administration, Parliaments would probably meet, and their power, though still a part of the meddle less; and they would be less supported theory of the constitution, became obsolete in by public opinion in their meddling. That practice. We do not, of course, imagine that the king's hands may not be rudely tied by Temple either expected or wished that Parliaothers, he must consent to tie them lightly ments should be thus disused; but he did exhimself. That the executive administration pect, we think, that something like what had may not be usurped by the checking body, happened in Holland would happen in Engsomething of the character of a checking body land, and that a large portion of the functions must be given to the body which conducts the lately assumed by Parliament would be quietly executive administration. The Parliament is transferred to the miniature Parliament which now arrogating to itself every day a larger he proposed to create. share of the functions of the Privy Council, Had this plan, with some modifications, been We must stop the evil by giving to the Privy tried at an earlier period, in a more composed Council something of the constitution of a state of the public mind, and by a better soveParliament. Let the nation see that all the reign, we are by no means certain that it would king's measures are directed by a cabinet not have effected the purpose for which it was composed of representatives of every order in designed. The restraint imposed on the king the state-by a cabinet which contains, not by the Council of Thirty, whom he had himself placemen alone, but independent and popular chosen, would have been feeble indeed when noblemen and gentlemen who have large es- compared with the restraint imposed by Parliatates and no salaries, and who are not likely to ment. But it would have been more constant. sacrifice the public welfare, in which they have It would have acted every year, and all the a deep stake, and the credit which they have year round; and before the Revolution the sesattained with the country, to the pleasure of a sions of Parliament were short and the recourt from which they receive nothing. When cesses long. The advice of the Council would the ordinary administration is in such hands probably have prevented any very monstrous. as these, the people will be quite content to see and scandalous measures; and would consethe Parliament become what it formerly was-quently have prevented the discontents which an extraordinary check. They will be quite followed such measures, and the salutary laws willing that the House of Commons should which are the fruits of such discontents. We meet only once in three years for a short ses-believe, for example, that the second Dutch sion, and should take as little part in matters of state as they did a hundred years ago.

war would never have been approved by such a Council as that which Temple proposed. Thus we believe that Temple reasoned: for We are quite certain that the shutting up of the on this hypothesis his scheme is intelligible; Exchequer would never even have been menand on any other hypothesis appears to us, as tioned in such a Council. The people, pleased it does to Mr. Courtenay, exceedingly absurd to think that Lord Russell, Lord Cavendish, and unmeaning. This Council was strictly and Mr. Powle, unplaced and unpensioned, what Barillon called it--an assembly of states. were daily representing their grievances, and There are the representatives of all the great defending their rights in the royal presence, sections of the community--of the Church, of would not have pined quite so much for the the Law, of the Peerage, of the Commons. meeting of Parliaments. The Parliament, The exclusion of one-half of the councillors when it met, would have found fewer and less from office under the crown-an exclusion glaring abuses to attack. There would have which is quite absurd when we consider the been less misgovernment and less reform. We Council merely as an executive board--be- should not have been cursed with the Cabal, or comes at once perfectly reasonable when we blessed with the Habeas Corpus Act. In the consider the Council as a body intended to re- mean time, the Council would, unless some at strain the crown, as well as to exercise the least of its powers had been delegated to a powers of the crown--to perform some of the smaller body, have been feeble, dilatory, difunctions of a Parliament, as well as the func-vided, unfit for every thing which requires tions of a cabinet. We see, too, why Temple secrecy and despatch, and peculiarly unfit for dwelt so much on the private wealth of the the administration of war. members-why he instituted a comparison between their united income and the united incomes of the members of the House of Cominons. Such a parallel would have been idle in the case of a mere cabinet. It is extremely significant in the case of a body intended to supersede the House of Commons in some very important functions.

