Volume II Part 21 (1/2)

[628] His admirers were able to boast, and his enemies seem not to have been able to deny, that the sense of the const.i.tuent bodies was fairly taken. It is true that he risked little. The party which was attached to him was triumphant, enthusiastic, full of life and energy. The party from which alone he could expect serious opposition was disunited and disheartened, out of humour with itself, and still more out of humour with its natural chief. A great majority, therefore, of the s.h.i.+res and boroughs returned Whig members.

It was not over England alone that William's guardians.h.i.+p now extended.

Scotland had risen on her tyrants. All the regular soldiers by whom she had long been held down had been summoned by James to his help against the Dutch invaders, with the exception of a very small force, which, under the command of the Duke of Gordon, a great Roman Catholic Lord, garrisoned the Castle of Edinburgh. Every mail which had gone northward during the eventful month of November had carried news which stirred the pa.s.sions of the oppressed Scots. While the event of the military operations was still doubtful, there were at Edinburgh riots and clamours which became more menacing after James had retreated from Salisbury. Great crowds a.s.sembled at first by night, and then by broad daylight. Popes were publicly burned: loud shouts were raised for a free Parliament: placards were stuck up setting prices on the heads of the ministers of the crown. Among those ministers Perth, as filling the great place of Chancellor, as standing high in the royal favour, as an apostate from the reformed faith, and as the man who had first introduced the thumbscrew into the jurisprudence of his country, was the most detested. His nerves were weak, his spirit abject; and the only courage which he possessed was that evil courage which braves infamy, and which looks steadily on the torments of others. His post, at such a time, was at the head of the Council board: but his heart failed him; and he determined to take refuge at his country seat from the danger which, as he judged by the looks and cries of the fierce and resolute populace of Edinburgh, was not remote. A strong guard escorted him safe to Castle Drummond: but scarcely had he departed when the city rose up.

A few troops tried to suppress the insurrection, but were overpowered.

The palace of Holyrood, which had been turned into a Roman Catholic seminary and printing house, was stormed and sacked. Huge heaps of Popish books, beads, crucifixes, and pictures were burned in the High Street. In the midst of the agitation came down the tidings of the King's flight. The members of the government gave up all thought of contending with the popular fury, and changed sides with a prompt.i.tude then common among Scottish politicians. The Privy Council by one proclamation ordered that all Papists should be disarmed, and by another invited Protestants to muster for the defence of pure religion. The nation had not waited for the call. Town and country were already up in arms for the Prince of Orange. Nithisdale and Clydesdale were the only regions in which there was the least chance that the Roman Catholics would make head; and both Nithisdale and Clydesdale were soon occupied by bands of armed Presbyterians. Among the insurgents were some fierce and moody men who had formerly disowned Argyle, and who were now equally eager to disown William. His Highness, they said, was plainly a malignant. There was not a word about the Covenant in his Declaration.

The Dutch were a people with whom no true servant of the Lord would unite. They consorted with Lutherans; and a Lutheran was as much a child of perdition as a Jesuit. The general voice of the kingdom, however, effectually drowned the growl of this hateful faction. [629]

