Constitutional History of England Volume II Part 29

_Connection of the popular party with France--Its motives on both sides._--This invincible distrust of the court is the best apology for that which has given rise to so much censure, the secret connections formed by the leaders of opposition with Louis XIV., through his amba.s.sadors Barillon and Rouvigny, about the spring of 1678.[705] They well knew that the king's designs against their liberties had been planned in concert with France, and could hardly be rendered effectual without her aid in money, if not in arms.[706] If they could draw over this dangerous ally from his side, and convince the King of France that it was not his interest to crush their power, they would at least frustrate the suspected conspiracy, and secure the disbanding of the army; though at a great sacrifice of the continental policy which they had long maintained, and which was truly important to our honour and safety. Yet there must be degrees in the scale of public utility; and, if the liberties of the people were really endangered by domestic treachery, it was ridiculous to think of saving Tournay and Valenciennes at the expense of all that was dearest at home. This is plainly the secret of that unaccountable, as it then seemed, and factious opposition, in the year 1678; which cannot be denied to have served the ends of France, and thwarted the endeavours of Lord Danby and Sir William Temple to urge on the uncertain and half-reluctant temper of the king into a decided course of policy.[707] Louis, in fact, had no desire to see the King of England absolute over his people, unless it could be done so much by his own help as to render himself the real master of both. In the estimate of kings, or of such kings as Louis XIV., all limitations of sovereignty, all co-ordinate authority of estates and parliaments, are not only derogatory to the royal dignity, but injurious to the state itself, of which they distract the councils and enervate the force. Great armies, prompt obedience, unlimited power over the national resources, secrecy in council, rapidity in execution, belong to an energetic and enlightened despotism: we should greatly err in supposing that Louis XIV. was led to concur in projects of subverting our const.i.tution from any jealousy of its contributing to our prosperity. He saw, on the contrary, in the perpetual jarring of kings and parliaments, a source of feebleness and vacillation in foreign affairs, and a field for intrigue and corruption. It was certainly far from his design to see a republic, either in name or effect, established in England; but an unanimous loyalty, a spontaneous submission to the court, was as little consonant to his interests; and, especially if accompanied with a willing return of the majority to the catholic religion, would have put an end to his influence over the king, and still more certainly over the Duke of York.[708] He had long been sensible of the advantage to be reaped from a malcontent party in England. In the first years after the restoration, he kept up a connection with the disappointed commonwealth's men, while their courage was yet fresh and unsubdued; and in the war of 1665 was very nearly exciting insurrections both in England and Ireland.[709] These schemes of course were suspended, as he grew into closer friends.h.i.+p with Charles, and saw a surer method of preserving an ascendancy over the kingdom. But, as soon as the Princess Mary's marriage, contrary to the King of England's promise, and to the plain intent of all their clandestine negotiations, displayed his faithless and uncertain character to the French cabinet, they determined to make the patriotism, the pa.s.sion, and the corruption of the House of Commons minister to their resentment and ambition.

The views of Lord Hollis and Lord Russell in this clandestine intercourse with the French amba.s.sador were sincerely patriotic and honourable: to detach France from the king; to crush the Duke of York and popish faction; to procure the disbanding of the army, the dissolution of a corrupted parliament, the dismissal of a bad minister.[710] They would indeed have displayed more prudence in leaving these dark and dangerous paths of intrigue to the court which was practised in them. They were concerting measures with the natural enemy of their country, religion, honour, and liberty; whose obvious policy was to keep the kingdom disunited that it might be powerless; who had been long abetting the worst designs of our own court, and who could never be expected to act against popery and despotism, but for the temporary ends of his ambition. Yet, in the very critical circ.u.mstances of that period, it was impossible to pursue any course with security; and the dangers of excessive circ.u.mspection and adherence to general rules may often be as formidable as those of temerity. The connection of the popular party with France may very probably have frustrated the sinister intentions of the king and duke, by compelling the reduction of the army, though at the price of a great sacrifice of European policy.[711] Such may be, with unprejudiced men, a sufficient apology for the conduct of Lord Russell and Lord Hollis, the most public-spirited and high-minded characters of their age, in this extraordinary and unnatural alliance.

It would have been unworthy of their virtue to have gone into so desperate an intrigue with no better aim than that of ruining Lord Danby; and of this I think we may fully acquit them. The n.o.bleness of Russell's disposition beams forth in all that Barillon has written of their conferences. Yet, notwithstanding the plausible grounds of his conduct, we can hardly avoid wis.h.i.+ng that he had abstained from so dangerous an intercourse, which led him to impair, in the eyes of posterity, by something more like faction than can be ascribed to any other part of his parliamentary life, the consistency and ingenuousness of his character.[712]

_Doubt as to the acceptance of money by the popular party._--I have purposely mentioned Lord Russell and Lord Hollis apart from others who were mingled in the same intrigues of the French amba.s.sador, both because they were among the first with whom he tampered, and because they are honourably distinguished by their abstinence from all pecuniary remuneration, which Hollis refused, and which Barillon did not presume to offer to Russell. It appears however from this minister's accounts of the money he had expended in this secret service of the French Crown, that, at a later time, namely about the end of 1680, many of the leading members of opposition, Sir Thomas Littleton, Mr. Garraway, Mr. Hampden, Mr. Powle, Mr. Sacheverell, Mr.

Foley, received sums of 500 or 300 guineas, as testimonies of the King of France's munificence and favour. Among others, Algernon Sidney, who, though not in parliament, was very active out of it, is more than once mentioned. Chiefly because the name of Algernon Sidney had been a.s.sociated with the most stern and elevated virtue, this statement was received with great reluctance; and many have ventured to call the truth of these pecuniary gratifications in question. This is certainly a bold surmise; though Barillon is known to have been a man of luxurious and expensive habits, and his demands for more money on account of the English court, which continually occur in his correspondence with Louis, may lead to a suspicion that he would be in some measure a gainer by it. This however might possibly be the case without actual peculation. But it must be observed that there are two cla.s.ses of those who are alleged to have received presents through his hands; one, of such as were in actual communication with himself; another, of such as Sir John Baber, a secret agent, had prevailed upon to accept it. Sidney was in the first cla.s.s; but, as to the second, comprehending Littleton, Hampden, Sacheverell, in whom it is as difficult to suspect pecuniary corruption as in him, the proof is manifestly weaker, depending only on the a.s.sertion of an intriguer that he had paid them the money. The falsehood either of Baber or Barillon would acquit these considerable men. Nor is it to be reckoned improbable that persons employed in this clandestine service should be guilty of a fraud, for which they could evidently never be made responsible. We have indeed a remarkable confession of Coleman, the famous intriguer executed for the popish plot, to this effect. He deposed in his examination before the House of Commons, in November 1678, that he had received last session of Barillon 2500 to be distributed among members of parliament, which he had converted to his own use.[713] It is doubtless possible that Coleman having actually expended this money in the manner intended, bespoke the favour of those whose secret he kept by taking the discredit of such a fraud on himself. But it is also possible that he spoke the truth. A similar uncertainty hangs over the transactions of Sir John Baber. Nothing in the parliamentary conduct of the above-mentioned gentlemen in 1680 corroborates the suspicion of an intrigue with France, whatever may have been the case in 1678.

