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 defeated 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

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which was then coveted as lucrative, and she also obtained the right of sending yearly to Panama a ship of 600 tons laden with goods for the Spanish colonists.

30. Effect of the Treaty of Utrecht on International relations. The general character of the Treaty of Utrecht is of greater historical importance than its details. It marks the end of a period of European history during which there was often some reality and always some pretence of combining together for common purposes of general interest, and not merely for the particular interests of the several states. Down to the Treaties of Westphalia (see p. 564) in 1648, Catholics had combined against Protestants and Protestants against Catholics. After that date, States which feared the overbearing insolence of Louis XIV. had combined against France. The Treaty of Utrecht ushered in a period lasting almost to the end of the eighteenth century, when each State stood up for its own interests alone, when no steady combinations could be formed, and when greed for material accessions was most conspicuous because no purpose of seeking the general good existed. Swift threw the blame upon the allies, and the Whigs threw the blame upon the Tories. The truth is that States combine readily through fear, and very seldom through a desire for the common good, and when Louis XIV. ceased to be formidable each State thought exclusively of its own interests.

31. England as a sea-power. 1713.-The success of the Tory ministers seemed complete. In reality, the very terms of the Treaty of Utrecht revealed their weakness. In secking to gain. material advantages for England, Oxford and Bolingbroke had been forced to look for them in advantages to trade, and in the increase of colonial dominion by which trade might be encouraged. Thereby they strengthened the trading class, which was the main support of the Whigs, whilst the landed gentry, on whom their own power mainly rested, received no benefit. Not that the Tories could well help doing what they had done. During the two wars which had been waged since the fall of James II. an immense change had been taking place in the relations between England and the other European States, irrespective of the victories of Marlborough in the field. Both France and the States General of the Dutch Netherlands had been forced to wage an exhausting war on their land frontier. The consequence was that the Dutch were no longer able to compete with the English at sea, and that Louis being, after the battle of La Hogue, compelled to limit his efforts either at sea or on land, decided to limit them at sea. The

result was, that though there were no important English naval victories between the battle of La Hogue and the Peace of Utrecht, the English navy at the end of the war was vastly superior to the navies of its only possible rivals, France and the Dutch Republic.

Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke: from a picture by Sir Godfrey Kneller.

England was now the one great sea-power in Europe, not so much through her own increasing strength as through the decay of the maritime vigour of other states.