The wars in George II.'s reign, and including the

whole of the Seven Years' War

War of American Independence.

Great French or Napoleonic War

86

121

600

In the earlier wars the taxation was nearly equal to the loans. But in the worst and most unnecessary, the American, the taxation did not amount to one-third of the debt incurred. The example has been followed also by other nations, and the debts of the world now amount to no less than 4,000,000,000l.

The change of public sentiment on the subject of the debt is shown by the fact that Swift thought the amount so great that he was in favour of repudiation. RepudiaThe Whigs always made out that such a tion.

policy would have been pursued if the Pretender had been restored. Addison, with his usual felicity, describes a dream which fell upon him after a visit to the bank. It is a vision of Public Credit, a beautiful virgin, whose touch could turn what she pleased to gold. Magna Charta, the Acts of Uniformity, Toleration, and Settlement are on the walls. She is easily affected by news, wastes quickly away, and recovers with equal quickness. Then, in a dance, entered hideous phantoms, two by two, at sight of which the lady fainted. They were Tyranny and Anarchy, Bigotry and Atheism, the Genius of a commonwealth, with a young man about twenty-two years of age. He had a sword in his right hand, which in the dance he often brandished at the Act of Settlement. A citizen whispered that he saw a sponge in his left hand. This was the Pretender, and the sponge was to wipe out the national debt. The scene vanished, and a second dance entered of amiable phantoms, Liberty and Monarchy, Moderation and Religion, a third person (whom Addison had then never seen, the Elector of Hanover), with the Genius of Great Britain. Whereupon Public Credit revived, and there were pyramids of guineas.

Statesmen of the present day see the need of making a provision for repayment, though, as money continually decreases in value, the burden continually becomes of less weight in proportion. When the French war ended the amount was 840, and it is now 780 millions.

'Woe to England,' has been the warning of thinkers, when the coal fields are exhausted and the national debt remains unpaid!'

Parties.

Section IV-Strength of parties. The Clergy.

The bulk of no party.

As it was in the reign of Anne that parties began to assume the shape which they have kept almost to our own times, it seems advisable to consider the classes of society from which the two parties respectively drew their strength. One must premise that the great bulk of the English people belongs to no party, but, being as it were between the two, sways from one to the other, according as their sense of justice or the prejudices of passion may incline them. When the Long Parliament met, the bulk of the people were opposed to the Court. Twenty years later at the Restoration they were as certainly for the Stuarts, and as surely at the Revolution against them. We may note also the sudden change in the queen's reign, when the same mob that had cheered Marlborough shouted for Dr. Sacheverell. The same reflexion helps to explain sudden changes of our own as well as of other days.

Tories.

The strength of the Tories lay in the country rather than in the towns, in the small boroughs rather than in the large towns, in the agricultural rather than in the moneyed interest. The tenant farmers were mostly Tories. Almost all the clergy, and especially the country clergy, were to be found in the Tory ranks. As an extreme wing of the Tory clergy must be ranked

the non-jurors, those who resigned place rather than take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, a sect numerically unimportant, but comprising several men who were distinguished for learning and for piety.

Whigs.

The Whigs were strong in the large towns, London being especially staunch to them. The merchants and bankers, as well as most of the small freeholders in the country, were Whigs. A good many of the lords and of the bishops belonged to that party; but this was because the former had been created, and the latter appointed, by King William. To these must be added the whole body of the Dissenters, who were estimated to amount to 4 per cent. of the population.

As the Universities were the recruiting ground of the clergy, we should expect that the Tory party would be strong in them. It was, however, much stronger at Oxford than at Cambridge. Shortly after the accession of George I., at the time of the rising for the old Pretender, it was found necessary to send soldiers down to Oxford to keep order. At the same time the king happened to be sending a present of books to the sister University. An Oxford epigram was written

The king observing, with judicious eyes,
The state of both his universities,

To Oxford sent a troop of horse; and why?
That learned body wanted loyalty;

To Cambridge books he sent, as well discerning
How much that loyal body wanted learning.

A Cambridge man replied

The king to Oxford sent a troop of horse,

For Tories own no argument but force;

With equal skill to Cambridge books he sent,

For Whigs admit no force but argument.

There was a great difference between the clergy of the towns and of the country; the London clergy, especially,

The clergy.
Queen

Anne's

Bounty.

were often men of mark. But the great majority of the clergy were both in learning and in social position far below the standard of the present day. It was estimated that not one benefice in forty was worth 100l. a year, so that the 'passing rich on 40l. a year,' of Goldsmith's poem would not then have excited the smile that it now does ; and as the Church of England wisely allows its clergy to marry, there was very general misery and distress amongst their families. Bishop Burnet claims the credit of having suggested a method of improving their position, first to William and then to Anne. The humane heart of Anne at once approved the suggestion, and Parliament was found quite willing to sanction the plan. In the times before the Reformation it had been the practice to give to the Pope firstfruits and tithes, that is, the whole of the first year's revenue, and a tithe of all later years. When Henry VIII. pillaged the Church this revenue was seized by the Crown, and Burnet's suggestion was to apply this fund to the improvement of the livings of the poorer clergy. It is still called Queen Anne's Bounty.

Section I-French Literature.

THE age of Lewis XIV. is often called the Augustan Age of French Literature. That name compares it with the time when, under the rule and patronage of Augustus, Roman literature reached its most polished if not its most original epoch, and when the masterpieces of most of the great Latin authors

Augustan
Age of

French
Literature.

Patronage.

were written. The period is often made to include works which really belonged to earlier times. Nor did the system of State patronage begin with Lewis. Some of his predecessors had encouraged literature. To one of them, Cardinal Richelieu, France owes the establishment of the Academy, which, itself to a great extent the creature of patronage, was intended in a sense to be the vehicle of the king's patronage to others. Pensions were freely bestowed on authors, and literature was intended to become a branch of the civil service. The Academy was to draw up a code of laws for the literary, by producing treatises on rhetoric and poetics, and to compile a dictionary of the French language, which, in the seventeenth century, was assuming its present shape. Patronage certainly cannot create genius any more than rules can make a poet. It is within its power to promote culture; but it will be found that its tendency is to dwarf genius. Despotism cannot give genius, but it can stifle it; for really great men will not long endure to live in the atmosphere of a despotic court, and to shape their voices only to speech that is agreeable there. They may for a time be content to dedicate their works to a king who is their paymaster, and to let their dedications be fulsome. Racine died in disgrace because he spoke out about the miserable condition of the French peasantry, and Boileau left the Court saying, 'What should I do there? I know not how to flatter.'

It is impossible to separate from the system of patronage the most marked characteristic of the era, that everything must be done according to rule. All accordIf patronage stifled genius on one side, rules ing to rule. stifled it on the other. The drama was hidebound by the doctrine of the three unities-of time, of place, and of action, fetters to which Shakespeare had never sub