words, be broken up into very short periods, with no sacrifice except that of euphony. The long sentences of Hooker and Clarendon, on the contrary, are really long sentences, and cannot be turned into short ones, without being entirely taken to pieces. the plans which they had the spirit to form: and it is seldom that men who have the spirit to form such plans, are reduced to the necessity of executing them. The allies had, during a short period, obtained the most appalling success. This was The best known of the works which Temple their auspicious moment. They neglected to composed during his first retreat from official improve it. It passed away; and it returned Dusiness are, an Essay on Government, which no more. The Prince of Orange arrested the seems to us exceedingly childish; and an Ac-progress of the French armies. Louis recount of the United Provinces, which we think turned to be amused and flattered at Versailles. a masterpiece in its kind. Whoever com- The country was under water. The winter pares these two pieces will probably agree approached. The weather became stormy with us in thinking that Temple was not a The fleets of the combined kings could no very deep or accurate reasoner, but was an longer keep the sea. The republic had obexcellent observer,-that he had no call to tained a respite; and the circumstances were philosophical speculation, but that he was such that a respite was, in a military view qualified to excel as a writer of Memoirs and important; in a political view, almost decisive. Travels. The alliance against Holland, formidable as While Temple was engaged in these pur- it was, was yet of such a nature that it could suits, the great storm which had long been not succeed at all unless it succeeded at once. brooding over Europe burst with such fury as The English ministers could not carry on the for a moment seemed to threaten ruin to all war without money. They could legally obtain free governments and ali Protestant churches. money only from the Parliament; and tney were France and England, without seeking for any most unwilling to call Parliament together. decent pretext, declared war against Holland. The measures which Charles had adopted at The immense armies of Louis poured across home were even more unpopular than his the Rhine, and invaded the territory of the foreign policy. He had bound himself by a United Provinces. The Dutch seemed to be treaty with Louis to re-establish the Catholic paralyzed with terror. Great towns opened religion in England; and, in pursuance of this their gates to straggling parties. Regiments design, he had entered on the same course flung down their arms without seeing an ene- which his brother afterwards pursued with my. Guelderland, Overyssel, Utrecht were greater obstinacy to a more fatal end. He had overrun by the conquerors. The fires of the annulled, by his own sole authority, the laws French camp were seen from the walls of Am- against Catholics and other dissenters. The sterdam. In the first madness of their despair, matter of the Declaration of Indulgence exas the devoted people turned their rage against perated one half of his subjects, and the manthe most illustrious of their fellow-citizens. ner the other half. Liberal men would have De Ruyter was saved with difficulty from as-rejoiced to see toleration granted, at least to sassins. De Witt was torn to pieces by an infuriated rabble. No hope was left to the Commonwealth, save in the dauntless, the ardent, the indefatigable, the unconquerable spirit which glowed under the frigid demeanour of the young Prince of Orange. all Protestant sects. Many High Churchmen had no objection to the king's dispensing power But a tolerant act done in an unconstitutional way excited the opposition of all those who were zealous either for the Church or for the privileges of the people; that is to say, of That great man rose at once to the full dig-ninety-nine Englishmen out of a hundred. nity of his part, and approved himself a wor- The ministers were, therefore, most unwilling thy descendant of the line of heroes who had to meet the Houses. Lawless and desperate vindicated the liberties of Europe against the as their counsels were, the boldest of them had house of Austria. Nothing could shake his too much value for his neck to think of resortfidelity to his country-not his close connec-ing to benevolences, privy seals, sh 'p-money, tion with the royal family of England-not the most earnest solicitations-not the most tempting offers. The spirit of the nation,-that spirit which had maintained the great conflict against the gigantic power of Philip-revived in all its strength. Counsels such as are inspired by a generous despair, and are almost always followed by a speedy dawn of hope, were gravely concerted by the statesmen of Holland. To open their dikes,-to man their ships, to leave their country, with all its miracles of art and industry,-its cities, its canals, its villas, its pastures, and its tulip gardens, buried under the waves of the German ocean, -to bear to a distant clime their Calvinistic faith and their old Batavian liberties, to fix, perhaps with happier auspices, the new Stadthouse of their Commonwealth, under other stars, and amidst a strange vegetation, in the Spice-Islands of the Eastern seas,—such were or any of the other unlawfur modes of extortion which former kings had employed. The audacious fraud of shutting up the exchequer furnished them with about twelve hundred thousand pounds :—a sum which, even in better hands than theirs, would hardly have suf ficed for the war-charges of a single year. And this was a step which could never be repeated;-a step which, like most breaches of public faith, was speedily found to have caused pecuniary difficulties greater than those which it