The Revolution put an end, in a very different way, to the long contest between the king and the Parliament. From that time, the House of Commons has been predominant in the state. The cabinet has really been, from that time, a committee nominated by the crown out of the prevailing party in Parliament. Though the minority in the Commons are conWe can hardly help thinking that the notion stantly proposing to condemn executive meaof this Parliament on a small scale was sug-sures, or call for papers which may enable the gested to Temple by what he had himself seen House to sit in judgment on such measures, in the United Provinces. The original Assem- these propositions are scarcely ever carried; bly of the States-General consisted, as he tells and if a proposition of this kind is carried us, of above eight hundred persons. But this against the government, a change of Ministry great body was represented by a smaller coun- almost necessarily follows. Growing and cil of about thirty, which bore the name and struggling power always gives more annoyexercised the powers of the States-General. ance and is more unmanageable than estabA las: the real States altogether ceased to lished power. The House of Commons gave

infinitely more trouble to the ministers of Charles II. than to any minister of later times; for, in the time of Charles II. the House was checking ministers in whom it did not confide. Now that its ascendency is fully established, it either confides in ministers or turns them out. This is undoubtedly a far better state of things than that which Temple wished to introduce. The modern cabinet is a far better Executive Council than his. The worst House of Commons that has sat since the Revolution was a far more efficient check on misgovernment than his fifteen independent councillors would have been. Yet, every thing considered, it seems to us that his plan was the work of an observant, ingenious, and fertile mind.

It was a favourite exercise among the Greek sophists to write panegyrics on characters proverbial for depravity. One professor of rhetoric sent to Socrates a panegyric on Busiris; and Isocrates himself wrote another which has come down to us. It is, we presume, from an ambition of the same kind that some writers have lately shown a disposition to eulogize Shaftesbury. But the attempt is vain. The charges against him rest on evidence not to be invalidated by any arguments which human wit can devise; or by any information which may be found in old trunks and escrutoires.

It is certain that, just before the Restoration, he declared to the regicides that he would be damned, body and soul, rather than suffer a hair of their heads to be hurt; and that, just after the Restoration, he was one of the judges who sentenced them to death. It is certain that he was a principal member of the most profligate administration ever known; and that he was afterwards a principal member of the most profligate Opposition ever known. It is certain that, in power, he did not scruple to violate the great fundamental principle of the constitution, in order to exalt the Catholics; and that, out of power, he did not scruple to violate every principle of justice, in order to destroy them. There were in that age honest men,-William Penn is an instance-who valued toleration so highly, that they would

On this occasion, as on every occasion on which he came prominently forward, Temple had the rare good fortune to please the public as well as the sovereign. The general exultation was great when it was known that the old Council, made up of the most odious tools of power, was dismissed-that small interior committees, rendered odious by the recent memory of the Cabal, were to be disused-and that the king would adopt no measure till it had been discussed and approved by a body, of which one half consisted of independent gentlemen and noblemen, and in which such persons as Russell, Cavendish, and Temple himself had seats. Town and country were in a ferment of joy. The bells were rung, bon-willingly have seen it established, even by an fires were lighted, and the acclamations of England were re-echoed by the Dutch, who considered the influence obtained by Temple as a certain omen of good for Europe. It is, indeed, much to the honour of his sagacity, that every one of his great measures should, in such times, have pleased every party which he had any interest in pleasing. This was the case with the Triple Alliance-with the Treaty which concluded the Second Dutch War-with the marriage of the Prince of Orange-and, finally, with the institution of this new Council.

The only people who grumbled were those popular leaders of the House of Commons who were not among the thirty; and if our view of the measure be correct, they were precisely the people who had good reason to grumble. They were precisely the people whose activity and whose influence the new Council was intended to destroy.

But there was very soon an end of the bright | hopes and loud applauses with which the publication of this scheme had been hailed. The perfidious levity of the king and the ambition of the chiefs of parties produced the instant, entire, and irremediable failure of a plan which nothing but firmness, public spirit, and selfdenial on the part of all concerned in it could conduct to a happy issue. Even before the project was divulged, its author had already found reason to apprehend that it would fail. Considerable difficulty was experienced in framing the list of councillors. There were two men in particular about whom the king and Temple could not agree,-two men deeply tainted with the vices common to the English statesmen of that age, but unrivalled in talents, address, and influence. These were the Earl of Shaftesbury, and George Saville Viscount Halifax.

