The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 5 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (leveled readers .TXT) 📖

session would be repaired, that the army would be augmented, and that he should be able, at the important conjuncture which was approaching, to speak to foreign powers in tones of authority, and especially to keep France steady to her engagements. The Whigs of the junto, better acquainted with the temper of the country and of the new House of Commons, pronounced it impossible to carry a vote for a land force of more than ten thousand men. Ten thousand men would probably be obtained if His Majesty would authorise his servants to ask in his name for that number, and to declare that with a smaller number he could not answer for the public safety. William, firmly convinced that twenty thousand would be too few, refused to make or empower others to make a proposition which seemed to him absurd and disgraceful. Thus, at a moment at which it was peculiarly desirable that all who bore a part in the executive administration should act cordially together, there was serious dissension between him and his ablest councillors. For that dissension neither he nor they can be severely blamed. They were differently situated, and necessarily saw the same objects from different points of view. He, as was natural, considered the question chiefly as an European question. They, as was natural, considered it chiefly as an English question. They had found the antipathy to a standing army insurmountably strong even in the late Parliament, a Parliament disposed to place large confidence in them and in their master. In the new Parliament that antipathy amounted almost to a mania. That liberty, law, property, could never be secured while the Sovereign had a large body of regular troops at his command in time of peace, and that of all regular troops foreign troops were the most to be dreaded, had, during the recent elections, been repeated in every town hall and market place, and scrawled upon every dead wall. The reductions of the preceding year, it was said, even if they had been honestly carved into effect, would not have been sufficient; and they had not been honestly carried into effect. On this subject the ministers pronounced the temper of the Commons to be such that, if any person high in office were to ask for what His Majesty thought necessary, there would assuredly be a violent explosion; the majority would probably be provoked into disbanding all that remained of the army; and the kingdom would be left without a single soldier. William, however, could not be brought to believe that the case was so hopeless. He listened too easily to some secret adviser, Sunderland was probably the man, who accused Montague and Somers of cowardice and insincerity. They had, it was whispered in the royal ear, a majority, whenever they really wanted one. They were bent upon placing their friend Littleton in the Speaker's chair; and they had carried their point triumphantly. They would carry as triumphantly a vote for a respectable military establishment if the honour of their master and the safety of their country were as dear to them as the petty interests of their own faction. It was to no purpose that the King was told, what was nevertheless perfectly true, that not one half of the members who had voted for Littleton, could, by any art or eloquence, be induced to vote for an augmentation of the land force. While he was urging his ministers to stand up manfully against the popular prejudice, and while they were respectfully representing to him that by so standing up they should only make that prejudice stronger and more noxious, the day came which the Commons had fixed for taking the royal speech into consideration. The House resolved itself into a Committee. The great question was instantly raised; What provision should be made for the defence of the realm? It was naturally expected that the confidential advisers of the Crown would propose something. As they remained silent, Harley took the lead which properly belonged to them, and moved that the army should not exceed seven thousand men. Sir Charles Sedley suggested ten thousand. Vernon, who was present, was of opinion that this number would have been carved if it had been proposed by one who was known to speak on behalf of the King. But few members cared to support an amendment which was certain to be less pleasing to their constituents, and did not appear to be more pleasing to the Court, than the original motion. Harley's resolution passed the Committee. On the morrow it was reported and approved. The House also resolved that all the seven thousand men who were to be retained should be natural born English subjects. Other votes were carried without a single division either in the Committee or when the mace was on the table.