I must fairly confess however that the decided bias of my own mind is on the affirmative side of this question; and that princ.i.p.ally because I am not so much struck, as some have been, by any violent improbability in what Barillon wrote to his court on the subject. If indeed we were to read that Algernon Sidney had been bought over by Louis XIV. or Charles II. to a.s.sist in setting up absolute monarchy in England, we might fairly oppose our knowledge of his inflexible and haughty character, of his zeal, in life and death, for republican liberty. But there is, I presume, some moral distinction between the acceptance of a bribe to desert or betray our principles and that of a trifling present for acting in conformity to them. The one is, of course, to be styled corruption; the other is repugnant to a generous and delicate mind, but too much sanctioned by the practice of an age far less scrupulous than our own, to have carried with it any great self-reproach or sense of degradation. It is truly inconceivable that men of such property as Sir Thomas Littleton or Mr. Foley should have accepted 300 or 500 guineas, the sums mentioned by Barillon, as the price of apostasy from those political principles to which they owed the esteem of their country, or of an implicit compliance with the dictates of France. It is sufficiently discreditable to the times in which they lived, that they should have accepted so pitiful a gratuity; unless indeed we should in candour resort to an hypothesis which seems not absurd, that they agreed among themselves not to offend Louis, or excite his distrust, by a refusal of this money.

Sidney indeed was, as there is reason to think, a distressed man; he had formerly been in connection with the court of France,[714] and had persuaded himself that the countenance of that power might one day or other be afforded to his darling scheme of a commonwealth; he had contracted a dislike to the Prince of Orange, and consequently to the Dutch alliance, from the same governing motive: is it strange that one so circ.u.mstanced should have accepted a small gratification from the King of France which implied no dereliction of his duty as an Englishman, or any sacrifice of political integrity? And I should be glad to be informed by the idolaters of Algernon Sidney's name, what we know of him from authentic and contemporary sources which renders this incredible.

_Secret treaties of the king with France._--France, in the whole course of these intrigues, held the game in her hands. Mistress of both parties, she might either embarra.s.s the king through parliament, if he pretended to an independent course of policy, or cast away the latter, when he should return to his former engagements. Hence, as early as May 1678, a private treaty was set on foot between Charles and Louis, by which the former obliged himself to keep a neutrality, if the allies should not accept the terms offered by France, to recall all his troops from Flanders within two months, to disband most of his army and not to a.s.semble his parliament for six months; in return he was to receive 6,000,000 livres. This was signed by the king himself on May 27; none of his ministers venturing to affix their names.[715]

Yet at this time he was making outward professions of an intention to carry on the war. Even in this secret treaty, so thorough was his insincerity, he meant to evade one of its articles, that of disbanding his troops. In this alone he was really opposed to the wishes of France; and her pertinacity in disarming him seems to have been the chief source of those capricious changes of his disposition, which we find for three or four years at this period.[716] Louis again appears not only to have mistrusted the king's own inclinations after the Prince of Orange's marriage, and his ability to withstand the eagerness of the nation for war, but to have apprehended he might become absolute by means of his army, without standing indebted for it to his ancient ally. In this point therefore he faithfully served the popular party. Charles used every endeavour to evade this condition; whether it were that he still entertained hopes of attaining arbitrary power through intimidation, or that, dreading the violence of the House of Commons, and ascribing it rather to a republican conspiracy than to his own misconduct, he looked to a military force as his security. From this motive we may account for his strange proposal to the French king of a league in support of Sweden, by which he was to furnish fifteen s.h.i.+ps and 10,000 men, at the expense of France, during three years, receiving six millions for the first year, and four for each of the two next. Louis, as is highly probable, betrayed this project to the Dutch government; and thus frightened them into that hasty signature of the treaty of Nimeguen, which broke up the confederacy and accomplished the immediate objects of his ambition. No longer in need of the court of England, he determined to punish it for that duplicity, which none resent more in others than those who are accustomed to practise it. He refused Charles the pension stipulated by the private treaty, alleging that its conditions had not been performed; and urged on Montagu, with promises of indemnification, to betray as much as he knew of that secret, in order to ruin Lord Danby.[717]

_Fall of Danby_--_His impeachment._--The ultimate cause of this minister's fall may thus be deduced from the best action of his life; though it ensued immediately from his very culpable weakness in aiding the king's base inclinations towards a sordid bargaining with France.

It is well known that the famous letter to Montagu, empowering him to make an offer of neutrality for the price of 6,000,000 livres, was not only written by the king's express order, but that Charles attested this with his own signature in a postscript.

This bears date five days after an act had absolutely pa.s.sed to raise money for carrying on the war; a circ.u.mstance worthy of particular attention, as it both puts an end to every pretext or apology which the least scrupulous could venture to urge in behalf of this negotiation, but justifies the whig party of England in an invincible distrust, an inexpiable hatred, of so perfidious a cozener as filled the throne. But as he was beyond their reach, they exercised a const.i.tutional right in the impeachment of his responsible minister.