removed. All the money that could be raised was gone; Holland was not conquered; and the king had no other resource but in a Parliament. Had a general election taken place at this crisis, it is probable that the country would have sent up representatives as resolutely hos tile to the court as those who met in November 1640; that the whole domestic and foreign made a formal renunciation of the dispensing power before he prorogued the Houses. But it was no more in his power to go on with the war than to maintain his arbitrary system at home. His ministry, betrayed within and fiercely assailed from without, went rapidly to pieces. Clifford threw down the white staff, and retired to the woods of Ugbrook, vowing, with bitter tears, that he would never again see that turbulent city and that perfidious court. Shaftesbury was ordered to deliver up the great seal; and instantly carried over his front of brass and his tongue of poison to the ranks of the Opposition. The remaining members of the Cabal had neither the capacity of the late Chancellor, nor the courage and en policy of the government would have been in- | stantly changed; and that the members of the Cabal would have expiated their crimes on Tower Hill. But the House of Commons was still the same which had been elected twelve years before, in the midst of the transports of joy, repentance, and loyalty which followed the Restoration; and no pains had been spared to attach it to the court by places, pensions, and bribes. To the great mass of the people it was scarcely less odious than the cabinet. Yet, though it did not immediately proceed to those strong measures which a new House would in all probability have adopted, it was sullen and unmanageable; and undid, slowly indeed and by degrees, but most effectually, all that the Ministers had done. In one session it anni-thusiasm of the late Treasurer. They were not hilated their system of internal government. In a second session, it gave a deathblow to their foreign policy. The dispensing power was the first object of attack. The Commons would not expressly approve the war; but neither did they as yet expressly condemn it; and they were even willing to grant the king a supply for the purpose of continuing hostilities, on condition that | he would redress internal grievances, among which the Declaration of Indulgence had a foremost place. only unable to carry on their foreign projects, but began to tremble for their own lands and heads. The Parliament, as soon as it again met, began to murmur against the alliance with France and the war with Holland; and the murmur gradually swelled into a fierce and terrible clamour. Strong resolutions were adopted against Lauderdale and Buckingham. Articles of impeachment were exhibited against Arlington. The Triple Alliance was mentioned with reverence in every debate; and the eyes of all men were turned towards the quiet orchard, where the author of that great league was amusing himself with reading and gardening. Shaftesbury, who was Chancellor, saw that the game was up,--that he had got all that was to be got by siding with despotism and Popery, and that it was high time to think of Temple was ordered to attend the king, and being a demagogue and a good Protestant. was charged with the office of negotiating a The Lord Treasurer Clifford was marked.out separate peace with Holland. The Spanish by his boldness, by his openness, by his zeal ambassador to the court of London had been for the Catholic religion, by something which, empowered by the States-General to treat in compared with the villany of his colleagues, their name. With him Temple came to a might almost be called honesty, to be the scape-speedy agreement; and in three days a treaty goat of the whole conspiracy. The king came was concluded. in person to the House of Peers to request their lordships to mediate between him and the Commons touching the Declaration of Indulgence. He remained in the House while his speech was taken into consideration,--a common practice with him;-for the debates amused his sated mind, and were sometimes, he used to say, as good as a comedy. A more sudden turn his majesty had certainly never seen in any comedy or intrigue, either at his own playhouse or at the duke's, than that which this memorable debate produced. The Lord Treasurer spoke with characteristic ardour and intrepidity in the defence of the Declaration. When he sat down, the Lord Chancellor rose from the woolsack, and to the amazement of the king and of the House, attacked Clifford-attacked the Declaration for which he had himself spoken in council-gave up the whole policy of the cabinet-and declared himself on the side of the House of Commons. Even that age had not witnessed so portentous a display of impudence. The king, by the advice of the French court, which cared much more about the war on the Continent than about the conversion of the English heretics, determined to save his foreign policy at the expense of his plans in favour of the Catholic Church. He obtained a supply; and in return for this concession he cancelled the Declaration of Indulgence, and The highest honours of the State were now within Temple's reach. After the retirement of Clifford, the white staff had been delivered to Thomas Osborne, soon after created Earl of Danby, who was related to Lady Temple, and had, many years earlier, travelled and played tennis with Sir William. Danby was an interested and unscrupulous man, but by no means destitute of abilities or of judgment. He was, indeed, a far better adviser than any in whom Charles had hitherto reposed confidence. Clarendon was a man of another generation, and did not in the least understand the society which he had to govern. The members of the Cabal were ministers of a foreign power, and enemies of the