The King's indignation and vexation were extreme. He was angry with the opposition, with the ministers, with all England. The nation seemed to him to be under a judicial infatuation, blind to dangers which his sagacity perceived to be real, near and formidable, and morbidly apprehensive of dangers which his conscience told him were no dangers at all. The perverse islanders were willing to trust every thing that was most precious to them, their independence, their property, their laws, their religion, to the moderation and good faith of France, to the winds and the waves, to the steadiness and expertness of battalions of ploughmen commanded by squires; and yet they were afraid to trust him with the means of protecting them lest he should use those means for the destruction of the liberties which he had saved from extreme peril, which he had fenced with new securities, which he had defended with the hazard of his life, and which from the day of his accession he had never once violated. He was attached, and not without reason, to the Blue Dutch Foot Guards. That brigade had served under him for many years, and had been eminently distinguished by courage, discipline and fidelity. In December 1688 that brigade had been the first in his army to enter the English capital, and had been entrusted with the important duty of occupying Whitehall and guarding the person of James. Eighteen months later, that brigade had been the first to plunge into the waters of the Boyne. Nor had the conduct of these veteran soldiers been less exemplary in their quarters than in the field. The vote which required the King to discard them merely because they were what he himself was seemed to him a personal affront. All these vexations and scandals he imagined that his ministers might have averted, if they had been more solicitous for his honour and for the success of his great schemes of policy, and less solicitous about their own popularity. They, on the other hand, continued to assure him, and, as far as can now be judged, to assure him with perfect truth, that it was altogether out of their power to effect what he wished. Something they might perhaps be able to do. Many members of the House of Commons had said in private that seven thousand men was too small a number. If His Majesty would let it be understood that he should consider those who should vote for ten thousand as having done him good service, there might be hopes. But there could be no hope if gentlemen found that by voting for ten thousand they should please nobody, that they should be held up to the counties and towns which they represented as turncoats and slaves for going so far to meet his wishes, and that they should be at the same time frowned upon at Kensington for not going farther. The King was not to be moved. He had been too great to sink into littleness without a struggle. He had been the soul of two great coalitions, the dread of France, the hope of all oppressed nations. And was he to be degraded into a mere puppet of the Harleys and the Hooves, a petty prince who could neither help nor hurt, a less formidable enemy and less valuable ally than the Elector of Brandenburg or the Duke of Savoy? His spirit, quite as arbitrary and as impatient of control as that of any of his predecessors, Stuart, Tudor or Plantagenet, swelled high against this ignominious bondage. It was well known at Versailles that he was cruelly mortified and incensed; and, during a short time, a strange hope was cherished there that, in the heat of his resentment, he might be induced to imitate his uncles, Charles and James, to conclude another treaty of Dover, and to sell himself into vassalage for a subsidy which might make him independent of his niggardly and mutinous Parliament. Such a subsidy, it was thought, might be disguised under the name of a compensation for the little principality of Orange, which Lewis had long been desirous to purchase even at a fancy price. A despatch was drawn up containing a paragraph by which Tallard was to be apprised of his master's views, and instructed not to hazard any distinct proposition, but to try the effect of cautious and delicate insinuations, and, if possible, to draw William on to speak first. This paragraph was, on second thoughts, cancelled; but that it should ever have been written must be considered a most significant circumstance.

It may with confidence be affirmed that William would never have stooped to be the pensioner of France; but it was with difficulty that he was, at this conjuncture, dissuaded from throwing up the government of England. When first he threw out hints about retiring to the Continent, his ministers imagined that he was only trying to frighten them into making a desperate effort to obtain for him an efficient army. But they soon saw reason to believe that he was in earnest. That he was in earnest, indeed, can hardly be doubted. For, in a confidential letter to Heinsius, whom he could have no motive for deceiving, he intimated his intention very clearly. "I foresee," he writes, "that I shall be driven to take an extreme course, and that I shall see you again in Holland sooner than I had imagined."16 In fact he had resolved to go down to the Lords, to send for the Commons, and to make his last speech from the throne. That speech he actually prepared and had it translated. He meant to tell his hearers that he had come to England to rescue their religion and their liberties; that, for that end, he had been under the necessity of waging a long and cruel war; that the war had, by the blessing of God, ended in an honourable and advantageous peace; and that the nation might now be tranquil and happy, if only those precautions were adopted which he had on the first day of the session recommended as essential to the public security. Since, however, the Estates of the Realm thought fit to slight his advice, and to expose themselves to the imminent risk of ruin, he would not be the witness of calamities which he had not caused and which he could not avert. He must therefore request the Houses to present to him a bill providing for the government of the realm; he would pass that bill, and withdraw from a post in which he could no longer be useful, but he should always take a deep interest in the welfare of England; and, if what he foreboded should come to pass, if in some day of danger she should again need his services, his life should be hazarded as freely as ever in her defence.

When the King showed his speech to the Chancellor, that wise minister forgot for a moment his habitual self-command. "This is extravagance, Sir," he said: "this is madness. I implore your Majesty, for the sake of