For responsible he surely was; though, strangely mistaking the obligations of an English statesman, Danby seems to fancy in his printed defence that the king's order would be a sufficient warrant to justify obedience in any case not literally unlawful. "I believe," he says, "there are very few subjects but would take it ill not to be obeyed by their servants; and their servants might as justly expect their master's protection for their obedience." The letter to Montagu, he a.s.serts, "was written by the king's command, upon the subject of peace and war, wherein his majesty alone is at all times sole judge, and ought to be obeyed not only by any of his ministers of state, but by all his subjects."[718] Such were, in that age, the monarchical or tory maxims of government, which the impeachment of this minister contributed in some measure to overthrow. As the king's authority for the letter to Montagu was an undeniable fact, evidenced by his own handwriting, the Commons in impeaching Lord Danby went a great way towards establis.h.i.+ng the principle that no minister can shelter himself behind the throne by pleading obedience to the orders of his sovereign. He is answerable for the justice, the honesty, the utility of all measures emanating from the Crown, as well as for their legality; and thus the executive administration is, or ought to be, subordinate, in all great matters of policy, to the superintendence and virtual control of the two Houses of Parliament. It must at the same time be admitted that, through the heat of honest indignation and some less worthy pa.s.sions on the one hand, through uncertain and crude principles of const.i.tutional law on the other, this just and necessary impeachment of the Earl of Danby was not so conducted as to be exempt from all reproach. The charge of high treason for an offence manifestly amounting only to misdemeanour, with the purpose, not perhaps of taking the life of the accused, but at least of procuring some punishment beyond the law,[719] the strange mixture of articles, as to which there was no presumptive proof, or which were evidently false, such as concealment of the popish plot, gave such a character of intemperance and faction to these proceedings, as may lead superficial readers to condemn them altogether.[720] The compliance of Danby with the king's corrupt policy had been highly culpable, but it was not unprecedented; it was even conformable to the court standard of duty; and as it sprung from too inordinate a desire to retain power, it would have found an appropriate and adequate chastis.e.m.e.nt in exclusion from office. We judge perhaps somewhat more favourably of Lord Danby than his contemporaries at that juncture were warranted to do; but even then he was rather a minister to be pulled down than a man to be severely punished. His one great and undeniable service to the protestant and English interests should have palliated a mult.i.tude of errors. Yet this was the mainspring and first source of the intrigue that ruined him.

_Questions arising on the impeachment_--_Danby's commitment to the Tower._--The impeachment of Lord Danby brought forward several material discussions on that part of our const.i.tutional law, which should not be pa.s.sed over in this place. 1. As soon as the charges presented by the Commons at the bar of the upper house had been read, a motion was made that the earl should withdraw; and another afterwards, that he should be committed to the Tower: both of which were negatived by considerable majorities.[721] This refusal to commit on a charge of treason had created a dispute between the two houses in the instance of Lord Clarendon.[722] In that case, however, one of the articles of impeachment did actually contain an unquestionable treason. But it was contended with much force on the present occasion that, if the Commons, by merely using the word traitorously, could alter the character of offences which, on their own showing, amounted only to misdemeanours, the boasted certainty of the law in matters of treason would be at an end; and unless it were meant that the Lords should pa.s.s sentence in such a case against the received rules of law, there could be no pretext for their refusing to admit the accused to bail. Even in Strafford's case, which was a condemned precedent, they had a general charge of high treason upon which he was committed; while the offences alleged against Danby were stated with particularity, and upon the face of the articles could not be brought within any reasonable interpretation of the statutes relating to treason. The House of Commons faintly urged a remarkable clause in the act of Edward III., which provides that, in case of any doubt arising as to the nature of an offence charged to amount to treason, the judges should refer it to the sentence of parliament; and maintained that this invested the two houses with a declaratory power to extend the penalties of the law to new offences which had not been clearly provided for in its enactments. But, though something like this might possibly have been in contemplation with the framers of that statute, and precedents were not absolutely wanting to support the construction, it was so repugnant to the more equitable principles of criminal law which had begun to gain ground, that even the heat of faction did not induce the Commons to insist upon it. They may be considered however as having carried their point; for, though the prorogation and subsequent dissolution of the present parliament ensued so quickly that nothing more was done in the matter, yet when the next House of Commons revived the impeachment, the Lords voted to take Danby into custody without any further objection.[723] It ought not to be inferred from hence, that they were wrong in refusing to commit; nor do I conceive, notwithstanding the latter precedent of Lord Oxford, that any rule to the contrary is established. In any future case it ought to be open to debate, whether articles of impeachment pretending to contain a charge of high treason do substantially set forth overt acts of such a crime; and, if the House of Lords shall be of opinion, either by consulting the judges or otherwise, that no treason is specially alleged, they should, notwithstanding any technical words, treat the offence as a misdemeanour, and admit the accused to bail.[724]

2. _Pardon pleaded in bar._--A still more important question sprung up as to the king's right of pardon upon a parliamentary impeachment.

Danby, who had absconded on the unexpected revival of these proceedings in the new parliament, finding that an act of attainder was likely to pa.s.s against him in consequence of his flight from justice, surrendered himself to the usher of the black rod; and, on being required to give in his written answer to the charges of the Commons, pleaded a pardon, secretly obtained from the king, in bar of the prosecution.[725] The Commons resolved that the pardon was illegal and void, and ought not to be pleaded in bar of the impeachment of the Commons of England. They demanded judgment at the Lords' bar against Danby, as having put in a void plea. They resolved, with that culpable violence which distinguished this and the succeeding House of Commons, in order to deprive the accused of the a.s.sistance of counsel, that no commoner whatsoever should presume to maintain the validity of the pardon pleaded by the Earl of Danby without their consent, on pain of being accounted a betrayer of the liberties of the Commons of England.[726] They denied the right of the bishops to vote on the validity of this pardon. They demanded the appointment of a committee from both houses to regulate the form and manner of proceeding on this impeachment, as well as on that of the five lords accused of partic.i.p.ation in the popish plot. The upper house gave some signs of a vacillating and temporising spirit, not by any means unaccountable.

They acceded, after a first refusal, to the proposition of a committee, though manifestly designed to encroach on their own exclusive claim of judicature.[727] But they came to a resolution that the spiritual Lords had a right to sit and vote in parliament in capital cases, until judgment of death shall be p.r.o.nounced.[728] The Commons of course protested against this vote;[729] but a prorogation soon dropped the curtain over their differences; and Danby's impeachment was not acted upon in the next parliament.