Established Church and had in consequence raised against them selves and their master an irresistible storm, of national and religious hatred. Danby wished to strengthen and extend the prerogative: but he had the sense to see that this could be done only by a complete change of system. He knew the English people and the House of Commons; and he knew that the course which Charles had recently taken, if obstinately pur sued, might well end before the windows of the Banqueting House. He saw that the true policy of the crown was to ally itself, not with the feeble, the hated, the down-trodden Catholics, but with the powerful, the wealthy, the popular, the dominant Church of England; to trust for aid, not to a foreign prince whose name was hateful to the British nation, and whose succours could be obtained only on terms of vassalage, but to the old Cavalier party, to the landed gentry, the clergy, and the universities. By rallying round the throne the whole strength of the Royalists and HighChurchmen, and by using without stint all the resources of corruption, he flattered himself that he could manage the Parliament. That he failed is to be attributed less to himself than to his master. Of the disgraceful dealings which were still kept up with the French court, Danby deserved little or none of the blame, though he suffered the whole punish ment. Hague in July, 1674. Holland was Low se cure, and France was surrounded on every side by enemies. Spain and the Empire were in arms for the purpose of compelling Louis to abandon all that he had acquired since the treaty of the Pyrenees. A congress for the purpose of putting an end to the war was opened at Nimeguen under the mediation of England, in 1675; and to that congress Temple was deputed. The work of conciliation, however, went on very slowly. The belligerent powers were still sanguine, and the mediating power was unsteady and insincere. In the mean time the Opposition in England became more and more formidable, and seemed fully determined to force the king into a war Danby, with great parliamentary talents, had with France. Charles was desirous of making paid little attention to foreign politics; and some appointments which might strengthen wished for the help of some person on whom the administration, and conciliate the confi. he could rely in that department. A plan was dence of the public. No man was more esteemaccordingly arranged for making Temple Se-ed by the nation than Temple; yet he had never cretary of State. Arlington was the only mem- been concerned in any opposition to any gober of the Cabal who still held office in Eng-vernment. In July, 1677, he was sent for from land. The temper of the House of Commons Nimeguen. Charles received him with ca made it necessary to remove him, or rather, to resses, earnestly pressed him to accept the seals require him to ell out; for at that time the of Secretary of State, and promised to bear half great offices of state were bought and sold as the charge of buying out the present holder. commissions in the army now are. Temple Temple was charmed by the kindness and po was informed that he should have the seats liteness of the king's manner, and by the liveif he would pay Arlington six thousand pounds. liness of his conversation; but his prudenc The transaction had nothing in it discreditable, was not to be so laid asleep. He calmly and according to the notions of that age; and the steadily excused himself. The king affected to investment would have been a good one; for treat his excuses as mere jests, and gayly said, we imagine that at that time the gains which "Go, get you gone to Sheen. We shall have a Secretary of State might make without doing no good of you till you have been there; and any thing considered as improper, were very when you have rested yourself, come up again." considerable. Temple's friends offered to lend Temple withdrew, and stayed two days at his him the money; but he was fully determined villa, but returned to town in the same mind not to take a post of so much responsibility in and the king was forced to consent at least to times so agitated, and under a prince on whom a delay. so little reliance could be placed, and accepted the embassy to the Hague, leaving Arlington to find another purchaser. Before Temple left England he had a long audience of the king, to whom he spoke with great severity of the measures adopted by the late ministry. The king owned that things had turned out ill. "But," said he, "if I had been well served, I might have made a good business of it." Temple was alarmed at this language, and inferred from it that the system of the Cabal had not been abandoned, but only suspended. He therefore thought it his duty to go, as he expresses it, "to the bottom of the matter." He strongly represented to the king the impossibility of establishing either absolute government or the Catholic religion in England; and concluded by repeating an observation which he had heard at Brussels from M. Gourville, a very intelligent Frenchman, well known to Charles: "A king of England," said Gourville, "who is willing to be the man of his people, is the greatest king in the world: but if he wishes to be more, by heaven he is nothing at all!" The king betrayed some symptoms of impatience during this lecture; but at last laid his hand kindly on Temple's shoulder, and said, "You are right, and so is Gourville; and I will be the man of my people." With this assurance Temple repaired to the VOL. III.