The commotion soon reached the neighbourhood of Castle Drummond. Perth found that he was no longer safe among his own servants and tenants. He gave himself up to an agony as bitter as that into which his merciless tyranny had often thrown better men. He wildly tried to find consolation in the rites of his new Church. He importuned his priests for comfort, prayed, confessed, and communicated: but his faith was weak; and he owned that, in spite of all his devotions, the strong terrors of death were upon him. At this time he learned that he had a chance of escaping on board of a s.h.i.+p which lay off Brentisland. He disguised himself as well as he could, and, after a long and difficult journey by unfrequented paths over the Ochill mountains, which were then deep in snow, he succeeded in embarking: but, in spite of all his precautions, he had been recognised, and the alarm had been given. As soon as it was known that the cruel renegade was on the waters, and that he had gold with him, pursuers, inflamed at once by hatred and by avarice, were on his track, A skiff, commanded by an old buccaneer, overtook the flying vessel and boarded her. Perth was dragged out of the hold on deck in woman's clothes, stripped, hustled, and plundered. Bayonets were held to his breast. Begging for life with unmanly cries, he was hurried to the sh.o.r.e and flung into the common gaol of Kirkaldy. Thence, by order of the Council over which he had lately presided, and which was filled with men who had been partakers in his guilt, he was removed to Stirling Castle. It was on a Sunday, during the time of public wors.h.i.+p, that he was conveyed under a guard to his place of confinement: but even rigid Puritans forgot the sanct.i.ty of the day and of the work. The churches poured forth their congregations as the torturer pa.s.sed by, and the noise of threats, execrations, and screams of hatred accompanied him to the gate of his prison. [630]

Several eminent Scotsmen were in London when the Prince arrived there; and many others now hastened thither to pay their court to him. On the seventh of January he requested them to attend him at Whitehall. The a.s.semblage was large and respectable. The Duke of Hamilton and his eldest son, the Earl of Arran, the chiefs of a house of almost regal dignity, appeared at the head of the procession. They were accompanied by thirty Lords and about eighty gentlemen of note. William desired them to consult together, and to let him know in what way he could best promote the welfare of their country. He then withdrew, and left them to deliberate unrestrained by his presence. They repaired to the Council chamber, and put Hamilton into the chair. Though there seems to have been little difference of opinion, their debates lasted three days, a fact which is sufficiently explained by the circ.u.mstance that Sir Patrick Hume was one of the debaters. Arran ventured to recommend a negotiation with the King. But this motion was ill received by the mover's father and by the whole a.s.sembly, and did not even find a seconder. At length resolutions were carried closely resembling the resolutions which the English Lords and Commoners had presented to the Prince a few days before. He was requested to call together a Convention of the Estates of Scotland, to fix the fourteenth of March for the day of meeting, and, till that day, to take on himself the civil and military administration. To this request he acceded; and thenceforth the government of the whole island was in his hands. [631]

The decisive moment approached; and the agitation of the public mind rose to the height. Knots of politicians were everywhere whispering and consulting. The coffeehouses were in a ferment. The presses of the capital never rested. Of the pamphlets which appeared at that time, enough may still be collected to form several volumes; and from those pamphlets it is not difficult to gather a correct notion of the state of parties.

There was a very small faction which wished to recall James without stipulations. There was also a very small faction which wished to set up a commonwealth, and to entrust the administration to a council of state under the presidency of the Prince of Orange. But these extreme opinions were generally held in abhorrence. Nineteen twentieths, of the nation consisted of persons in whom love of hereditary monarchy and love of const.i.tutional freedom were combined, though in different proportions, and who were equally opposed to the total abolition of the kingly office and to the unconditional restoration of the King.

But, in the wide interval which separated the bigots who still clung to the doctrines of Filmer from the enthusiasts who still dreamed the dreams of Harrington, there was room for many shades of opinion. If we neglect minute subdivisions, we shall find that the great majority of the nation and of the Convention was divided into four bodies. Three of these bodies consisted of Tories. The Whig party formed the fourth.

