (see p. 674) on the southern frontier of what had lately been the Spanish Netherlands. England obtained the largest share of the material advantages of the peace, whilst she lost credit by her illfaith in concealing her abandonment of her allies, and especially in giving up the Catalans to the vengeance of Philip. In Europe she was to keep Gibraltar and Minorca, and obtained from France a promise to destroy the fortifications of Dunkirk. In America she acquired territory round Hudson's Bay, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the French part of St. Christopher's. By an accompanying treaty with Spain, called the Assiento Treaty, she had the sole right of importing negro slaves into the Spanish colonies in America, a traffic which would now be scouted as infamous but