But

Не

illegal exertion of the prerogative. There
were many honest men who dreaded arbitrary
power so much, that, on account of the alliance
between Popery and arbitrary power, they
were disposed to grant no toleration to Papists.
On both those classes we look with indulgence,
though we think both in the wrong.
Shaftesbury belonged to neither class.
united all that was worst in both. From the
friends of toleration he borrowed their contempt
for the constitution; and from the friends of
liberty their contempt for the rights of con-
science. We never can admit that his conduct
as a member of the Cabal was redeemed by
his conduct as a leader of Opposition. On the
contrary, his life was such, that every part of
it, as if by a skilful contrivance, reflects infamy
on every other. We should never have known
how abandoned a prostitute he was in place
if we had not known how desperate an incen
diary he was out of it. To judge of him fairly,
we must bear in mind that the Shaftesbury who.
in office, was the chief author of the Declara
tion of Indulgence, was the same Shaftesbury
who, out of office, excited and kept up the sa
vage hatred of the rabble of London against
the very class to whom that Declaration of In-
dulgence was intended to give illegal relief.

It is amusing to see the excuses that are made for him. We will give two specimens. It is acknowledged that he was one of the ministry who had made the alliance with France against Holland, and that this alliance was most pernicious. What, then, is the de fence? Even this-that he betrayed his mas ter's counsels to the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, and tried to rouse all the Protestant powers of Germany to defend the States. Again, it is acknowledged that he was deeply

quired, and long preserved, the reputation of | ty; and that, though an uncertain friend, he infallible wisdom and invariable success, he was a placable enemy. He voted in favour lived to see a mighty ruin wrought by his own of Lord Strafford, the victim of the Whigs. ungovernable passions;-to see the great par- He did his utmost to save Lord Russell, the ty which he had led, vanquished, and scatter- victim of the Tories. And on the whole, we ed, and trampled down;-to see all his own are inclined to think that his public life, though devilish enginery of lying witnesses, partial far indeed from faultless, has as few great sheriff's, packe 1 juries, unjust judges, blood- stains as that of any politician who took an thirsty mobs, ready to be employed against active part in affairs during the troubled and himself and his most devoted followers;-to disastrous period of ten years which elapsed fly from that proud city whose favour had al- between the fall of Lord Danby and the Revomost raised him to be Mayor of the Palace;―lution. to hide himself in squalid retreats; to cover His mind was much less turned to particuhis gray head with ignominious disguises;-lar observations, and much more to general and he died in hopeless exile, sheltered by a speculation, than that of Shaftesbury. Shaftes state which he had cruelly injured and insult- bury knew the king, the Council, the Parliaed, from the vengeance of a master whose fa- ment, the city, better than Halifax; but Halifax vour he had purchased by one series of crimes, would have written a far better treatise on poand forfeited by another. litical science than Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury Halifax had, in common with Shaftesbury, shone more in consultation, and Halifax in and with almost all the politicians of that age, controversy:-Shaftesbury was more fertile in a very loose morality where the public were expedients, and Halifax in arguments. Noconcerned; but in his case the prevailing in- thing that remains from the pen of Shaftesbury fection was modified by a very peculiar con- will bear a comparison with the political tracts stitution both of heart and head;-by a temper of Halifax. Indeed, very little of the prose of singularly free from gall, and by a refining that age is so well worth reading as the "Chaand skeptical understanding. He changed racter of a Trimmer," and the "Anatomy of an his course as often as Shaftesbury; but he Equivalent." What particularly strikes us in did not change it to the same extent, or in the those works, is the writer's passion for genesame direction. Shaftesbury was the very re- ralization. He was treating of the most excitverse of a trimmer. His disposition led him ing subjects in the most agitated times-he generally to do his utmost to exalt the side was himself placed in the very thick of the which was up, and to depress the side which civil conflict:-yet there is no acrimony, nowas down. His transitions were from extreme thing inflammatory, nothing personal. He preto extreme. While he stayed with a party, he serves an air of cold superiority,—a certain went all lengths for it :-when he quitted it, he philosophical serenity, which is perfectly marwent all lengths against it. Halifax was em- vellous,-he treats every question as an abstract phatically a trimmer,-a trimmer both by in- question,-begins with the widest propositions tellect and by constitution. The name was argues those propositions on general grounds fixed on him by his contemporaries; and he was so far from being ashamed of it that he assumed it as a badge of honour. He passed from faction to faction. But instead of adopting and inflaming the passions of those whom he joined, he tried to diffuse among them something of the spirit of those whom he had just left. While he acted with the Opposition, he was suspected of being a spy of the court; and when he had joined the court, all the Tories were dismayed by his republican doctrines.