The amity of the Whigs and Tories had not survived the peril which had produced it. On several occasions, during the Prince's march from the West, dissension had appeared among his followers. While the event of his enterprise was doubtful, that dissension had, by his skilful management, been easily quieted. But, from the day on which he entered Saint James's palace in triumph, such management could no longer be practised. His victory, by relieving the nation from the strong dread of Popish tyranny, had deprived him of half his influence. Old antipathies, which had slept when Bishops were in the Tower, when Jesuits were at the Council board, when loyal clergymen were deprived of their bread by scores, when loyal gentlemen were put out of the commission of the peace by hundreds, were again strong and active. The Royalist shuddered at the thought that he was allied with all that from his youth up he had most hated, with old parliamentary Captains who had stormed his country house, with old parliamentary Commissioners who had sequestrated his estate, with men who had plotted the Rye House butchery and headed the Western rebellion. That beloved Church, too, for whose sake he had, after a painful struggle, broken through his allegiance to the throne, was she really in safety? Or had he rescued her from one enemy only that she might be exposed to another? The Popish priests, indeed, were in exile, in hiding, or in prison. No Jesuit or Benedictine who valued his life now dared to show himself in the habit of his order. But the Presbyterian and Independent teachers went in long procession to salute the chief of the government, and were as graciously received as the true successors of the Apostles. Some schismatics avowed the hope that every fence which excluded them from ecclesiastical preferment would soon be levelled; that the Articles would be softened down; that the Liturgy would be garbled; that Christmas would cease to be a feast; that Good Friday would cease to be a fast; that canons on whom no Bishop had ever laid his hand would, without the sacred vestment of white linen, distribute, in the choirs of Cathedrals, the eucharistic bread and wine to communicants lolling on benches. The Prince, indeed, was not a fanatical Presbyterian; but he was at best a Lat.i.tudinarian. He had no scruple about communicating in the Anglican form; but he cared not in what form other people communicated. His wife, it was to be feared, had imbibed too much of his spirit. Her conscience was under the direction of Burnet. She heard preachers of different Protestant sects. She had recently said that she saw no essential difference between the Church of England and the other reformed Churches. [632] It was necessary, therefore, that the Cavaliers should, at this conjuncture, follow the example set by their fathers in 1641, should draw off from Roundheads and sectaries, and should, in spite of all the faults of the hereditary monarch, uphold the cause of hereditary monarchy.

The body which was animated by these sentiments was large and respectable. It included about one half of the House of Lords, about one third of the House of Commons, a majority of the country gentlemen, and at least nine tenths of the clergy; but it was torn by dissensions, and beset on every side by difficulties.

One section of this great party, a section which was especially strong among divines, and of which Sherlock was the chief organ, wished that a negotiation should be opened with James, and that he should be invited to return to Whitehall on such conditions as might fully secure the civil and ecclesiastical const.i.tution of the realm. [633] It is evident that this plan, though strenuously supported by the clergy, was altogether inconsistent with the doctrines which the clergy had been teaching during many years. It was, in truth, an attempt to make a middle way where there was no room for a middle way, to effect a compromise between two things which do not admit of compromise, resistance and nonresistance. The Tories had formerly taken their stand on the principle of nonresistance. But that ground most of them had now abandoned, and were not disposed again to occupy. The Cavaliers of England had, as a cla.s.s, been so deeply concerned, directly or indirectly, in the late rising against the King, that they could not, for very shame, talk at that moment about the sacred duty of obeying Nero; nor, indeed, were they disposed to recall the prince under whose misgovernment they had suffered so much, without exacting from him terms which might make it impossible for him again to abuse his power.

They were, therefore, in a false position. Their old theory, sound or unsound, was at least complete and coherent. If that theory were sound, the King ought to be immediately invited back, and permitted, if such were his pleasure, to put Seymour and Danby, the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Bristol, to death for high treason, to reestablish the Ecclesiastical Commission, to fill the Church with Popish dignitaries, and to place the army under the command of Popish officers. But if, as the Tories themselves now seemed to confess, that theory was unsound, why treat with the King? If it was admitted that he might lawfully be excluded till he gave satisfactory guarantees for the security of the const.i.tution in Church and State, it was not easy to deny that he might lawfully be excluded for ever. For what satisfactory guarantee could he give? How was it possible to draw up an Act of Parliament in language clearer than the language of the Acts of Parliament which required that the Dean of Christ Church should be a Protestant? How was it possible to put any promise into words stronger than those in which James had repeatedly declared that he would strictly respect the legal rights of the Anglican clergy? If law or honour could have bound him, he would never have been forced to fly from his kingdom. If neither law nor honour could bind him, could he safely be permitted to return?