_Votes of bishops._--There seems to be no kind of pretence for objecting to the votes of the bishops on such preliminary questions as may arise in an impeachment of treason. It is true that ancient custom has so far ingrafted the provisions of the ecclesiastical law on our const.i.tution, that they are bound to withdraw when judgment of life or death is p.r.o.nounced; though even in this they always do it with a protestation of their right to remain. This, once claimed as a privilege of the church, and reluctantly admitted by the state, became, in the lapse of ages, an exclusion and badge of inferiority.

In the const.i.tutions of Clarendon, under Henry II., it is enacted, that the bishops and others holding spiritual benefices "in capite"

should give their attendance at trials in parliament, till it come to sentence of life or member. This, although perhaps too ancient to have authority as statute law, was a sufficient evidence of the const.i.tutional usage, where nothing so material could be alleged on the other side. And, as the original privilege was built upon nothing better than the narrow superst.i.tions of the canon law, there was no reasonable pretext for carrying the exclusion of the spiritual lords farther than certain and constant precedents required. Though it was true, as the enemies of Lord Danby urged, that by voting for the validity of his pardon, they would in effect determine the whole question in his favour, yet there seemed no serious reasons, considering it abstractedly from party views, why they should not thus indirectly be restored for once to a privilege, from which the prejudices of former ages alone had shut them out.

The main point in controversy, whether a general or special pardon from the king could be pleaded in answer to an impeachment of the Commons so as to prevent any further proceedings in it, never came to a regular decision. It was evident that a minister who had influence enough to obtain such an indemnity, might set both houses of parliament at defiance; the pretended responsibility of the Crown's advisers, accounted the palladium of our const.i.tution, would be an idle mockery, if not only punishment could be averted, but enquiry frustrated. Even if the king could remit the penalties of a guilty minister's sentence upon impeachment, it would be much, that public indignation should have been excited against him, that suspicion should have been turned into proof, that shame and reproach, irremissible by the great seal, should avenge the wrongs of his country. It was always to be presumed that a sovereign, undeceived by such a judicial inquiry, or sensible to the general voice it roused, would voluntarily, or at least prudently, abandon an unworthy favourite. Though it might be admitted that long usage had established the royal prerogative of granting pardons under the great seal, even before trial, and that such pardons might be pleaded in bar (a prerogative indeed which ancient statutes, not repealed, though gone into disuse, or rather in no time acted upon, had attempted to restrain), yet we could not infer that it extended to cases of impeachment. In ordinary criminal proceedings by indictment the king was before the court as prosecutor, the suit was in his name; he might stay the process at his pleasure, by entering a "noli prosequi;" to pardon, before or after judgment, was a branch of the same prerogative; it was a great const.i.tutional trust, to be exercised at his discretion. But in an appeal or accusation of felony, brought by the injured party, or his next of blood, a proceeding wherein the king's name did not appear, it was undoubted that he could not remit the capital sentence. The same principle seemed applicable to an impeachment at the suit of the Commons of England, demanding justice from the supreme tribunal of the other house of parliament. It could not be denied that James had remitted the whole sentence upon Lord Bacon. But impeachments were so unusual at that time, and the privileges of parliament so little out of dispute, that no great stress could be laid on this precedent.

Such must have been the course of arguing, strong on political, and specious on legal grounds, which induced the Commons to resist the plea put in by Lord Danby. Though this question remained in suspense on the present occasion, it was finally decided by the legislature in the act of settlement; which provides that no pardon under the great seal of England be pleadable to an impeachment of the Commons in parliament.[730] These expressions seem tacitly to concede the Crown's right of granting a pardon after sentence; which, though perhaps it could not well be distinguished in point of law from a pardon pleadable in bar, stands on a very different footing, as has been observed above, with respect to const.i.tutional policy. Accordingly, upon the impeachment of the six peers who had been concerned in the rebellion of 1715, the House of Lords after sentence pa.s.sed, having come to a resolution on debate that the king had a right to reprieve in cases of impeachment, addressed him to exercise that prerogative as to such of them as should deserve his mercy; and three of the number were in consequence pardoned.[731]

3. _Abatement of impeachments by dissolution._--The impeachment of Danby first brought forward another question of hardly less magnitude, and remarkable as one of the few great points in const.i.tutional law, which have been discussed and finally settled within the memory of the present generation: I mean the continuance of an impeachment by the Commons from one parliament to another. Though this has been put at rest by a determination altogether consonant to maxims of expediency, it seems proper in this place to show briefly the grounds upon which the argument on both sides rested.

In the earlier period of our parliamentary records, the business of both houses, whether of a legislative or judicial nature, though often very multifarious, was despatched, with the rapidity natural to comparatively rude times, by men impatient of delay, unused to doubt, and not cautious in the proof of facts or attentive to the subtleties of reasoning. The session, generally speaking, was not to terminate till the pet.i.tions in parliament for redress had been disposed of, whether decisively or by reference to some more permanent tribunal.

Pet.i.tions for alteration of the law, presented by the Commons, and a.s.sented to by the Lords, were drawn up into statutes by the king's council just before the prorogation or dissolution. They fell naturally to the ground, if the session closed before they could be submitted to the king's pleasure. The great change that took place in the reign of Henry VI., by pa.s.sing bills complete in their form through the two houses instead of pet.i.tions, while it rendered manifest to every eye that distinction between legislative and judicial proceedings which the simplicity of older times had half concealed, did not affect this const.i.tutional principle. At the close of a session, every bill then in progress through parliament became a nullity, and must pa.s.s again through all its stages before it could be tendered for the royal a.s.sent. No sort of difference existed in the effect of a prorogation and a dissolution; it was even maintained that a session made a parliament.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, writs of error from inferior courts to the House of Lords became far less usual than in the preceding age; and when they occurred, as error could only be a.s.signed on a point of law appearing on the record, they were quickly decided with the a.s.sistance of the judges. But, when they grew more frequent, and especially when appeals from the chancellor, requiring often a tedious examination of depositions, were brought before the Lords, it was found that a sudden prorogation might often interrupt a decision; and the question arose, whether writs of error, and other proceedings of a similar nature, did not, according to precedent or a.n.a.logy, cease, or in technical language abate, at the close of a session. An order was accordingly made by the house on March 11, 1673, that "the Lords committees for privileges should inquire whether an appeal to this house either by writ of error or pet.i.tion, from the proceedings of any other court being depending, and not determined in one session of parliament, continue in statu quo unto the next session of parliament, without renewing the writ of error or pet.i.tion, or beginning all anew." The committee reported on the 29th of March, after mis-reciting the order of reference to them in a very remarkable manner, by omitting some words and interpolating others, so as to make it far more extensive than it really was,[732] that upon the consideration of precedents, which they specify, they came to a resolution that "businesses depending in one parliament or session of parliament have been continued to the next session of the same parliament, and the proceedings thereupon have remained in the same state in which they were left when last in agitation." The house approved of this resolution, and ordered it accordingly.[733]

