who was a Protestant, could be of no weight. But Middleton found an ally in one whom he regarded as a rival and an enemy. Melfort, scared by the universal hatred of which he knew himself to be the object, and afraid that he should be held accountable, both in England and in France, for his master's wrongheadedness, submitted the case to several eminent Doctors of the Sorbonne. These learned casuists pronounced the Declaration unobjectionable in a religious point of view. The great Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, who was regarded by the Gallican Church as a father scarcely inferior in authority to Cyprian or Augustin, showed by powerful arguments, both theological and political, that the scruple which tormented James was precisely of that sort against which a much wiser King had given a caution in the words, "Be not righteous overmuch."* The authority of the French divines was supported by the authority of the French Government. The language held at Versailles was so strong that James began to be alarmed. What if Lewis should take serious offence, should think his hospitality ungratefully requited, should conclude a peace with the usurpers, and should request his unfortunate guests to seek another asylum? It was necessary to submit. On the seventeenth of April 1693 the Declaration was signed and sealed. The concluding sentence was a prayer. "We come to vindicate our own right, and to establish the liberties of our people; and may God give us success in the prosecution of the one as we sincerely intend the confirmation of the other!"+ The prayer was heard. The success of James was strictly proportioned to his sincerity. What his sincerity was we know on the best evidence. Scarcely had he called on heaven to witness the truth of his professions, when he directed Melfort to send a copy of the Declaration to Rome with such explanations as might satisfy the Pope. Melfort's letter ends thus: "After all, the object of this Declaration is only to get us back to England. We shall fight the battle of the Catholics with much greater advantage at Whitehall than at Saint Germains."‡

Life of James, ii. 509. Bossuet's opinion will be found in the Appendix to M. Mazure's history. The Bishop sums up his arguments thus: "Je dirai donc volontiers aux Catholiques, s'il y en a qui n'approuvent point la déclaration dont il s'agit; Noli esse justus multum ; neque plus sapias quam necesse est, ne obstupescas." In the Life of James it is asserted that the French Doctors changed their opinion, and that Bossuet,

though he held out longer than the rest,
saw at last that he had been in error, but
did not choose formally to retract. I
think much too highly of Bossuet's
understanding to believe this.

Life of James, ii. 505.

"En fin celle cy-j'entends la déclaration n'est que pour rentrer; et l'on peut beaucoup mieux disputer des affaires des Catholiques à Whythall qu'à Saint Germain."-Mazure, Appendix.

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XX.

CHAP.

XX.

Effect of

claration.

Meanwhile the document from which so much was expected had been despatched to London. There it was printed at a secret press in the house of a Quaker: for there was among the Quakers a party, small in number, but zealous and active, which had imbibed the politics of William Penn.* To circulate such a work was a service of some danger: but agents were found. Several persons were taken up while distributing copies in the streets of the city. A hundred packets were stopped in one day at the Post Office on their way to the fleet. But, after a short time, the government wisely gave up the endeavour to suppress what could not be suppressed, and published the Declaration at full length, accompanied by a severe commentary.†

The commentary, however, was hardly needed. The Dethe new De- claration altogether failed to produce the effect which Middleton had anticipated. The truth is that his advice had not been asked till it mattered not what advice he gave. If James had put forth such a manifesto in January 1689, the throne would probably not have been declared vacant. If he had put forth such a manifesto when he was on the coast of Normandy at the head of an army, he would have conciliated a large part of the nation, and he might possibly have been joined by a large part of the fleet. But both in 1689 and in 1692 he had held the language of an implacable tyrant; and it was now too late to affect tenderness of heart and reverence for the constitution of the realm. The contrast between the new Declaration and the preceding Declaration excited, not without reason, general suspicion and contempt. What confidence could be placed in the word of a Prince so unstable, of a Prince who veered from extreme to extreme? nothing would satisfy him but the heads and quarters of hundreds of poor ploughmen and boatmen who had, several years before, taken some rustic liberties with him at which his grandfather Henry the Fourth would have had a hearty laugh. In 1693, the foulest and most ungrateful treasons were to be covered with oblivion. Caermarthen expressed the general sentiment. "I do not," he said, "understand all this. Last April I was to be hanged. This April I am to have a free pardon. I cannot imagine what I have done during the past year to deserve such goodness." The general

Baden to the States General, June
1693.
Four thousand copies, wet
from the press, were found in this house.
Baden's Letters to the States Gene-

In 1692,

ral of May and June 1693; An Answer to the Late King James's Declaration published at Saint Germains, 1693.

opinion was that a snare was hidden under this unwonted
clemency, this unwonted respect for law. The Declaration,
it was said, was excellent; and so was the Coronation oath.
Every body knew how King James had observed his Coronation
oath; and every body might guess how he would observe his
Declaration. While grave men reasoned thus, the Whig
jesters were not sparing of their pasquinades. Some of the
Noncompounders, meantime, uttered indignant murmurs.
The King was in bad hands, in the hands of men who hated
monarchy. His mercy was cruelty of the worst sort. The
general pardon which he had granted to his enemies was in
truth a general proscription of his friends. Hitherto the
Judges appointed by the usurper had been under a restraint,
imperfect, indeed, yet not absolutely nugatory. They had
known that a day of reckoning might come, and had there-
fore in general dealt tenderly with the persecuted adherents
of the rightful King. That restraint His Majesty had now
taken away.
He had told Holt and Treby that, till he should
land in England, they might hang royalists without the
smallest fear of being called to account.*

But by no class of people was the Declaration read with so much disgust and indignation as by the native aristocracy of Ireland. This then was the reward of their loyalty. This was the faith of kings. When England had cast James out, when Scotland had rejected him, the Irish had still been true to him; and he had, in return, solemnly given his sanction to a law which restored to them an immense domain of which they had been despoiled. Nothing that had happened since that time had diminished their claim to his favour. They had defended his cause to the last: they had fought for him long after he had deserted them: many of them, when unable to contend longer against superior force, had followed him into banishment; and now it appeared that he was desirous to make peace with his deadliest enemies at the expense of his most faithful friends. There was much discontent in the Irish regiments which were dispersed through the Netherlands and along the frontiers of Germany and Italy. Even the Whigs allowed that, for once, the O's and Macs were in the right, and asked triumphantly whether a prince who had broken his word to his devoted servants could be expected to keep it to his foes ?+

Life of James, ii. 514. I am unwilling to believe that Ken was among those who blamed the Declaration of 1693 as too merciful.