It is probable, however, that, in spite of these arguments, a motion for opening a negotiation with James would have been made in the Convention, and would have been supported by the great body of Tories, had he not been, on this, as on every other occasion, his own worst enemy. Every post which arrived from Saint Germains brought intelligence which damped the ardour of his adherents. He did not think it worth his while to feign regret for his past errors, or to promise amendment. He put forth a manifesto, telling his people that it had been his constant care to govern them with justice and moderation, and that they had been cheated into ruin by imaginary grievances. [634] The effect of his folly and obstinacy was that those who were most desirous to see him restored to his throne on fair conditions felt that, by proposing at that moment to treat with him, they should injure the cause which they wished to serve.

They therefore determined to coalesce with another body of Tories of whom Sancroft was the chief. Sancroft fancied that he had found out a device by which provision might be made for the government of the country without recalling James, and yet without despoiling him of his crown. This device was a Regency. The most uncompromising of those divines who had inculcated the doctrine of pa.s.sive obedience had never maintained that such obedience was due to a babe or to a madman. It was universally acknowledged that, when the rightful sovereign was intellectually incapable of performing his office, a deputy might be appointed to act in his stead, and that any person who should resist the deputy, and should plead as an excuse for doing so the command of a prince who was in the cradle, or who was raving, would justly incur the penalties of rebellion. Stupidity, perverseness, and superst.i.tion, such was the reasoning of the Primate, had made James as unfit to rule his dominions as any child in swaddling clothes, or as any maniac who was grinning and chattering in the straw of Bedlam. That course must therefore be taken which had been taken when Henry the Sixth was an infant, and again when he became lethargic. James could not be King in effect: but he must still continue to be King in semblance. Writs must still run in his name. His image and superscription must still appear on the coin and on the Great Seal. Acts of Parliament must still be called from the years of his reign. But the administration must be taken from him and confided to a Regent named by the Estates of the Realm. In this way, Sancroft gravely maintained, the people would remain true to their allegiance: the oaths of fealty which they had sworn to their King would be strictly fulfilled; and the most orthodox Churchmen might, without any scruple of conscience, take office under the Regent. [635]

The opinion of Sancroft had great weight with the whole Tory party, and especially with the clergy. A week before the day for which the Convention had been summoned, a grave party a.s.sembled at Lambeth Palace, heard prayers in the chapel, dined with the Primate, and then consulted on the state of public affairs. Five suffragans of the Archbishop, who had shared his perils and his glory in the preceding summer, were present. The Earls of Clarendon and Ailesbury represented the Tory laity. The unanimous sense of the meeting appeared to be that those who had taken the oath of allegiance to James might justifiably withdraw their obedience from him, but could not with a safe conscience call any other by the name of King. [636]

Thus two sections of the Tory party, a section which looked forward to an accommodation with James, and a section which was opposed to any such accommodation, agreed in supporting the plan of Regency. But a third section, which, though not very numerous, had great weight and influence, recommended a very different plan. The leaders of this small band were Danby and the Bishop of London in the House of Lords, and Sir Robert Sawyer in the House of Commons. They conceived that they had found out a way of effecting a complete revolution under strictly legal forms. It was contrary to all principle, they said, that the King should be deposed by his subjects; nor was it necessary to depose him. He had himself, by his flight, abdicated his power and dignity. A demise had actually taken place. All const.i.tutional lawyers held that the throne of England could not be one moment vacant. The next heir had therefore succeeded. Who, then, was the next heir? As to the infant who had been carried into France, his entrance into the world had been attended by many suspicious circ.u.mstances. It was due to the other members of the royal family and to the nation that all doubts should be cleared up. An investigation had been solemnly demanded, in the name of the Princess of Orange, by her husband, and would have been inst.i.tuted if the parties who were accused of fraud had not taken a course which, in any ordinary case, would have been considered as a decisive proof of guilt. They had not chosen to await the issue of a solemn parliamentary proceeding: they had stolen away into a foreign country: they had carried with them the child: they had carried with them all those French and Italian women of the bedchamber who, if there had been foul play, must have been privy to it, and who ought therefore to have been subjected to a rigorous cross examination. To admit the boy's claim without inquiry was impossible; and those who called themselves his parents had made inquiry impossible.

