CHAP. XI. 1714. of the republican party, from which his family had sustained such grievous injuries at home. French mistresses, the charms of the Duchess of Portsmouth, were not disregarded by the amorous monarch; but the chief motive of his conduct was a desire to extinguish the Puritan faction and the Protestant faith in his dominions. It was an article of the secret treaty between Charles and Louis XIV., that the republican forms of government as existing in Holland should be superseded by a hereditary monarchy in the person of the Stadtholder and his family, and that the English monarch should as soon as prudent do what was possible for the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Great Britain. These social and political divisions, naturally arising from the vehement contests of the seventeenth century, derived additional strength from the expulsion of the ancient dynasty, and the successful result of the Revolution of 1688 in this country. Personal animosity and party ambition were immediately added to the flames of political hostility. It was felt by all that the change of dynasty had been brought about by many disgraceful acts of treachery in the leaders of the movement, as well as by the generous indignation of the nation at attempts to enslave them. The bitterness of lost influence, the recollection of shattered power, were added to the broad lines of political distinction; and a cast-down party, which had generous feelings and profound attachments to rest upon, ere long gathered strength from the very circumstances, in Hist. de the external condition of the nation, which to appearance had established the power of their opponents on an immovable foundation.1 1 Capefigue, Louis XIV. ii. 167. The Revolution had been brought about by a coali 66 XI. 1714. 9. it had brought of parties about the tion of parties, arising from the general feeling of CHAP. unbearable oppression experienced by the nation. The Tories had joined in it as cordially as the Whigs; the High Church party as much as the Dissenters. It The union began with sending the seven bishops to the Tower; was ended by the cheers of the troops at their acquittal Revolution. on Hounslow Heath. Bolingbroke has well expressed the views which induced the Tory party and ancient Cavaliers of the realm to take part in this great movement, and there is no reason to believe that he was insincere in what he said. Many," says he, "of the most distinguished Tories, some of those who carried highest the doctrines of passive obedience and nonresistance, were engaged in it, and the whole nation was ripe for it. The Whigs were zealous in the same cause, but their zeal was not such as I think it had been some years before, a zeal without knowledge. I mean it was better tempered and more prudently conducted. Though the King was not the better for his experience, parties were. Both saw their errors. The Tories stopped short in pursuit of a bad principle; the Whigs reformed the abuse of a good one. Both had sacrificed their country to their party; both on this occasion sacrificed their party to their country. The cause of liberty was no longer made the cause of a party, by being set on such a bottom as one party alone approved. The Revolution was plainly designed to restore and secure our government, ecclesiastical and civil, on true foundations; and whatever might happen to the King, there was no room to apprehend any change in the constitution. The republican whimsies, indeed, that reigned in the days of usurpation and confusion, still prevailed among some of that party. But this leaven was so near worn CHAP. XI. 1714. out that it could neither corrupt, nor seem any longer to corrupt, the mass of the Whig party. That party never had been Republicans or Presbyterians, any more than they had been Quakers; any more than the Tory party had been Papists when, notwithstanding their aversion to Popery, they were undeniably under the accidental influence of Popish councils. But even the appearances tion on Par- were now rectified. The Revolution was a fire which lingbroke's purged off the dross of both parties; and, the dross 125. being purged off, they appeared to be the same metal, and answered the same standard."1 1 Disserta ties-Bo Works, ii. 10. Dangers which the Revo lution. The fund But it is a dangerous thing even for the best founded causes of dissatisfaction, to overturn an established govflowed from ernment. Such a step generally remedies the immediate evils which produced the discontent, but it does so only ing system. by introducing a host of others, often still more injurious, and which become by the triumph of the first convulsion wholly irremovable. No nation ever had juster cause for dispossessing a sovereign than England had in 1688; for James was striving at once and by force to subvert the civil liberties, and change the established religion, of his people. Yet from this just and necessary change, as all parties then felt it to be, was soon found to flow a series of causes and effects which induced a host of evils so serious and appalling, that the contemporary age was seized with consternation at their magnitude, and the results of them will be felt to the latest generation in Great Britain. The first effect which immediately followed was the commencement of the great war with France, which, beginning in 1689, continued, with a cessation only of five years, till 1713. England was now the head of the Protestant and independent league; and upon her fell the weight of the XI. 1714. contest with Romish and despotic France. The finances CHAP. of Great Britain, as they were managed in former times, could never have sustained the cost of such a war for a tenth part of the time. But expense now seemed to be no obstacle to the Government. A new engine of surpassing strength had been discovered for extracting capital out of a country; and the able statesmen who had it in their hands felt it to be not less serviceable in consolidating the internal power than in meeting the external expenses of the new dynasty. The revenue at the dethronement of James II. was only £2,000,000 a-year, a sum not equal to three months' expenditure of the war; and long experience had proved the extreme difficulty of getting the people, even under the most pressing emergencies of Government, to make any addition to the public burdens. But William brought with him from Holland the secret of the Funding System. He showed the nation what may be done by forestalling the resources of future years in the present, by pledging the industry of a people to its capital. It was this marvellous discovery, then new to the world, which at once occasioned the successes which signalised the external government of the Revolution, and engendered the internal discontent which all but produced its downfall. 11. terrors it Great Bri When this system first began, the nation was not sensible of the important consequences to which it could General lead. They thought that it could only be a temporary excited in expedient, and that though perhaps it might lead to a tain. few millions being unnecessarily added to the national debt, yet that would be all. Though from the first, accordingly, its progress was viewed with a jealous eye by the thinking few, it made but little impression upon the unthinking many before the peace of Ryswick. But CHAP. when the War of the Succession began in 1702, and continued without intermission, and attended by daily 1714. increasing expenditure for ten years, the apprehensions of a large part of the nation became excessive. At the Revolution, the national debt was £661,000; by the year 1710 it exceeded £50,000,000 sterling. Though this sum may seem inconsiderable to us, who have become accustomed to the much greater debts which have since been contracted, yet it appeared prodigious to a people then beginning to learn for the first time to what burden the finances of a nation may, by the funding system, be subjected. It was a terrible thing to think that in twenty years the public debt had been augmented eighty-fold,—that in that short time it had come to amount to twenty-five times the revenue of the nation at its commencement. And it had in reality become a formidable burden, as compared with the resources of the state even at that time; for the public income, which had been two millions at the dethronement of James, had only risen to £5,691,000 at the death of Anne, while the debt was £54,000,000 12. broke's ac -being nearly ten times its amount, and about half in proportion to the national revenue of what it is at this time. Bolingbroke has left us the following vivid picture of Boling- the apprehensions with which, in the latter years of the count of its War of the Succession, the minds of men were filled on dangers. this dismal subject: "It is impossible to look back without grief on the necessary and unavoidable consequences of this establishment, or without indignation on that mystery of iniquity which hath been raised upon it, and carried on by means of it. Who can answer that a scheme which oppresses the farmer, ruins the |