Among the Nairne Papers is a letter sent on this occasion by Middleton to Macarthy, who was then serving in Germany. Middleton tries to soothe Macar

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XX.

CHAP.

XX.

French

preparations for

the campaign.

Institution of the Or

der of Saint Lewis.

Middleton's account of Versailles.

:

While the Declaration was the subject of general conversation in England, military operations recommenced on the Continent. The preparations of France had been such as amazed even those who estimated most highly her resources and the abilities of her rulers. Both her agriculture and her commerce were suffering. The vineyards of Burgundy, the interminable cornfields of the Beauce, had failed to yield their increase the looms of Lyons were silent; and the merchant ships were rotting in the harbour of Marseilles. Yet the monarchy presented to its numerous enemies a front more haughty and more menacing than ever. Lewis had determined not to make any advance towards a reconciliation with the new government of England till the whole strength of his realm had been put forth in one more effort. A mighty effort in truth it was, but too exhausting to be repeated. He made an immense display of force at once on the Pyrenees and on the Alps, on the Rhine and on the Meuse, in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean. That nothing might be wanting which could excite the martial ardour of a nation eminently highspirited, he instituted, a few days before he left his palace for the camp, a new military order of knighthood, and placed it under the protection of his own sainted ancestor and patron. The cross of St. Lewis shone on the breasts of the gentlemen who had been conspicuous in the trenches before Mons and Namur, and on the fields of Fleurus and Steinkirk; and the sight raised a generous emulation among those who had still to win an honourable fame in arms.*

In the week in which this celebrated order began to exist Middleton visited Versailles. A letter in which he gave his

thy and to induce Macarthy to soothe
others. Nothing more disingenuous was
ever written by a Minister of State.
"The King," says the Secretary, "pro-
mises in the foresaid Declaration to
restore the Settlement, but, at the same
time, declares that he will recompense
all those who may suffer by it by giving
them equivalents." Now James did not
declare that he would recompense any
body, but merely that he would advise
with his Parliament on the subject. He
did not declare that he would even advise
with his Parliament about recompensing
all who might suffer, but merely about
recompensing such as had followed him
to the last. Finally he said nothing
about equivalents. Indeed the notion of
giving an equivalent to every body who
suffered by the Act of Settlement, in
other words, of giving an equivalent for

the fee simple of half the soil of Ireland, was obviously absurd. Middleton's letter will be found in Macpherson's collection. I will give a sample of the language held by the Whigs on this occasion. "The Roman Catholics of Ireland," says one writer, "although in point of interest and profession different from us, yet, to do them right, have deserved well from the late King, though ill from us; and for the late King to leave them and exclude them is such an instance of uncommon ingratitude that Protestants have no reason to stand by a Prince that deserts his own party, and a people that have been faithful to him and his interest to the very last."-A Short and True Relation of the Intrigues, &c., 1694.

The edict of creation was registered by the Parliament of Paris on the 10th of April 1693.

friends in England an account of his visit has come down to us. He was presented to Lewis, was most kindly received, and was overpowered by gratitude and admiration. Of all the wonders of the Court,-so Middleton wrote,-its master was the greatest. The splendour of the great King's personal merit threw even the splendour of his fortunes into the shade. The language which His Most Christian Majesty held about English politics was, on the whole, highly satisfactory. Yet in one thing this accomplished prince and his able and experienced ministers were strangely mistaken. They were all possessed with the absurd notion that the Prince of Orange was a great man. No pains had been spared to undeceive them: but they were under an incurable delusion. They saw through a magnifying glass of such power that the leech appeared to them a leviathan. It ought to have occurred to Middleton that possibly the delusion might be in his own vision and not in theirs. Lewis and the counsellors who surrounded him were far indeed from loving William. But they did not hate him with that mad hatred which raged in the breasts of his English enemies. Middleton was one of the wisest and most moderate of the Jacobites. Yet even Middleton's judgment was so much darkened by malice that, on this subject, he talked nonsense unworthy of his capacity. He, like the rest of his party, could see in the usurper nothing but what was odious and contemptible, the heart of a fiend, the understanding and manners of a stupid, brutal, Dutch boor, who generally observed a sulky silence, and, when forced to speak, gave short testy answers in bad English. The French statesmen, on the other hand, judged of William's faculties from an intimate knowledge of the way in which he had, during twenty years, conducted affairs of the greatest moment and of the greatest difficulty. He had, ever since 1673, been playing against themselves a most complicated game of mixed chance and skill for an immense stake: they were proud, and with reason, of their own dexterity at that game; yet they were conscious that in him they had found more than their match. At the commencement of the long contest every advantage had been on their side. They had at their absolute command all the resources of the greatest kingdom in Europe; and he was merely the servant of a commonwealth, of which the whole territory was inferior in extent to Normandy or

The letter is dated the 19th of April 1693. It is among the Nairne MSS., and was printed by Macpherson,

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XX.