Judgment must therefore go against him by default. If he was wronged, he was wronged, not by the nation, but by those whose strange conduct at the time of his birth had justified the nation in demanding investigation, and who had then avoided investigation by flight. He might therefore, with perfect equity, be considered as a pretender. And thus the crown had legally devolved on the Princess of Orange. She was actually Queen Regnant. The Houses had nothing to do but to proclaim her. She might, if such were her pleasure, make her husband her first minister, and might even, with the consent of Parliament, bestow on him the t.i.tle of King.

The persons who preferred this scheme to any other were few; and it was certain to be opposed, both by all who still bore any good will to James, and by all the adherents of William. Yet Danby, confident in his own knowledge of parliamentary tactics, and well aware how much, when great parties are nearly balanced, a small flying squadron can effect, was not without hopes of being able to keep the event of the contest in suspense till both Whigs and Tories, despairing of complete victory, and afraid of the consequences of delay, should suffer him to act as umpire.

Nor is it impossible that he might have succeeded if his efforts had been seconded, nay, if they had not been counteracted, by her whom he wished to raise to the height of human greatness. Quicksighted as he was and versed in affairs, he was altogether ignorant of the character of Mary, and of the feeling with which she regarded her husband; nor was her old preceptor, Compton, better informed. William's manners were dry and cold, his const.i.tution was infirm, and his temper by no means bland; he was not a man who would commonly be thought likely to inspire a fine young woman of twenty-six with a violent pa.s.sion. It was known that he had not always been strictly constant to his wife; and talebearers had reported that she did not live happily with him. The most acute politicians therefore never suspected that, with all his faults, he had obtained such an empire over her heart as princes the most renowned for their success in gallantry, Francis the First and Henry the Fourth, Lewis the Fourteenth and Charles the Second, had never obtained over the heart of any woman, and that the three kingdoms of her forefathers were valuable in her estimation chiefly because, by bestowing them on him, she could prove to him the intensity and disinterestedness of her affection. Danby, in profound ignorance of her sentiments, a.s.sured her that he would defend her rights, and that, if she would support him, he hoped to place her alone on the throne. [637]

The course of the Whigs, meanwhile, was simple and consistent. Their doctrine was that the foundation of our government was a contract expressed on one side by the oath of allegiance, and on the other by the coronation oath, and that the duties imposed by this contract were mutual. They held that a sovereign who grossly abused his power might lawfully be withstood and dethroned by his people. That James had grossly abused his power was not disputed; and the whole Whig party was ready to p.r.o.nounce that he had forfeited it. Whether the Prince of Wales was supposit.i.tious, was a point not worth discussing. There were now far stronger reasons than any which could be drawn from the circ.u.mstances of his birth for excluding him from the throne. A child, brought to the royal couch in a warming pan, might possibly prove a good King of England. But there could be no such hope for a child educated by a father who was the most stupid and obstinate of tyrants, in a foreign country, the seat of despotism and superst.i.tion; in a country where the last traces of liberty had disappeared; where the States General had ceased to meet; where parliaments had long registered without one remonstrance the most oppressive edicts of the sovereign; where valour, genius, learning, seemed to exist only for the purpose of aggrandising a single man; where adulation was the main business of the press, the pulpit, and the stage; and where one chief subject of adulation was the barbarous persecution of the Reformed Church. Was the boy likely to learn, under such tuition and in such a situation, respect for the inst.i.tutions of his native land? Could it be doubted that he would be brought up to be the slave of the Jesuits and the Bourbons, and that he would be, if possible, more bitterly prejudiced than any preceding Stuart against the laws of England?

