William's part in the Revolution—Convention declared a Parliament—Oath of Allegiance—Settlement of Civil List—Appropriation Clause—Toleration and Comprehension—Address of the Commons inviting the King to declare war.
Thus prudently and calmly was effected our great English Revolution. Both as an event and as an achievement we have equal cause to review its history with pleasure; for if in some aspects it testifies to the good fortune of our nation, it reflects credit in others on the good qualities of our people. I have endeavoured in the last chapter to point out that the modern Whig view of the Revolution as a great conflict between two opposing schools of constitutional doctors, resulting in the victory of the more liberal one, is largely legendary; that the struggle between Whigs and Tories resolved itself almost entirely into a dispute of preferences as between two alternative candidates for the throne; and that both parties showed themselves alike prepared to waive the principles which they severally held on condition of attaining their practical end—the success of their favoured candidate. But this does not in any way detract either from the value of the Revolution or from the merits of its authors; while it otherwise only serves to conform it to the normal type of English political work. All our great constitutional precedents are the parents of principle rather than its offspring; we deduce our theories from accomplished facts of our own creation, the creation of such accomplished facts being itself determined by no theoretical considerations, but by certain practical exigencies of the moment. Few Englishmen will think any worse of the Whig because, although firmly wedded to the principle of national sovereignty, he would have been willing to lose the opportunity of expressly affirming it so long as he could by any means place William of Orange, with full regal power, on the throne. Nor will they be any more disposed to condemn the Tory in that when he found himself compelled to give way on the practical point of the succession, he did not think it worth while to quarrel with the assertions or implications of Whig principle contained in the resolution by which the transfer was effected. On the contrary, the temper and habits of mind thus jointly illustrated are national characteristics on which we especially and not unreasonably pride ourselves.
For the purposes of a precedent, too, the transaction could hardly have come more happily off. Even a Tory of to-day will admit that it was good for the future development of our constitutional life that the Whig principles of "national sovereignty," "original contract between king and people," and all the rest of it, should then and there receive unmistakable recognition and irrevocable ratification; and this beyond question they did receive. No hair-splittings about desertion or abdication[10] could obscure the two plain facts, that the nation deposed James II., and by a distinct assertion of inherent, or assumption of new, authority—it matters not which—made a new king out of a man who, but for such assertion or assumption of authority, could never have become more than the consort of a queen.
As regards the new King himself, his behaviour at this great crisis in his own fortunes and the destiny of two nations deserves, at any rate, the credit of honesty and straightforwardness. We shall not really add to that honour by seeking any more showy motives than those which lie on the face of his conduct. The mere masculine repugnance of the man of action to lower the spear before the distaff would in any case probably have induced him to reject the proposal of the Tory lords. But apart from this, his shrewd knowledge of men and clear insight into politics assured him that he had only to refuse the false position in order to compel the offer of the true one. He might have been all else that he was—the devoted son of Holland; the true, if unimpassioned, friend of England; the implacable enemy of the French king and his designs; the ardent champion of Protestantism and the liberties of Europe;—and yet only been the more tempted in every one of these by a place on the steps of a powerful throne, and an influence which even from that situation he might have wielded to the attainment of many great ends. He was saved from accepting it solely by his pride, his ambition, and his perspicacity. He resented the thought of holding power as his wife's lieutenant, and he saw that he had only to refuse that post in order to make himself a necessity as king.
The first act of the new sovereign was to summon and swear a Privy Council, and to nominate a Ministry. In the then infancy of our modern Constitution it was not, as it now is, incumbent upon the sovereign to select the Ministers from one particular party. It was competent to him, and William deemed it expedient for him, to tender office to the representatives of both political connections. Danby, a Tory by principle, though he had sided with the Whigs in opposing the Regency scheme, and only broke away from them on the question of declaring the throne vacant, was made President of the Council. Halifax, a Trimmer indeed, but of closer affinities with Whiggery than with Toryism, and the chief upholder of the Whig doctrine on the question of the succession, became Lord Privy Seal. Nottingham, a Tory up to almost any point short of passive obedience, received the seals of one Secretaryship of State; upon Shrewsbury, a Whig, were bestowed those of the other. The Treasury and the Admiralty were committed to the Administration of Boards—the former under the presidency of Admiral Herbert, the latter under that of Charles Mordaunt, afterwards the famous and eccentric Earl of Peterborough. By an exercise of the royal authority, willingly acquiesced in at the time by the nation, but destined to entail more momentous national consequences than any of his subjects foresaw, King William retained in his own hands the exclusive direction of foreign affairs. The Great Seal was placed in commission.