This resolution was decisive as to the continuance of ordinary judicial business beyond the termination of a session. It was still open to dispute whether it might not abate by a dissolution. And the peculiar case of impeachment, to which, after the dissolution of the long parliament in 1678, every one's attention was turned, seemed to stand on different grounds. It was referred therefore to the committee of privileges, on the 11th of March 1679, to consider whether pet.i.tions of appeal which were presented to this house in the last parliament be still in force to be proceeded on. Next day it is referred to the same committee, on a report of the matter of fact as to the impeachments of the Earl of Danby and the five popish lords in the late parliament, to consider of the state of the said impeachments and all the incidents relating thereto, and to report to the house. On the 18th of March Lord Ess.e.x reported from the committee, that, "upon perusal of the judgment of this house of the 29th of March 1673, they are of opinion, that in all cases of appeals and writs of error they continue, and are to be proceeded on, in statu quo, as they stood at the dissolution of the last parliament, without beginning de novo....

And, upon consideration had of the matter referred to their lords.h.i.+ps concerning the state of the impeachments brought up from the House of Commons the last parliament, etc.... they are of opinion that the dissolution of the last parliament doth not alter the state of the impeachments brought up by the Commons in that parliament." This report was taken into consideration next day by the house; and after a debate, which appears from the journals to have lasted some time, and the previous question moved and lost, it was resolved to agree with the committee.[734]

This resolution became for some years the acknowledged law of parliament. Lord Stafford, at his trial in 1680, having requested that his counsel might be heard as to the point, whether impeachments could go from one parliament to another, the house took no notice of this question; though they consulted the judges about another which he had put, as to the necessity of two witnesses to every overt act of treason.[735] Lord Danby and Chief-Justice Scroggs pet.i.tioned the Lords in the Oxford parliament, one to have the charges against him dismissed, the other to be bailed; but neither take the objection of an intervening dissolution.[736] And Lord Danby, after the dissolution of three successive parliaments since that in which he was impeached, having lain for three years in the Tower, when he applied to be enlarged on bail by the court of king's bench in 1682, was refused by the judges, on the ground of their incompetency to meddle in a parliamentary impeachment; though, if the prosecution were already at an end, he would have been ent.i.tled to an absolute discharge. On Jefferies becoming chief justice of the king's bench, Danby was admitted to bail.[737] But in the parliament of 1685, the impeached lords having pet.i.tioned the house, it was resolved, that the order of the 19th of March 1679 be reversed and annulled as to impeachments; and they were consequently released from their recognisances.[738]

The first of these two contradictory determinations is not certainly free from that reproach which so often contaminates our precedents of parliamentary law, and renders an honest man reluctant to show them any greater deference than is strictly necessary. It pa.s.sed during the violent times of the popish plot; and a contrary resolution would have set at liberty the five catholic peers committed to the Tower, and enabled them probably to quit the kingdom before a new impeachment could be preferred. It must be acknowledged, at the same time, that it was borne out, in a considerable degree, by the terms of the order of 1673, which seems liable to no suspicion of answering a temporary purpose; and that the court party in the House of Lords were powerful enough to have withstood any flagrant innovation in the law of parliament. As for the second resolution, that of 1685, which reversed the former, it was pa.s.sed in the very worst of times; and, if we may believe the protest, signed by the Earl of Anglesea and three other peers, with great precipitation and neglect of usual forms. It was not however annulled after the revolution; but, on the contrary, received what may seem at first sight a certain degree of confirmation, from an order of the House of Lords in 1690, on the pet.i.tions of Lords Salisbury and Peterborough, who had been impeached in the preceding parliament, to be discharged; which was done after reading the resolutions of 1679 and 1685, and a long debate thereon. But as a general pardon had come out in the meantime, by which the judges held that the offences imputed to these two lords had been discharged, and as the Commons showed no disposition to follow up their impeachment against them, no parliamentary reasoning can perhaps be founded on this precedent.[739] In the case of the Duke of Leeds, impeached by the Commons in 1695, no further proceedings were had; but the Lords did not make an order for his discharge from the accusation till five years after three dissolutions had intervened; and grounded it upon the Commons not proceeding with the impeachment. They did not however send a message to enquire if the Commons were ready to proceed, which, according to parliamentary usage, would be required in case of a pending impeachment. The cases of Lords Somers, Orford, and Halifax, were similar to that of the Duke of Leeds, except that so long a period did not intervene. These instances therefore rather tend to confirm the position, that impeachments did not ipso facto abate by a dissolution, notwithstanding the reversal of the order of 1679. In the case of the Earl of Oxford, it was formally resolved in 1717, that an impeachment does not determine by a prorogation of parliament; an authority conclusive to those who maintain that no difference exists in the law of parliament between the effects of a prorogation and a dissolution. But it is difficult to make all men consider this satisfactory.

The question came finally before both houses of parliament in 1791, a dissolution having intervened during the impeachment of Mr. Hastings; an impeachment which, far unlike the rapid proceedings of former ages, had already been for three years before the House of Lords, and seemed likely to run on to an almost interminable length. It must have been abandoned in despair, if the prosecution had been held to determine by the late dissolution. The general reasonings, and the force of precedents on both sides, were urged with great ability, and by the princ.i.p.al speakers in both houses; the lawyers generally inclining to maintain the resolution of 1685, that impeachments abate by a dissolution, but against still greater names which were united on the opposite side. In the end, after an ample discussion, the continuance of impeachments, in spite of a dissolution, was carried by very large majorities; and this decision, so deliberately taken, and so free from all suspicion of partiality (the majority in neither house, especially the upper, bearing any prejudice against the accused person), as well as so consonant to principles of utility and const.i.tutional policy, must for ever have set at rest all dispute upon the question.