Nor did the Whigs think that, situated as the country then was, a departure from the ordinary rule of succession was in itself an evil.

They were of opinion that, till that rule had been broken, the doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right and pa.s.sive obedience would be pleasing to the court, would be inculcated by the clergy, and would retain a strong hold on the public mind. The notion would still prevail that the kingly office is the ordinance of G.o.d in a sense different from that in which all government is his ordinance. It was plain that, till this superst.i.tion was extinct, the const.i.tution could never be secure. For a really limited monarchy cannot long exist in a society which regards monarchy as something divine, and the limitations as mere human inventions. Royalty, in order that it might exist in perfect harmony with our liberties, must be unable to show any higher or more venerable t.i.tle than that by which we hold our liberties. The King must be henceforth regarded as a magistrate, a great magistrate indeed and highly to be honoured, but subject, like all other magistrates, to the law, and deriving his power from heaven in no other sense than that in which the Lords and the Commons may be said to derive their power from heaven. The best way of effecting this salutary change would be to interrupt the course of descent. Under sovereigns who would consider it as little short of high treason to preach nonresistance and the patriarchal theory of government, under sovereigns whose authority, springing from resolutions of the two Houses, could never rise higher than its source, there would be little risk of oppression such as had compelled two generations of Englishmen to rise in arms against two generations of Stuarts. On these grounds the Whigs were prepared to declare the throne vacant, to fill it by election, and to impose on the prince of their choice such conditions as might secure the country against misgovernment.

The time for the decision of these great questions had now arrived. At break of day, on the twenty-second of January, the House of Commons was crowded with knights and burgesses. On the benches appeared many faces which had been well known in that place during the reign of Charles the Second, but had not been seen there under his successor. Most of those Tory squires, and of those needy retainers of the court, who had been returned in mult.i.tudes to the Parliament of 1685, had given place to the men of the old country party, the men who had driven the Cabal from power, who had carried the Habeas Corpus Act, and who had sent up the Exclusion Bill to the Lords. Among them was Powle, deeply read in the history and law of Parliament, and distinguished by the species of eloquence which is required when grave questions are to be solemnly brought under the notice of senates; and Sir Thomas Littleton, versed in European politics, and gifted with a vehement and piercing logic which had often, when, after a long sitting, the candles had been lighted, roused the languis.h.i.+ng House, and decided the event of the debate.

There, too, was William Sacheverell, an orator whose great parliamentary abilities were, many years later, a favourite theme of old men who lived to see the conflicts of Walpole and Pulteney. [638] With these eminent persons was joined Sir Robert Clayton, the wealthiest merchant of London, whose palace in the Old Jewry surpa.s.sed in splendour the aristocratical mansions of Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden, whose villa among the Surrey hills was described as a garden of Eden, whose banquets vied with those of Kings, and whose judicious munificence, still attested by numerous public monuments, had obtained for him in the annals of the City a place second only to that of Gresham. In the Parliament which met at Oxford in 1681, Clayton had, as member for the capital, and at the request of his const.i.tuents, moved for leave to bring in the Bill of Exclusion, and had been seconded by Lord Russell.

In 1685 the City, deprived of its franchises and governed by the creatures of the court, had returned four Tory representatives. But the old charter had now been restored; and Clayton had been again chosen by acclamation. [639] Nor must John Birch be pa.s.sed over. He had begun life as a carter, but had, in the civil wars, left his team, had turned soldier, had risen to the rank of Colonel in the army of the Commonwealth, had, in high fiscal offices, shown great talents for business, had sate many years in Parliament, and, though retaining to the last the rough manners and plebeian dialect of his youth, had, by strong sense and mother wit, gained the ear of the Commons, and was regarded as a formidable opponent by the most accomplished debaters of his time. [640] These were the most conspicuous among the veterans who now, after a long seclusion, returned to public life. But they were all speedily thrown into the shade by two younger Whigs, who, on this great day, took their seats for the first time, who soon rose to the highest honours of the state, who weathered together the fiercest storms of faction, and who, having been long and widely renowned as statesmen, as orators, and as munificent patrons of genius and learning, died, within a few months of each other, soon after the accession of the House of Brunswick. These were Charles Montague and John Somers.

