CHAP.
XXIV,

Domestic discontent.

for him to wage war on the sea. William was therefore able to indulge, during some weeks, the pleasing belief that he had by skill and firmness averted from the civilised world a general war which had lately seemed to be imminent, and that he had secured the great community of nations against the undue predominance of one too powerful member.

But the pleasure and the pride with which he contemplated the success of his foreign policy gave place to very different feelings, as soon as he again had to deal with our domestic factions. And, indeed, those who most revere his memory, must acknowledge that, in dealing with these factions, he did not, at this time, show his wonted statesmanship. For a wise man, he seems never to have been sufficiently aware how much offence is given by discourtesy in small things. His ministers had apprised him that the result of the elections had been unsatisfactory, and that the temper of the new representatives of the people would require much management. Unfortunately he did not lay this intimation to heart. He had by proclamation fixed the opening of the Parliament for the 29th of November. This was then considered as a very late day. For the London season began together with Michaelmas Term; and, even during the war, the King had scarcely ever failed to receive the compliments of his faithful Lords and Commons on the 5th of November, the anniversary both of his birth and of his memorable landing. The numerous members of the House of Commons who were in town, having their time on their hands, formed cabals, and heated themselves and each other by murmuring at his partiality for the country of his birth. He had been off to

Holland, they said, at the earliest possible moment. He was now lingering in Holland till the latest possible moment. This was not the worst. The 29th of November came: but the King was not come. It was necessary that the Lords Justices should prorogue the Parliament till the 6th of December. The delay was imputed, and justly, to adverse winds. But the malecontents asked, with some reason, whether His Majesty had not known that there were often gales from the West in the German Ocean, and whether, when he had made a solemn appointment with the Estates of his Realm for a particular day, he ought not to have arranged things in such a way that nothing short of a miracle could have prevented him from keeping that appointment.

Thus the ill humour which a large proportion of the new legislators had brought up from their country seats became

CHAP.

XXIV.

chosen

more and more acrid every day, till they entered on their functions. One question was much agitated during this unpleasant interval. Who was to be Speaker? The Junto Littleton wished to place Sir Thomas Littleton in the chair. He was Speaker one of their ablest, most zealous and most steadfast friends; and had been, both in the House of Commons and at the Board of Treasury, an invaluable second to Montague. There was reason indeed to expect a strong opposition. That Littleton was a Whig, was a grave objection to him in the opinion of the Tories. That he was a placeman, and that he was for a standing army, were grave objections to him in the opinion of many who were not Tories. But nobody else came forward. The health of the late Speaker Foley had failed. Musgrave was talked of in coffeehouses: but the rumour that he would be proposed soon died away. Seymour's name was in a few mouths but Seymour's day had gone by. He still possessed, indeed, those advantages which had once made him the first of the country gentlemen of England; illustrious descent, ample fortune, ready and weighty eloquence, perfect familiarity with parliamentary business. But all these things could not do so much to raise him as his moral character did to drag him down. Haughtiness such as his, though it could never have been liked, might, if it had been united with elevated sentiments of virtue and honour, have been pardoned. But of all the forms of pride, even the pride of upstart wealth not excepted, the most offensive is the pride of ancestry when found in company with sordid and ignoble vices, greediness, mendacity, knavery and impudence; and such was the pride of Seymour. Many, even of those who were well pleased to see the ministers galled by his keen and skilful rhetoric, remembered that he had sold himself more than once, and suspected that he was impatient to sell himself again. On the very eve of the opening of Parliament, a little tract entitled "Considerations on the Choice of a Speaker" was widely circulated, and seems to have produced a great sensation. The writer cautioned the representatives of the people, at some length, against Littleton; and then, in even stronger language, though more concisely, against Seymour: but did not suggest any third person. The sixth of December came, and found the Country party, as it called itself, still unprovided with a candidate. The King, who had not been many hours in London, took his seat in the House of Lords. The Commons were summoned to the bar, and were directed to choose a Speaker. They returned to their Chamber. Har

CHAP.
XXIV.

King's speech.

force.

tington proposed Littleton; and the proposition was seconded by Spencer. No other person was put in nomination: but there was a warm debate of two hours. Seymour, exasperated by finding that no party was inclined to support his pretensions, spoke with extravagant violence. He who could well remember the military despotism of Cromwell, who had been an active politician in the days of the Cabal, and who had seen his own beautiful county turned into a Golgotha by the Bloody Circuit, declared that the liberties of the nation had never been in greater danger than at that moment, and that their doom would be fixed if a courtier were called to the chair. The opposition insisted on dividing. Hartington's motion was carried by two hundred and forty-two votes to a hundred and thirty-five, Littleton himself, according to the childish old usage which has descended to our times, voting in the minority. Three days later, he was presented and approved.

The King then spoke from his throne. He declared his firm conviction that the Houses were disposed to do whatever was necessary for the safety, honour and happiness of the kingdom; and he asked them for nothing more. When they came to consider the military and naval establishments, they would remember that, unless England were secure from attack, she could not continue to hold the high place which she had won for herself among European powers: her trade would languish; her credit would fail; and even her internal tranquillity would be in danger. He also expressed a hope that some progress would be made in the discharge of the debts contracted during the war. "I think," he said, "an English Parliament can never make such a mistake as not to hold sacred all Parliamentary engagements."

ProceedThe speech appeared to be well received; and during a ings re- short time William flattered himself that the great fault, as lating to the amount he considered it, of the preceding session would be repaired, of the land 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 cor-
dially 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, con-
sidered 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 pre-
ceding year, it was said, even if they had been honestly car-
ried 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 eagerly 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 interest of
their own faction. It was to no purpose that the King was
told, what was nevertheless perfectly true, that not one half

CHAP.

XXIV.

CHAP.
XXIV.

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 carried 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 everything 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