_Popish plot._--The year 1678, and the last session of the parliament that had continued since 1661, were memorable for the great national delusion of the popish plot. For national it was undoubtedly to be called, and by no means confined to the whig or opposition party, either in or out of parliament, though it gave them much temporary strength. And though it were a most unhappy instance of the credulity begotten by heated pa.s.sions and mistaken reasoning, yet there were circ.u.mstances, and some of them very singular in their nature, which explain and furnish an apology for the public error, and which it is more important to point out and keep in mind, than to inveigh, as is the custom in modern times, against the fact.i.tiousness and bigotry of our ancestors. For I am persuaded that we are far from being secure from similar public delusions, whenever such a concurrence of coincidences and seeming probabilities shall again arise, as misled nearly the whole people of England in the popish plot.[740]

_Coleman's letters._--It is first to be remembered that there was really and truly a popish plot in being, though not that which t.i.tus Oates and his a.s.sociates pretended to reveal--not merely in the sense of Hume, who, arguing from the general spirit of proselytism in that religion, says there is a perpetual conspiracy against all governments, protestant, Mahometan, and pagan, but one alert, enterprising, effective, in direct operation against the established protestant religion in England. In this plot the king, the Duke of York, and the King of France were chief conspirators; the Romish priests, and especially the jesuits, were eager co-operators. Their machinations and their hopes, long suspected, and in a general sense known, were divulged by the seizure and publication of Coleman's letters. "We have here," he says, in one of these, "a mighty work upon our hands, no less than the conversion of three kingdoms, and by that perhaps the utter subduing of a pestilent heresy, which has a long time domineered over this northern world. There were never such hopes since the death of our queen Mary as now in our days. G.o.d has given us a prince, who is become (I may say by miracle) zealous of being the author and instrument of so glorious a work; but the opposition we are sure to meet with is also like to be great; so that it imports us to get all the aid and a.s.sistance we can." These letters were addressed to Father la Chaise, confessor of Louis XIV., and displayed an intimate connection with France for the great purpose of restoring popery. They came to light at the very period of Oates's discovery; and though not giving it much real confirmation, could hardly fail to make a powerful impression on men unaccustomed to estimate the value and bearings of evidence.[741]

The conspiracy supposed to have been concerted by the jesuits at St.

Omers, and in which so many English catholics were implicated, chiefly consisted, as is well known, in a scheme of a.s.sa.s.sinating the king.

Though the obvious falsehood and absurdity of much that the witnesses deposed in relation to this plot render it absolutely incredible, and fully acquit those unfortunate victims of iniquity and prejudice, it could not appear at the time an extravagant supposition, that an eager intriguing faction should have considered the king's life a serious obstacle to their hopes. Though as much attached in heart as his nature would permit to the catholic religion, he was evidently not inclined to take any effectual measures in its favour; he was but one year older than his brother, on the contingency of whose succession all their hopes rested, since his heiress was not only brought up in the protestant faith, but united to its most strenuous defender.

Nothing could have been more anxiously wished at St. Omers than the death of Charles; and it does not seem improbable that the atrocious fictions of Oates may have been originally suggested by some actual, though vague, projects of a.s.sa.s.sination, which he had heard in discourse among the ardent spirits of that college.

_Murder of Sir Edmondbury G.o.dfrey._--The popular ferment which this tale, however undeserving of credit, excited in a predisposed mult.i.tude, was naturally wrought to a higher pitch by the very extraordinary circ.u.mstances of Sir Edmondbury G.o.dfrey's death. Even at this time, although we reject the imputation thrown on the catholics, and especially on those who suffered death for that murder, it seems impossible to frame any hypothesis which can better account for the facts that seem to be authenticated. That he was murdered by those who designed to lay the charge on the papists, and aggravate the public fury, may pa.s.s with those who rely on such writers as Roger North,[742] but has not the slightest corroboration from any evidence; nor does it seem to have been suggested by the contemporary libellers of the court party. That he might have had, as an active magistrate, private enemies, whose revenge took away his life, which seems to be Hume's conjecture, is hardly more satisfactory; the enemies of a magistrate are not likely to have left his person unplundered, nor is it usual for justices of the peace, merely on account of the discharge of their ordinary duties, to incur such desperate resentment. That he fell by his own hands was doubtless the suggestion of those who aimed at discrediting the plot; but it is impossible to reconcile this with the marks of violence which are so positively sworn to have appeared on his neck; and, on a later investigation of the subject in the year 1682, when the court had become very powerful, and a belief in the plot had grown almost a mark of disloyalty, an attempt made to prove the self-murder of G.o.dfrey, in a trial before Pemberton, failed altogether; and the result of the whole evidence, on that occasion, was strongly to confirm the supposition that he had perished by the hands of a.s.sa.s.sins.[743] His death remains at this moment a problem for which no tolerably satisfactory solution can be offered. But at the time, it was a very natural presumption to connect it with the plot, wherein he had not only taken the deposition of Oates, a circ.u.mstance not in itself highly important, but was supposed to have received the confidential communications of Coleman.[744]

Another circ.u.mstance, much calculated to persuade ordinary minds of the truth of the plot, was the trial of Reading, a Romish attorney, for tampering with the witnesses against the accused catholic peers, in order to make them keep out of the way.[745] As such clandestine dealing with witnesses creates a strong, and perhaps with some too strong a presumption of guilt, where justice is sure to be uprightly administered, men did not make a fair distinction as to times when the violence of the court and jury gave no reasonable hope of escape; and when the most innocent party would much rather procure the absence of a perjured witness than trust to the chance of disproving his testimony.

