IX. 1712. in whom the qualities of fidelity and constancy had OHAP. proved to be so lamentably deficient. She naturally, therefore, felt herself attracted towards a party whose watchwords were Loyalty and Devotion, and which, in the worst times, in the field or on the scaffold, had shown themselves true to their principles and faithful to their oaths. She was attracted to the Cavaliers as naturally and unavoidably as the friends of freedom were to the cause of Russell and Sidney. 71. cause pro grasping ambition of the Whigs. On the other hand, the large share which they had had in these convulsions, and the evident tendency of The same their principles, if pushed to extremities in troubled times, duced the to reproduce them, was the real reason which rendered the Whigs so tenacious of office, and so inordinately ambitious of all the patronage and influence which could support them in it. They felt a secret conviction that their position was insecure; they rested on the unstable equilibrium. They knew that there could be little sincere reliance, in the sovereign on the throne, upon a party which had beheaded her grandfather and dethroned her father; and therefore they felt an insatiable desire to strengthen themselves in office, in such a way as should render them independent of any change in her disposition, and beyond the reach of her suspicions. They were haunted, like the Jacobins of Paris a century after, and from the same reason, by a perpetual dread of a Restoration. Thence their anxiety to secure the patronage of all offices under Government to themselves; thence their desire, in an especial manner, to have no one round the person of the sovereign but their own devoted adherents; thence their grasping ambition, their exclusive system, their unpopularity both with the sovereign and the nation, and their fall. The great lesson to be VOL. II. Q IX. 1712. CHAP. learned from the eventful story of Queen Anne's reign, as of all other periods which succeed those of civil convulsion, is, that political crimes draw after them, even in this world, their own punishment; that the causes which induce that punishment are the very ones which the criminals devise to avert it; and that, of all public crimes, the greatest and the most irremediable are those which sever the bonds that unite the sovereign and the people. 72. Errors of the people at this crisis. 73. Faults of the Queen and the But the people themselves were far from being immaculate at this crisis. On the contrary, they largely shared at once in the ingratitude of the Court and the blindness of the Government. They entered not only readily, but cordially and enthusiastically, into the persecution of the illustrious general who had raised their country to such an unparalleled pitch of glory; they evinced the too frequent, and to human nature degrading, jealousy of little against great minds. Such was the strength of this feeling that it led them to overlook, not only every consideration of prudence and wisdom, but every attention to their own and their children's interests; to forget alike their principles, their policy, and security ; and generally support, at the close of a war in the prosecution of which they had made the greatest sacrifices, and displayed the noblest spirit, a peace which was characterised by the abandonment of all the objects for which those sacrifices had been made, and all the securities which that spirit had enabled them to attain. Her Still greater, because blacker and more unpardonable, was the ingratitude of the Queen on this occasion. fault was of a far deeper dye than that either of the this crisis. Whigs or Tories, for it was mixed up with personal feeling, it was stained by odious ingratitude. Tories at Marl borough had in every sense been the architect of her fortune. By displacing her father, he had been mainly instrumental in placing her on the throne; he had secured her there by the wisdom of his measures, and illustrated her reign by the glory of his actions. Whatever he had been to others, to her at least he had been a true and faithful servant—a wise and trusty counsellor —a successful and glorious general. Yet she repaid all these inestimable services by the blackest ingratitude, and not only acquiesced, but took the lead, in a series of persecutions of her first and greatest subject, her first and greatest benefactor, which were a disgrace to the age in which she lived, and to the end of the world will be a hissing and a reproach against human nature itself. Her Tory ministers were blameable, not because they strove to supplant Marlborough and the Whigs in power, but because, in the prosecution of that object, they abandoned all the main objects of our foreign policy, relinquished all the fruits of the war, and carried their political hostility beyond all bounds into private malignity and persecution. But in Queen Anne's case, these offences, grave as they are, were mingled with others of a deeper dye; for she was not only unwise and inconsistent as a sovereign, but ungrateful and revengeful as a woman. CHAP. IX. 1712. son from events. It is recorded by Lord Bacon, that when the English 74. garrison of Calais, in the reign of Queen Mary, was Moral lesevacuating that fortress after its capitulation to the subsequent Duke of Guise, a French officer said to an English, "When will your standard be again seen here?" "When your national sins shall exceed ours," was the Englishman's reply. We have seen the accomplishment of this memorable prophecy. The march of Marl IX. 1712. 244 THE LIFE OF CHAP. borough and Eugene to Paris in 1711 was interrupted, and a disgraceful peace concluded, in consequence of divisions and heartburnings-the sad bequest of two successful revolutions in Great Britain; and repeatedly, during the eighteenth century, England was brought to the verge of ruin in consequence. But time rolled on, and brought its wonted changes on its wings. England, under the Hanoverian dynasty, which Marlborough seated on the throne, enjoyed during a century the inestimable blessings of civil and religious freedom, combined with devotion and loyalty to the throne. The national feeling was composed of all the generous aspirations which actuated the Whigs of the preceding century, and all the noble devotion which sustained the Tories. Meanwhile, France, during the same period, was distracted by the passions, and at last torn by the convulsions, which had desolated England a century before; and what was the result? Such, and such only, as under the administration of a righteous Providence might be expected. The march of Eugene and Marlborough, suspended for a century, was renewed; victory was in the end faithful to the standards of freedom and loyalty, of patriotism and perseverance; the national sins of France had exceeded those of England, and the anticipated result took place: the gates of Calais were entered by the English horse, which had traversed France from Bayonne; and the standards of Wellington and Blucher were seen on the towers of Paris. > CHAPTER X. MARLBOROUGH'S BRILLIANT RECEPTION ON THE CONTINENT.-LOSES CHAP. X. 1713. 1. Marlbo rough's im portant share in se Hanoverian succession. LIKE all other great contests which have desolated the world, the War of the Succession, although ostensibly waged on account of the Spanish succession, was really the result of opposite and contending principles which divided mankind. Civil and religious liberty was the p cause for which Marlborough contended, and its success earn the was wound up with the Hanoverian succession. Civil despotism was the principle which animated the armies of Louis; the establishment of the Romish faith would have followed their triumph, and the restoration of the Stuart line was its symbol. The Elector of Hanover was found with the one host, the Pretender was conspicuous in the ranks of the other. The malice of his enemies, and the factious spirit which had come to animate the British counsels, had deprived Marlborough of the means of securing the independence of his country by the conditions of the treaty of peace, and at the same time |