XI. and agents were responsible. That great rule, essential to CHAP. our polity, was now inverted. The sycophants, who were legally punishable, enjoyed impunity: the King, who was not legally punishable, was punished with merciless severity. Was it possible for the Cavaliers of England, the sons of the warriors who had fought under Rupert, not to feel bitter sorrow and indignation when they reflected on the fate of their rightful liege lord, the heir of a long line of princes, lately enthroned in splendour at Whitehall, now an exile, a suppliant, a mendicant? His calamities had been greater than even those of the Blessed Martyr from whom he sprang. The father had been slain by avowed and deadly foes: the ruin of the son had been the work of his own children. Surely the punishment, even if deserved, should have been inflicted by other hands. And was it altogether deserved? Had not the unhappy man been rather weak and rash than wicked? Had he not some of the qualities of an excellent prince? His abilities were certainly not of a high order: but he was diligent: he was thrifty: he had fought bravely: he had been his own minister for maritime affairs, and had, in that capacity acquitted himself respectably: he had, till his spiritual guides obtained a fatal ascendency over his mind, been regarded as a man of strict justice; and, to the last, when he was not misled by them, he generally spoke truth and dealt fairly. With so many virtues he might, if he had been a Protestant, nay, if he had been a moderate Roman Catholic, have had a prosperous and glorious reign. Perhaps it might not be too late for him to retrieve his errors. It was difficult to believe that he could be so dull and perverse as not to have profited by the terrible discipline which he had recently undergone; and, if that discipline had produced the effects which might reasonably be expected from it, England might still enjoy, under her legitimate ruler, a larger measure of happiness and tranquillity than she could expect from the administration of the best and ablest usurper. We should do great injustice to those who held this language, if we supposed that they had, as a body, ceased to regard Popery and despotism with abhorrence. Some zealots might indeed be found who could not bear the thought of imposing conditions on their King, and who were ready to recall him without the smallest assurance that the Declaration of Indulgence should not be instantly republished, that the High Commission should not be instantly revived, that СНАР. XI. Temper of Petre should not be again seated at the Council Board, and that the Fellows of Magdalene should not again be ejected. But the number of these men was small. On the other hand, the number of those Royalists, who, if James would have acknowledged his mistakes and promised to observe the laws, were ready to rally round him, was very large. It is a remarkable fact that two able and experienced statesmen, who had borne a chief part in the Revolution, frankly acknowledged, a few days after the Revolution had been accomplished, their apprehension that a Restoration was close at hand. "If King James were a Protestant," said Halifax to Reresby, "we could not keep him out four months." "If King James,” said Danby to Reresby about the same time, "would but give the country some satisfaction about religion, which he might easily do, it would be very hard to make head against him."* Happily for England, James was, as usual, his own worst enemy. No word indicating that he took blame to himself on account of the past, or that he intended to govern constitutionally for the future, could be extracted from him. Every letter, every rumour, that found its way from Saint Germains to England made men of sense fear that, if, in his present temper, he should be restored to power, the second tyranny would be worse than the first. Thus the Tories, as a body, were forced to admit, very unwillingly, that there was, at that moment, no choice but between William and public ruin. They therefore, without altogether relinquishing the hope that he who was King by right might at some future time be disposed to listen to reason, and without feeling anything like loyalty towards him who was King in possession, discontentedly endured the new government. It may be doubted whether that government was not, the Whigs. during the first months of its existence, in more danger from the affection of the Whigs than from the disaffection of the Tories. Enmity can hardly be more annoying than querulous, jealous, exacting fondness; and such was the fondness which the Whigs felt for the Sovereign of their choice. They were loud in his praise. They were ready to support him with purse and sword against foreign and domestic foes. But their attachment to him was of a peculiar kind. Loyalty such as had animated the gallant gentlemen who had fought for Charles the First, loyalty such as had rescued Charles the Second from the fearful dangers and difficulties caused by *Reresby's Memoirs. 1 twenty years of maladministration, was not a sentiment to which the doctrines of Milton and Sidney were favourable : nor was it a sentiment which a prince, just raised to power by a rebellion, could hope to inspire. The Whig theory of government is that kings exist for the people, and not the people for kings; that the right of a king is divine in no other sense than that in which the right of a member of parliament, of a judge, of a juryman, of a mayor, of a headborough, is divine; that while the chief magistrate governs according to law, he ought to be obeyed and reverenced; that, when he violates the law, he ought to be withstood; and that, when he violates the law grossly, systematically, and pertinaciously, he ought to be deposed. On the truth of these principles depended the justice of William's title to the throne. It is obvious that the relation between subjects who held these principles, and a ruler whose accession had been the triumph of these principles, must have been altogether different from the relation which had subsisted between the Stuarts and the Cavaliers. The Whigs loved William indeed: but they loved him, not as a king, but as a party leader; and it was not difficult to foresee that their enthusiasm would cool fast if he should refuse to be the mere leader of their party, and should attempt to be king of the whole nation. What they expected from him in return for their devotion to his cause was that he should be one of themselves, a stanch and ardent Whig; that he should show favour to none but Whigs; that he should make all the old grudges of the Whigs his own; and there was but too much reason to apprehend that, if he disappointed this expectation, the only section of the community which was zealous in his cause would be estranged from him.