One other name must be mentioned, a name then known only to a small circle of philosophers, but now p.r.o.nounced beyond the Ganges and the Mississippi with reverence exceeding that which is paid to the memory of the greatest warriors and rulers. Among the crowd of silent members appeared the majestic forehead and pensive face of Isaac Newton. The renowned University on which his genius had already begun to impress a peculiar character, still plainly discernible after the lapse of a hundred and sixty years, had sent him to the Convention; and he sate there, in his modest greatness, the un.o.btrusive but unflinching friend of civil and religious freedom.

The first act of the Commons was to choose a Speaker; and the choice which they made indicated in a manner not to be mistaken their opinion touching the great questions which they were about to decide. Down to the very eve of the meeting, it had been understood that Seymour would be placed in the chair. He had formerly sate there during several years.

He had great and various t.i.tles to consideration; descent, fortune, knowledge, experience, eloquence. He had long been at the head of a powerful band of members from the Western counties. Though a Tory, he had in the last Parliament headed, with conspicuous ability and courage, the opposition to Popery and arbitrary power. He had been among the first gentlemen who had repaired to the Dutch head quarters at Exeter, and had been the author of that a.s.sociation by which the Prince's adherents had bound themselves to stand or fall together. But, a few hours before the Houses met, a rumour was spread that Seymour was against declaring the throne vacant. As soon, therefore, as the benches had filled, the Earl of Wilts.h.i.+re, who represented Hamps.h.i.+re, stood up, and proposed that Powle should be Speaker. Sir Vere Fane, member for Kent, seconded the motion. A plausible objection might have been raised; for it was known that a pet.i.tion was about to be presented against Powle's return: but the general cry of the House called him to the chair; and the Tories thought it prudent to acquiesce. [641] The mace was then laid on the table; the list of members was called over; and the names of the defaulters were noted.

Meanwhile the Peers, about a hundred in number, had met, had chosen Halifax to be their Speaker, and had appointed several eminent lawyers to perform the functions which, in regular Parliaments, belong to the judges. There was, in the course of that day, frequent communication between the Houses. They joined in requesting that the Prince would continue to administer the government till he should hear further from them, in expressing to him their grat.i.tude for the deliverance which he, under G.o.d, had wrought for the nation, and in directing that the thirty-first of January should be observed as a day of thanksgiving for that deliverance. [642]

Thus far no difference of opinion had appeared: but both sides were preparing for the conflict. The Tories were strong in the Upper House, and weak in the Lower; and they knew that, at such a conjuncture, the House which should be the first to come to a resolution would have a great advantage over the other. There was not the least chance that the Commons would send up to the Lords a vote in favour of the plan of Regency: but, if such a vote were sent down from the Lords to the Commons, it was not absolutely impossible that many even of the Whig representatives of the people might be disposed to acquiesce rather than take the grave responsibility of causing discord and delay at a crisis which required union and expedition. The Commons had determined that, on Monday the twenty-eighth of January, they would take into consideration the state of the nation. The Tory Lords therefore proposed, on Friday the twenty-fifth, to enter instantly on the great business for which they had been called together. But their motives were clearly discerned and their tactics frustrated by Halifax, who, ever since his return from Hungerford, had seen that the settlement of the government could be effected on Whig principles only, and who had therefore, for the time, allied himself closely with the Whigs. Devons.h.i.+re moved that Tuesday the twenty-ninth should be the day. ”By that time,” he said with more truth than discretion, ”we may have some lights from below which may be useful for our guidance.” His motion was carried; but his language was severely censured by some of his brother peers as derogatory to their order.