_Injustice of judges on the trials._--There was indeed good reason to distrust the course of justice. Never were our tribunals so disgraced by the brutal manners and iniquitous partiality of the bench as in the latter years of this reign. The _State Trials_, none of which appear to have been published by the prisoners' friends, bear abundant testimony to the turpitude of the judges. They explained away and softened the palpable contradictions of the witnesses for the Crown, insulted and threatened those of the accused, checked all cross-examination, a.s.sumed the truth of the charge throughout the whole of every trial.[746] One Whitbread, a jesuit, having been indicted with several others, and the evidence not being sufficient, Scroggs discharged the jury of him, but ordered him to be kept in custody till more proof might come in. He was accordingly indicted again for the same offence. On his pleading that he had been already tried, Scroggs and North had the effrontery to deny that he had been ever put in jeopardy, though the witnesses for the Crown had been fully heard before the jury were most irregularly and illegally discharged of him on the former trial. North said he had often known it done, and it was the common course of law. In the course of this proceeding, Bedloe, who had deposed nothing explicit against the prisoner on the former trial, accounted for this by saying, it was not then convenient; an answer with which the court and jury were content.[747]

It is remarkable that, although the king might be justly surmised to give little credence to the pretended plot, and the Duke of York was manifestly affected in his interests by the heats it excited, yet the judges most subservient to the court, Scroggs, North, Jones, went with all violence into the popular cry, till, the witnesses beginning to attack the queen, and to menace the duke, they found it was time to rein in, as far as they could, the pa.s.sions they had instigated.[748]

Pemberton, a more honest man in political matters, showed a remarkable intemperance and unfairness in all trials relating to popery. Even in that of Lord Stafford in 1680, the last, and perhaps the worst, proceeding under this delusion, though the court had a standing majority in the House of Lords, he was convicted by fifty-five peers against thirty-one; the Earl of Nottingham, lord chancellor, the Duke of Lauderdale, and several others of the administration voting him guilty, while he was acquitted by the honest Hollis and the acute Halifax.[749] So far was the belief in the popish plot, or the eagerness in hunting its victims to death, from being confined to the whig faction, as some writers have been willing to insinuate. None had more contributed to rouse the national outcry against the accused, and create a firm persuasion of the reality of the plot, than the clergy in their sermons, even the most respectable of their order, Sancroft, Sharp, Barlow, Burnet, Tillotson, Stillingfleet; inferring its truth from G.o.dfrey's murder or Coleman's letters, calling for the severest laws against catholics, and imputing to them the fire of London, nay, even the death of Charles I.[750]

_Exclusion of Duke of York proposed._--Though the Duke of York was not charged with partic.i.p.ation in the darkest schemes of the popish conspirators, it was evident that his succession was the great aim of their endeavours, and evident also that he had been engaged in the more real and undeniable intrigues of Coleman. His accession to the throne, long viewed with just apprehension, now seemed to threaten such perils to every part of the const.i.tution, as ought not supinely to be waited for, if any means could be devised to obviate them. This gave rise to the bold measure of the exclusion bill, too bold indeed for the spirit of the country, and the rock on which English liberty was nearly s.h.i.+pwrecked. In the long parliament, full as it was of pensioners and creatures of court influence, nothing so vigorous would have been successful. Even in the bill which excluded catholic peers from sitting in the House of Lords, a proviso, exempting the Duke of York from its operation, having been sent down from the other house, pa.s.sed by a majority of two voices.[751] But the zeal they showed against Danby induced the king to put an end to this parliament of seventeen years' duration; an event long ardently desired by the popular party, who foresaw their ascendancy in the new elections.[752]

The next House of Commons accordingly came together with an ardour not yet quenched by corruption; and after reviving the impeachments commenced by their predecessors, and carrying a measure long in agitation, a test[753] which shut the catholic peers out of parliament, went upon the exclusion bill. Their dissolution put a stop to this; and in the next parliament the Lords rejected it.[754]

The right of excluding an unworthy heir from the succession was supported not only by the plain and fundamental principles of civil society, which establish the interest of the people to be the paramount object of political inst.i.tutions, but by those of the English const.i.tution. It had always been the better opinion among lawyers, that the reigning king with consent of parliament was competent to make any changes in the inheritance of the Crown; and this, besides the acts pa.s.sed under Henry VIII. empowering him to name his successor, was expressly enacted, with heavy penalties against such as should contradict it, in the thirteenth year of Elizabeth. The contrary doctrine indeed, if pressed to its legitimate consequences, would have shaken all the statutes that limit the prerogative; since, if the a.n.a.logy of entails in private inheritances were to be resorted to, and the existing legislature should be supposed incompetent to alter the line of succession, they could as little impair as they could alienate the indefeasible rights of the heir; nor could he be bound by restrictions to which he had never given his a.s.sent. It seemed strange to maintain that the parliament could reduce a king of England to the condition of a doge of Venice, by shackling and taking away his authority, and yet could not divest him of a t.i.tle which they could render little better than a mockery. Those accordingly who disputed the legislative omnipotence of parliament did not hesitate to a.s.sert that statutes infringing on the prerogative were null of themselves. With the court lawyers conspired the clergy, who pretended these matters of high policy and const.i.tutional law to be within their province; and, with hardly an exception, took a zealous part against the exclusion. It was indeed a measure repugnant to the common prejudices of mankind; who, without entering on the abstract competency of parliament, are naturally accustomed in an hereditary monarchy to consider the next heir as possessed of a right, which, except through necessity, or notorious criminality, cannot be justly divested. The mere profession of a religion different from the established, does not seem, abstractedly considered, an adequate ground for unsettling the regular order of inheritance. Yet such was the narrow bigotry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which died away almost entirely among protestants in the next, that even the trifling differences between Lutherans and Calvinists had frequently led to alternate persecutions in the German states, as a prince of one or the other denomination happened to a.s.sume the government. And the Romish religion, in particular, was in that age of so restless and malignant a character, that unless the power of the Crown should be far more strictly limited than had hitherto been the case, there must be a very serious danger from any sovereign of that faith; and the letters of Coleman, as well as other evidences, made it manifest that the Duke of York was engaged in a scheme of general conversion, which, from his arbitrary temper and the impossibility of succeeding by fair means, it was just to apprehend, must involve the subversion of all civil liberty. Still this was not distinctly perceived by persons at a distance from the scene, imbued, as most of the gentry were, with the principles of the old cavaliers, and those which the church had inculcated. The king, though hated by the dissenters, retained the affections of that party, who forgave the vices they deplored, to his father's memory and his personal affability. It appeared harsh and disloyal to force his consent to the exclusion of a brother in whom he saw no crime, and to avoid which he offered every possible expedient.[755] There will always be found in the people of England a strong unwillingness to force the reluctance of their sovereign--a latent feeling, of which parties in the heat of their triumphs are seldom aware, because it does not display itself until the moment of reaction. And although, in the less settled times before the revolution, this personal loyalty was highly dangerous, and may still, no doubt, sometimes break out so as to frustrate objects of high import to the public weal, it is on the whole a salutary temper for the conservation of the monarchy, which may require such a barrier against the encroachments of factions and the fervid pa.s.sions of the mult.i.tude.