He wanted neither arguments nor elcquence to exhibit what was commonly regarded as his wavering policy in the fairest light. He trimmed, he said, as the temperate zone trims between intolerable heat and intolerable cold -as a good government trims between despotism and anarchy-as a pure church trims between the errors of the Papists and those of the Anabaptists. Nor was this defence by any means without weight; for though there is abundant proof that his integrity was not of strength to withstand the temptations by which his cupidity and vanity were sometimes assailed, yet his dislike of extremes, and a forgiving and compassionate temper which seems to have been natural to him, preserved him from all participation in the worst crimes of his time. If both parties accused him of deserting them, both were compelled to admit that they had great obligations to his humaniVOL. III.-47

and often, when he has brought out his theorem, leaves the reader to make the application, without adding an allusion to particular men or to passing events. This speculative turn of mind rendered him a bad adviser in cases which required celerity. He brought forward, with wonderful readiness and copiousness, arguments, replies to those arguments, rejoinders to those replies, general maxims of policy, and analogous cases from history. But Shaftesbury was the man for a prompt decision. Of the parliamentary eloquence of these celebrated rivals, we can judge only by report; and so judging, we should be inclined to think that, though Shaftes bury was a distinguished speaker, the superiority belonged to Halifax. Indeed the readiness of Halifax in debate, the extent of his knowledge, the ingenuity of his reasoning, the liveliness of his expression, and the silver clearness and sweetness of his voice, seem to have made the strongest impression on his contemporaries. By Dryden he is described as

"Of piercing wit and pregnant thought, Endued by nature and by learning taught To move assemblies."

His oratory is utterly and irretrievably lost to us, like that of Somers, of Bolingbroke, of Charles Townshend-of many others who were accustomed to rise amidst the breathless expectation of senates, and to sit down amidst reiterated bursts of applause. But old men who lived to admire the eloquence of Pulteney

in its meridian, and that of Pitt in its splendid | all business. Accordingly, there soon arose a dawn, still murmured that they had heard no- small interior cabinet, consisting of Essex, thing like the great speeches of Lord Halifax Sunderland, Halifax, and Temple. For a time on the Exclusion Bill. The power of Shaftes- perfect harmony and confidence subsisted bebury over large masses was unrivalled. Ha- tween the four. But the meetings of the thirty lifax was disqualified by his whole character, were stormy. Sharp retorts passed between moral and intellectual, for the part of a dema- Shaftesbury and Halifax, who led the opposite gogue. It was in small circles, and, above all, parties. In the Council, Halifax generally had in the House of Lords, that his ascendency was the advantage. But it soon became apparent felt. that Shaftesbury still had at his back the majority of the House of Commons. The discontents, which the change of ministry had for a moment quieted, broke forth again with redoubled violence; and the only effect which the late measures appeared to have produced was, that the Lord President, with all the dignity and authority belonging to his high place, stood at the head of the Opposition. The im peachment of Lord Danby was eagerly prosecuted. The Commons were determined to exclude the Duke of York from the throne. All offers of compromise were rejected. It must not be forgotten, however, that in the midst of the confusion, one inestimable law,the only benefit which England has derived from the troubles of that period, but a benefit which may well be set off against a great mass of evil,-the Habeas Corpus Act, was pushed through the Houses, and received the royal assent.