-46 But while Temple thus carefully shunned the responsibility of bearing a part in the ge neral direction of affairs, he gave a signal proof of that never-failing sagacity which enabled him to find out ways of distinguishing himself without risk. He had a principal share in bringing about an event which was at the time hailed with general satisfaction, and which subsequently produced consequences of the highest importance. This was the marriage of the Prince of Orange and the Lady Mary. In the following year Temple returned to the Hague; and thence he was ordered, at the close of 1678, to repair to Nimeguen, for the purpose of signing the hollow and unsatis factory treaty by which the distractions of Europe were for a short time suspended. He grumbled much at being required to sign bad articles which he had not framel, and still more at having to travel in very cold weather. After all, a difficulty of etiquette prevented him from signing, and he returned to the Hague. Scarcely had he arrived there when he received intelligence that the king, whose embarrassments were now far greater than ever, was fully resolved immediately to appoint him Se cretary of State. He a third time declined that high post, and began to make preparations for a journey to Italy; thinking, doubtless, that he should spend his time much more pleasantly 2 H 362 among pictures and ruins than in such a whirlpool of political and religious frenzy as was then raging in London. But the king was in extreme necessity, and was no longer to be so easily put off. Temple received positive orders to repair instantly to England. He obeyed, and found the country in a state even more fearful than that which he had pictured to himself. Those are terrible conjunctures, when the discontents of a nation-not light and capricious discontents, but discontents which had been steadily increasing during a long series of years have attained their full maturity. The discerning few predict the approach of these conjunctures, but predict in vain. To the many, the evil season comes as a total eclipse of the sun at noon comes to a people of savages. Society which, but a short time before, was in a state of perfect repose, is on a sudden agitated with the most fearful convulsions, and seems to be on the verge of dissolution; and the rulers who, till the mischief was beyond the reach of all ordinary remedies, had never bestowed one thought on its existence, stand bewildered and panic-stricken, without hope or resource, in the midst of the confusion. One such conjuncture this generation has seen. God grant that it may never see another! At such a juncture it was that Temple landed on English ground in the beginning of 1679. The Parliament had obtained a glimpse of the king's dealings with France; and their anger had been unjustly directed against Danby, whose conduct as to that matter had been, on the whole, deserving rather of praise than of censure. The Popish Plot, the murder of Godfrey, the infamous inventions of Oates, the discovery of Colman's letters, had excited the nation to madness. All the disaffections which had been generated by eighteen years of misgovernment had come to the birth together. At this moment the king had been advised to dissolve that Parliament which had been elected just after his restoration; and which, though its composition had since that time been greatly altered, was still far more deeply imbued with the old Cavalier spirit than any that had preceded or that was likely to follow it. The general election had commenced, and was proceeding with a degree of excitement never before known. The tide ran furiously against the court. It was clear that a majority of the new House of Commons would be-to use a word which came into fashion a few months later--decided Whigs. Charles had found it necessary to yield to the violence of the public feeling. The Duke of York was on the point of retiring to Holland. "I never," says Temple, who had seen the abolition of monarchy, the dissolution of the Long Parliament, the fall of the Protectorate, the declaration of Monk against the Rump,--"I never saw greater disturbance in men's minds." The king now with the utmost urgency besought Temple to take the seals. The pecuniary part of the arrangement no longer presented any difficulty; and Sir William was not quite so decided in his refusal as he had formerly been. He took three days to consider the posture of affairs, and to examine his own The Parliament met; and the violence of its Temple's plan was, that the existing Privy Council, which consisted of fifty members, should be dissolved-that there should no longer be a small interior council, like that which is now designated as the Cabinet,—that a new Privy Council of thirty members should be appointed, and that the king should pledge himself to govern by the constant advice of this body,-to suffer all his affairs of every kind to be freely debated there, and not to reserve any part of the public business for a secret committee. In Fifteen members of this new Council were to be great officers of state. The other fifteen were to be independent noblemen and gentlemen of the greatest weight in the country. appointing them particular regard was to be had to the amount of their property. The The annual income whole annual income of the councillors was estimated at £300,000. of all the members of the House of Commons was not supposed to exceed £400,000. The appointment of wealthy councillors Temple describes as "a chief regard, necessary to this constitution." This plan was the subject of frequent con versation between the king and Temple. After a month passed in discussions, to which nc third person appears to have been privv Charles declared himself satisfied of the expediency of the proposed measure, and resolved to carry it into effect. It is much to be regretted that Temple has left us no account of these conferences. Historians have, therefore, been left to form their own conjectures as to the object of this very extraordinary plan,-"this constitution," as Temple himself calls it. And we cannot say that any explanation