The first question propounded to the Privy Council was whether the Convention should be declared a lawful Parliament, or dissolved and a fresh Parliament summoned in the regular manner by royal writ. The Council advised the former course, and a Bill declaring the Convention a Parliament was at once introduced and passed through the House of Lords. It was opposed in the Commons by the Tories, who hoped that a general election might strengthen their numbers; but the resistance—founded as it was upon mere technical considerations, and with historical precedent against it—was never very formidable; and the Bill passed the Lower House in a few days, and became law. Among its clauses was one providing that no one should, after the 1st of March then next ensuing, sit or vote in either House of Parliament without taking the oaths of allegiance to the new King and Queen, and the Jacobites and ultra-Tories conceived the hope that many peers, bishops, and commoners would find it impossible to reconcile their consciences to this test. As a matter of fact the non-jurors, except among the Episcopal body, to whom Archbishop Sancroft set the example of recusancy, were comparatively few. Even later, when the oath was tendered to the clergy at large, the number of those who found themselves conscientiously unable to take it was but one-twentieth of the whole body.[11]In the interval, however, between the passing of the Act and the day fixed for submission to the test, the great question of the royal revenues was taken up and decided. Certain proceeds of taxation were in those days granted to the Crown either for a fixed term of years or for life. The former, being on the face of them annexed to the regal office, were of course transferable without much difficulty or dispute to the new incumbent of that office; but doubts naturally arose as to the exact legal status of the latter kind of imposts. Some were for interpreting the word "life" as virtually meaning reign, upon which construction the right to exact these taxes had lapsed by the deposition of the sovereign to whom they were granted. Others insisted on an interpretation stricter in one sense and laxer in another, and argued that though William had become entitled to these revenues as King he could only enjoy them during the life of James. In other words, in order to avoid taking liberties with the word "life," they were prepared to behave with far more unbridled license to the word "king." The practical inconvenience of settling revenues on William during the life of James may or may not have weighed more with the Parliament than the theoretical anomaly of treating the former as sovereign for one purpose and the latter as such for another; but anyhow it was tacitly agreed to treat the grant to James as annulled by his so-called abdication. The Commons then voted the sum of £1,200,000 for the current year, one half to be appropriated to the civil list, the other half to the defences of the country—mainly, of course, in other words, to the prosecution of the impending war in Ireland. At the first sitting of Parliament, after the prorogation, which took place some months afterwards, the Royal Speech from the Throne contained an announcement to the Commons that in order that they might be satisfied how the money had been laid out which they had already given, his Majesty had directed the accounts to be laid before them whenever they should think fit to call for them. The privilege thus practically acknowledged may no doubt be, as some constitutional lawyers have contended, coeval with the constitution; but it had been so intermittently respected that its unvarying recognition from this time forward is justly reckoned as one of the chief gains which accrued to our parliamentary system from the Revolution. It seems, however, to have been only in the Stat., 9 and 10 Will. III. c. 44, that there appears an appropriation clause of the modern type apportioning all the supplies of the session to the services for which they were provided.