Shaftesbury seems to have troubled himself very little about theories of government. Halifax was, in speculation, a strong republican, and did not conceal it. He often made hereditary monarchy and aristocracy the subjects of his keen pleasantry, while he was fighting the battles of the court, and obtaining for himself step after step in the peerage. In this way he attempted to gratify at once his intellectual vanity and his more vulgar ambition. He shaped his life according to the opinion of the multitude, and indemnified himself by talking according to his own. His colloquial powers were great; his perceptions of the ridiculous exquisitely fine; and he seems to have had the rare art of preserving the reputation of good-breeding and good-nature, while habitually indulging his trong propensity to mockery. Temple wished to put Halifax into the new Council, and to leave out Shaftesbury. The king objected strongly to Halifax, to whom he had taken a great dislike, which is not accounted for, and which did not last long. Temple replied that Halifax was a man eminent both by his station and by his abilities, and would, if excluded, do every thing against the new arrangement, that could be done by eloquence, sarcasm, and intrigue. All who were consulted were of the same mind; and the king yielded, but not till Temple had almost gone on his knees. The point was no The Parliament rose: London was deserted; sooner settled than his majesty declared that and Temple retired to his villa, whence, on he would have Shaftesbury too. Temple again council days, he went to Hampden Court. had recourse to entreaties and expostulation. The post of Secretary was again and again Charles told him that the enmity of Shaftesbury pressed on him by his master, and by his three would be at least as formidable as that of Hali-colleagues of the inner cabinet. Halifax, in fax; and this was true: but Temple might have replied that by giving power to Halifax they gained a friend, and that by giving power to Shaftesbury they only strengthened an enemy. It was vain to argue and protest. The king only laughed and jested at Temple's anger; and Shaftesbury was not only sworn of the Council, but appointed Lord President.

Temple was so bitterly mortified by this step, that he had at one time resolved to have nothing to do with the new administration; and seriously thought of disqualifying himself from sitting in the Council by omitting to take the sacrament. But the urgency of Lady Temple and Lady Giffard induced him to abandon that intention.

The Council was organized on the 21st of April, 1679; and on the very next day one of ine fundamental principles on which it had heen constructed was violated. A secret cominittee, or, in the modern phrase, a cabinet of nine members was formed. But as this committee included Shaftesbury and Monmouth, it contained within itself the elements of as much faction as would have sufficed to impede

The king, finding the Parliament as troublesome as ever, determined to prorogue it; and he did so without even mentioning his intention to the Council by whose advice he had pledged himself, only a month before, to conduct the government. The councillors were generally dissatisfied, and Shaftesbury swore with great vehemence that if he could find ou who the secret advisers were he would have their heads.

particular, threatened laughingly to burn down the house at Sheen. But Temple was immovable. His short experience of English politics had disgusted him; and he felt himself so much oppressed by the responsibility under which he at present lay, that he had no inclination to add to the load.

When the term fixed for the prorogation had nearly expired, it became necessary to consider what course should be taken. The king and his four confidential advisers thought that a new Parliament might be more manageable, and could not possibly be more refractory than that which they now had, and they therefore determined on a dissolution. But when the question was proposed at Council, the majority, jealous, it should seem, of the small directing knot, and unwilling to bear the unpopularity of the measures of government while excluded from all power, joined Shaftesbury, and the members of the cabinet were left alone in the minority. The king, however, had made up his mind, and ordered the Parliament to be instantly dissolved. Temple's Council was now nothing more than an ordinary Privy Council