which has yet been given seems to us quite satisfactory. Indeed, almost all the writers whom we have consulted appear to consider the change as merely a change of administration; and, so considering it, they generally applaud it. Mr. Courtenay, who has evidently examined this subject with more attention than has often been bestowed upon it, seems to think Temple's scheme very strange, unintelligible, and absurd. It is with very great diffidence that we offer our own solution of what we have always thought one of the great riddles of English history. We are strongly inclined to suspect that the appointment of the new Privy Council was really a much more remarkable event than has generally been supposed; and that what Temple had in view was to effect, under colour of a change of administration, a permanent change in the constitution. they were men of enormous private wealth only made the matter worse. The House of Commons is a checking body, and therefore it is desirable that it should, to a great extent, consist of men of independent fortune, who receive nothing and expect nothing from the government. But with executive boards the case is quite different. Their business is not to check, but to act. The very same things, therefore, which are the virtues of Parliamen's, may be vices in Cabinets. We can hardly conceive a greater curse to the country than an administration, the members of which should be as perfectly independent of each other, and as little under the necessity of making mutual concessions, as the representatives of London and Devonshire in the House of Commons are, or ought to be Now Temple's new Council was to contain fifteen members, who were to hold no offices, and the average amount of whose private estates was ten thousand pounds a year; an income which, in proportion to the wants of a man of rank of that period, was at least equal to thirty thousand a year in our own time. Was it to be expected that such men would gratuitously take on themselves the labour and responsibility of ministers, and the unpopularity which the best ministers must sometimes be prepared to brave? Could there be any doubt that an opposition would soon be formed within the cabinet itself, and that the consequence would be disunion, altercation, tardiness in operations, the divulging of secrets, every thing most alien from the nature of an executive council? Is it possible to imagine that considerations so grave and so obvious should have altoge ther escaped the notice of a man of Temple's sagacity and experience? One of two things appears to us to be certain,—either that his project has been misunderstood, or that his talents for public affairs have been overrated. We lean to the opinion that his project has been misunderstood. His new Council, as we have shown, would have been an exceedingly bad cabinet. The inference which we are inclined to draw is this,—that he meant his Council to serve some other purpose than that of a mere cabinet. Barillon used four or five words which contain, we think, the key of the whole mystery. Mr. Courtenay calls them pithy words, but he does not, if we are right, apprehend their whole force. "Ce sont," said Barillon, "des états, non des consiels." The plan, considered as a plan for the formation of a cabinet, is so obviously inconvenient that we cannot easily believe this to have been Temple's chief object. The number of the new Council alone would be a most serious objecion. The largest cabinets of modern times have not, we believe, consisted of more than fifteen members. Even this number has generally been thought too large. The Marquess Wellesley, whose judgment, on a question of executive administration, is entitled to as much respect as that of any statesman that England ever produced, expressed, on a very important occasion, his conviction that even thirteen was an inconveniently large number. But in a cabinet of thirty members, what chance could there be of finding unity, secrecy, expedition,―any of the qualities which such a body ought to possess? If indeed the members of such a cabinet were closely bound together by interest, if they all had a deep stake in the permanence of the administration, if the majority were dependent on a small number of leading men, the thirty might perhaps act as a smaller number would act, though more slowly, more awkwardly, and with more risk of improper In order clearly to understand what we ima disclosures. But the Council which Temple gine to have been Temple's views, we must proposed was so framed that if, instead of remember that the government of England was thirty members, it had contained only ten, it at that moment, and had been during nearly would still have been the most unwieldy and eighty years, in a state of transition. A change, discordant cabinet that ever sat. One-half of not the less real nor the less extensive because the members were to be persons holding no disguised under ancient names and forms, was office, persons who had no motive to compro-in constant progress. The theory of the con mise their opinions, or to take any share of the stitution-the fundamental laws which fix the responsibilty of an unpopular measure;-per-powers of the three branches of the legislature sons, therefore, who might be expected, as underwent no material change between the often as there might be a crisis requiring the most cordial co-operation, to draw off from the rest, and to throw every difficulty in the way of the public business. The circumstance that * In the negotiations of 1812. time of Elizabeth and the time of William III. The most celebrated laws of the seventeenth century on those subjects-the Petition of Right-the Declaration of Right-are purely declaratory. They purport to be merely re citals of the old polity of England. They do |