_Schemes of Shaftesbury and Monmouth._--The bill of exclusion was drawn with as much regard to the inheritance of the Duke of York's daughters as they could reasonably demand, or as any lawyer engaged for them could have shown; though something different seems to be insinuated by Burnet. It provided that the imperial crown of England should descend to and be enjoyed by such person or persons successively during the life of the Duke of York, as should have inherited or enjoyed the same in case he were naturally dead. If the Princess of Orange was not expressly named (which, the bishop tells us, gave a jealousy, as though it were intended to keep that matter still undetermined), this silence was evidently justified by the possible contingency of the birth of a son to the duke, whose right there was no intention in the framers of the bill to defeat. But a large part of the opposition had unfortunately other objects in view.

It had been the great error of those who withstood the arbitrary counsels of Charles II. to have admitted into their closest confidence, and in a considerable degree to the management of their party, a man so dest.i.tute of all honest principle as the Earl of Shaftesbury. Under his contaminating influence their pa.s.sions became more untractable, their connections more seditious and democratical, their schemes more revolutionary, and they broke away more and more from the line of national opinion, till a fatal reaction involved themselves in ruin, and exposed the cause of public liberty to its most imminent peril. The countenance and support of Shaftesbury brought forward that unconst.i.tutional and most impolitic scheme of the Duke of Monmouth's succession. There could hardly be a greater insult to a nation used to respect its hereditary line of kings, than to set up the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a prost.i.tute, without the least pretence of personal excellence or public services, against a princess of known virtue and attachment to the protestant religion. And the effrontery of this attempt was aggravated by the libels eagerly circulated to dupe the credulous populace into a belief of Monmouth's legitimacy. The weak young man, lured on to destruction by the arts of intriguers and the applause of the mult.i.tude, gave just offence to sober-minded patriots, who knew where the true hopes of public liberty were anch.o.r.ed, by a kind of triumphal procession through parts of the country, and by other indications of a presumptuous ambition.[756]

_Unsteadiness of the king._--If any apology can be made for the encouragement given by some of the whig party (for it was by no means general) to the pretensions of Monmouth, it must be found in their knowledge of the king's affection for him, which furnished a hope that he might more easily be brought in to the exclusion of his brother for the sake of so beloved a child than for the Prince of Orange. And doubtless there was a period when Charles's acquiescence in the exclusion did not appear so unattainable as, from his subsequent line of behaviour, we are apt to consider it. It appears from the recently published life of James, that in the autumn of 1680 the embarra.s.sment of the king's situation, and the influence of the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth, who had gone over to the exclusionists, made him seriously deliberate on abandoning his brother.[757] Whether from natural instability of judgment, from the steady adherence of France to the Duke of York, or from observing the great strength of the tory party in the House of Lords, where the bill was rejected by a majority of 63 to 30, he soon returned to his former disposition. It was long however before he treated James with perfect cordiality. Conscious of his own insincerity in religion, which the duke's bold avowal of an obnoxious creed seemed to reproach, he was provoked at bearing so much of the odium, and incurring so many of the difficulties, which attended a profession that he had not ventured to make. He told Hyde, before the dissolution of the parliament in 1680, that it would not be in his power to protect his brother any longer, if he did not conform and go to church.[758] Hyde himself, and the duke's other friends, had never ceased to urge him on this subject. Their importunity was renewed by the king's order, even after the dissolution of the Oxford parliament; and it seems to have been the firm persuasion of most about the court that he could only be preserved by conformity to the protestant religion. He justly apprehended the consequences of a refusal; but, inflexibly conscientious on this point, he braved whatever might arise from the timidity or disaffection of the ministers and the selfish fickleness of the king.

In the apprehensions excited by the king's unsteadiness and the defection of the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth, he deemed his fortunes so much in jeopardy, as to have resolved on exciting a civil war, rather than yield to the exclusion. He had already told Barillon that the royal authority could be re-established by no other means.[759] The episcopal party in Scotland had gone such lengths that they could hardly be safe under any other king. The catholics of England were of course devoted to him. With the help of these he hoped to show himself so formidable that Charles would find it his interest to quit that cowardly line of politics, to which he was sacrificing his honour and affections. Louis, never insensible to any occasion of rendering England weak and miserable, directed his amba.s.sador to encourage the duke in this guilty project with the promise of a.s.sistance.[760] It seems to have been prevented by the wisdom or public spirit of Churchill, who pointed out to Barillon the absurdity of supposing that the duke could stand by himself in Scotland. This scheme of lighting up the flames of civil war in three kingdoms, for James's private advantage, deserves to be more remarked than it has. .h.i.therto been at a time when the apologists seem to have become numerous. If the designs of Russell and Sidney for the preservation of their country's liberty are blamed as rash and unjustifiable, what name shall we give to the project of maintaining the pretensions of an individual by means of rebellion and general bloodshed?

It is well known that those who took a concern in the maintenance of religion and liberty, were much divided as to the best expedients for securing them; some, who thought the exclusion too violent, dangerous, or impracticable, preferring the enactment of limitations on the prerogatives of a catholic king. This had begun in fact from the court, who pa.s.sed a bill through the House of Lords in 1677, for the security, as it was styled, of the protestant religion. This provided that a declaration and oath against transubstantiation should be tendered to every king within fourteen days after his accession; that, on his refusal to take it, the ecclesiastical benefices in the gift of the Crown should vest in the bishops, except that the king should name to every vacant see one out of three persons proposed to him by the bishops of the province. It enacted also, that the children of a king refusing such a test should be educated by the archbishop and two or three more prelates. This bill dropped in the Commons; and Marvell speaks of it as an insidious stratagem of the ministry.[761] It is more easy, however, to give hard names to a measure originating with an obnoxious government, than to prove that it did not afford a considerable security to the established church, and impose a very remarkable limitation on the prerogative. But the opposition in the House of Commons had probably conceived their scheme of exclusion, and would not hearken to any compromise. As soon as the exclusion became the topic of open discussion, the king repeatedly offered to grant every security that could be demanded consistently with the lineal succession. Hollis, Halifax, and for a time Ess.e.x, as well as several eminent men in the lower house, were in favour of limitations.[762]

But those which they intended to insist upon were such encroachments on the const.i.tutional authority of the Crown, that, except a t.i.tle and revenue, which Charles thought more valuable than all the rest, a popish king woul