* Such were the difficulties by which, at the moment of his elevation, he found himself beset. Where there was a good path he had seldom failed to choose it. But now he had only a choice among paths every one of which seemed likely to lead to destruction. From one faction he could hope for no cordial support. The cordial support of the other faction he could retain only by becoming the most factious man in his kingdom, a Shaftesbury on the throne. If he persecuted the Here, and in many other places, I abstain from citing authorities, because my authorities are too numerous to cite. My notions of the temper and relative position of political and religious parties in the reign of William the Third, have been derived, not from any single work, СНАР. XI. CHAP. XI. Ministerial arrangements. Tories, their sulkiness would infallibly be turned into fury. If he showed favour to the Tories, it was by no means certain that he would gain their goodwill; and it was but too probable that he might lose his hold on the hearts of the Whigs. Something however he must do: something he must risk: a Privy Council must be sworn in: all the great offices, political and judicial, must be filled. It was impossible to make an arrangement that would please everybody, and difficult to make an arrangement that would please anybody: but an arrangement must be made. What is now called a ministry he did not think of forming. Indeed what is now called a ministry was never known in England till he had been some years on the throne. Under the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts, there had been ministers but there had been no ministry. The servants of the Crown were not, as now, bound in frankpledge for each other. They were not expected to be of the same opinion even on questions of the gravest importance. Often they were politically and personally hostile to each other, and made no secret of their hostility. It was not yet felt to be inconvenient or unseemly that they should accuse each other of high crimes, and demand each other's heads. No man had been more active in the impeachment of the Lord Chancellor Clarendon than Coventry, who was a Commissioner of the Treasury. No man had been more active in the impeachment of the Lord Treasurer Danby than Winnington, who was Solicitor General. Among the members of the Government there was only one point of union, their common head, the Sovereign. The nation considered him as the proper chief of the administration, and blamed him severely if he delegated his high functions to any subject. Clarendon has told us that nothing was so hateful to the Englishmen of his time as a Prime Minister. They would rather, he said, be subject to an usurper like Oliver, who was first magistrate in fact as well as in name, than to a legitimate King who referred them to a Grand Vizier. One of the chief accusations which the country party had brought against Charles the Second was that he was too indolent and too fond of pleasure to examine with care the balance sheets of public accountants and the inventories of military stores. James, when he came to the crown, had determined to appoint no Lord High Admiral or Board of Admiralty, and to keep the entire direction of maritime affairs in his own hands; and this arrangement, which would XI. now be thought by men of all parties unconstitutional and CHAP. pernicious in the highest degree, was then generally applauded even by people who were not inclined to see his conduct in a favourable light. How completely the relation in which the King stood to his Parliament and to his ministers had been altered by the Revolution was not at first understood even by the most enlightened statesmen. It was universally supposed that the government would, as in time past, be conducted by functionaries independent of each other, and that William would exercise a general superintendence over them all. It was also fully expected that a prince of William's capacity and experience would transact much important business without having recourse to any adviser. minister There were therefore no complaints when it was under- William stood that he had reserved to himself the direction of foreign his own affairs. This was indeed scarcely matter of choice: for, with for foreign the single exception of Sir William Temple, whom nothing affairs. would induce to quit his retreat for public life, there was no Englishman who had proved himself capable of conducting an important negotiation with foreign powers to a successful and honourable issue. Many years had elapsed since England. had interfered with weight and dignity in the affairs of the great commonwealth of nations. The attention of the ablest English politicians had long been almost exclusively occupied by disputes concerning the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of their own country. The contests about the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill, the Habeas Corpus Act and the Test Act, had produced an abundance, indeed a glut, of those talents which raise men to eminence in societies torn by internal factions. All the Continent could not show such skilful and wary leaders of parties, such dexterous parliamentary tacticians, such ready and eloquent debaters, as were assembled at Westminster. But a very different training was necessary to form a great minister for foreign affairs; and the Revolution had on a sudden placed England in a situation in which the services of a great minister for foreign affairs were indispensable to her. William was admirably qualified to supply that in which the most accomplished statesmen of his kingdom were deficient. He had long been preeminently distinguished as a negotiator. He was the author and the soul of the European coalition against the French ascendency. The clue, without which it was perilous to enter the vast and intricate maze of |