But while these delicate matters of royal rights and official income were being disposed of, the King was commendably anxious to show himself at once in some other light than that of an applicant for parliamentary aids. As early as the 1st of March he sent a special message to the Commons calling their attention to the "grievous burden" of the unpopular hearth-tax, and signifying that assent either "to the regulation of it, or to the taking of it wholly away," not doubting but the Commons would take care of his revenue in some other way. This judicious proposal gave great satisfaction. The Commons replied in terms of warm acknowledgment, and the city of London presented to him an address of thanks. He interposed, however, with less success and perhaps with less judgment in the religious disputes by which the country was divided. The traditions, alike of his nation and his house, may well have encouraged him to aspire to the great office of moderator and mediator between contending sects; but it is doubtful whether such a post could under any circumstances have been within the reach of a Dutch Calvinist. For the imperfect and illogically-regulated relief accorded by the Toleration Act to most of the dissenting denominations the country was prepared; but neither the occasion nor the idea of the Comprehension Bill—a measure for widening the entrance to the Church of England at the very moment when those who had chosen to remain outside were being encouraged by a relieving Act to remain there—was in itself a happy one. Churchmen were, from their own point of view, entitled to argue that the two measures proceeded upon two opposite and conflicting theories of state policy; that toleration, properly understood and applied, would render comprehension superfluous, and had indeed been accepted by the Church with that very object; and that it was but a poor return for her surrender of her ancient claim to compel schismatics into her fold, that she should be required unduly to extend its limits for the purpose of embracing them. It is probable enough that William's eye for an ecclesiastical scruple was not quite as keen as his insight into the principles of civil government and the workings of European policy, for he seems to have been surprised and disappointed at finding that Churchmen and Dissenters, though the Toleration Act was accepted by the former without serious difficulty and by the latter with hearty rejoicings, would neither of them so much as look at his scheme of comprehension. He evidently understood neither the "dissidence of dissent" nor the Anglicanism of the Anglican Communion. The Comprehension Bill had a troubled time of it even in the House of Lords, where it was first introduced, and after some debate in the House of Commons it was shelved. As vainly did William attempt to compose the feud between the Whig and Tory Churchman and Nonconformist by offering, so to speak, a bribe to each of them to tolerate the other. The new oath of allegiance, framed by Parliament for itself, required to be extended to all those classes of persons who had been compelled to take one. Legislation was commenced for that purpose concurrently with the debates over the Comprehension Bill, and the King, according to Burnet, saw here, as he thought, an opportunity of bringing the disputants to a mutually beneficial compromise. In his speech to the Commons on the 16th of March, he signified his wish that in the pending legislation "they would leave room for the admission of all Protestants that were willing and able to serve"—a suggestion which, of course, was directly aimed at the tests then excluding Dissenters from office. And while he pressed this measure of relief upon the Tories, he at the same time invited the Whigs to make a concession to their adversaries by absolving, as he was willing to do, the existing beneficed clergy from the necessity of taking the new oath of allegiance. He begged of the one party not to compel the Nonconformist to choose between offence against conscience and exclusion from civil office, and of the other party not to compel a clergyman to choose between offence against conscience and expulsion from ecclesiastical office; and he imagined that each would find their account in consenting. But no. The Whig was determined to force the oath upon the parson; the Tory was resolved to force the test upon the dissenter. No provision of relief for Nonconformists was introduced into the Comprehension Bill, and the measure itself was shortly afterwards dropped. The Oaths Bill passed in a form which compelled every beneficed clergyman to swear allegiance to the new King and Queen by the 1st of August 1689, on pain of suspension, to be followed on the 1st of February 1690, in the event of the non-juror remaining contumacious, by deprivation.
History has done justice to these well-meaning efforts of William; but the political virtue which for the moment was its own reward, must, one imagines, have been felt by him as painfully unremunerative. He could not have expected to be personally popular, and he was not, though Macaulay, in his desire for strong pictorial effect, has surely exaggerated his unpopularity. But he, no doubt, counted upon wielding a greater civil influence at the outset of his career than he in fact discovered to be his, and must have learned, with some chagrin, that he had failed to realise the vehemence of those English party conflicts in which not even the ablest and best intentioned of mediators can interpose without disappointment until he has mastered all the secrets of their intensity. On the whole, one can easily understand the feeling of satisfaction with which he hailed the coming of the hour when he, with whom the instincts of the European statesman and soldier were always dominant over these of the domestic administrator, was once more summoned to activity in one of the two arts in which he shone. On the 19th of April the Commons presented an address to the Crown, in which, after reciting the various acts of hostility committed by Louis XIV. against their country, "particularly the present invasion of Ireland," they assured William that when he "should think fit to enter into a war against the French king, they would give him such assistance in a parliamentary way as to enable him to support and go through with the same." To this invitation from his Parliament William returned an answer of ready acquiescence, while to those about him he exclaimed, with unwonted animation, "This is the first day of my reign."
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