ford and General Ross were all that was heard in behalf of the lately triumphant leader of the Commons! The resolution having passed without a division, Lord Coningsby next stood up and said, "The worthy Chairman of the Committee has impeached the hand, but I do impeach the head; he has impeached the clerk, and I the justice; he has impeached the scholar, and I the master: I impeach Robert Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, of high treason and other high crimes and misdemeanors!"

This resolution also was carried without a division; but the impeachment of Ormond was a matter of much greater difficulty and debate. It was moved by Stanhope on the 21st, and led to a discussion of nine hours and a half. Several undoubted friends of the Protestant succession spoke in favour of the Duke; amongst others, Sir Joseph Jekyll, one of the Committee of Secrecy; and Ormond had so many partisans in the House, that the motion of Stanhope was passed by a majority of only forty-seven. Next day, Mr. Aislabie also impeached, not of high treason, but of high crimes and misdemeanors, the Earl of Strafford, as one of the two plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Utrecht;* Mr. Hungerford sarcastically observing, that the Bishop of London, the other plenipotentiary, was, it seemed, to have the benefit of clergy!

It appears, however, that the zeal displayed in defence of Ormond inclined the Ministers to drop their proceedings against him, and the Duke of Devonshire had even taken measures to obtain for him a private audience of the King, in which any expressions of loyalty and promises of good conduct would probably have been accepted. Such a course was warmly pressed upon the Duke by his Jacobite confederates, who wished him to maintain his footing in England, and to lull the suspicions of the government until their plans should be matured. Another scheme had also been framed for an immediate insurrection in the West; many measures having been concerted, and many engagements taken by Ormond himself for that object. But Ormond, who combined very honourable feelings with a very feeble resolution, could neither stoop to the dissimulation of the first project, nor rise to the energy of the second. He took, of all courses, the worst for himself and his party; he secretly fled to France. It has been said that, before he went, he paid a visit to Lord Oxford in the Tower, and advised him to attempt his escape; -that, finding his arguments ineffectual, he took leave of him with the words, "Farewell, Oxford without a head!"-and that Oxford answered, "Farewell, Duke without a duchy!"

On the flight of Ormond, acts of attainder against him and Bolingbroke were passed without difficulty, and almost without opposition; but Ormond, unlike Bolingbroke, having thus taken his part, steadily adhered to it in evil fortune, and never returned to his native country. He was certainly a man of very amiable temper and no mean

• Coxe erroneously says that the impeachment of Strafford was moved by Stanhope. (Life of Walpole, p. 67.)

accomplishments, and with no blot upon his character-unless incapacity and utter want of vigour are to be looked upon as such. He died in 1745, at the age of fourscore. He is described by St. Simon, in his visit to Madrid in 1721, as short and fat in person, but yet of most graceful demeanour, and most noble aspect; remarkable for his attachment to the Church of England, and refusing large domains which were offered as the price of his conversion.* Twentytwo years later we find the following account of him at Avignon, in the lively letters of Lady Mary Montagu:-"All the English, without distinction, see the Duke of Ormond. Lord Chesterfield, who, you know, is related to him, lay at his house during his stay in this town; and, to say truth, nobody can be more insignificant. He keeps an assembly where all the best company go twice in the week; lives here in great magnificence; is quite inoffensive; and seems to have forgotten every part of his past life, and to be of no party."t

Thus, then, of the three peers impeached of high treason, the Earl of Oxford remained alone. On the 9th of July, Lord Coningsby, followed by a great part of the House of Commons, brought up to the bar of the Lords sixteen articles of impeachment against him, to which six further ones were afterwards added. The first fifteen referred to the transactions of the Peace of Utrecht; but the sixteenth to the creation of twelve peers in December, 1711, "by which the said Earl did most highly abuse the influence he then had with her Majesty, and prevailed on her to exercise, in the most unprecedented and dangerous manner that valuable and undoubted prerogative which the wisdom of the laws and constitution of this kingdom hath entrusted with the Crown for the rewarding signal virtue and distinguished merit; by which desperate advice he did not only, as far as in him lay, deprive her Majesty of the continuance of those seasonable and wholesome counsels in that critical juncture, but wickedly perverted the true and only end of that great and useful prerogative, to the dishonour of the Crown, and the irreparable mischief to the constitution of Parliaments."

The impeachment being thus before the Lords, a debate arose in that House, whether any of the articles amounted to high treason; and it was proposed to consult the judges: but a motion to that effect was lost by 84 votes against 52. On the next motion, that Oxford should be committed to the Tower, the Earl rose and addressed the House in a short speech-protesting his innocence, and most artfully insinuating that, in many of the acts imputed to him, he had only obeyed the positive orders of the Queen. This, in fact, seems to have been true with respect to the cessation of arms and the instructions to Ormond, and would have raised a question of most peculiar difficulty, at a period when the present doctrine of ministerial responsibility was still extremely loose and unsettled in

Mém. de St. Simon, vol. xix. p. 441, ed. 1829.

+ To Mr. Wortley, June 1, 1743.

See an anecdote in Lord Hardwicke's State Papers, vol. ii. p. 482.

the public mind. "My Lords," said Oxford, in conclusion, "if ministers of state, acting by the immediate commands of their sovereign, are afterwards to be made accountable for their proceedings, it may, one day or other, be the case of all the members of this august assembly . . . . My Lords, I am now to take my leave of your Lordships, and of this honourable House, perhaps forever. I shall lay down my life with pleasure in a cause favored by my late dear Royal mistress; and, when I consider that I am to be judged by the justice, honour, and virtue of my peers, I shall acquiesce and retire with great content. And, my Lords, God's will be done!" In spite of this specious appeal, Lord Oxford, though reprieved for a - few days from an indisposition, was committed to the Tower.

In considering these acts of ministerial animosity with that calmness which, at such a distance of time, it requires no great effort to preserve, they appear to me most undoubtedly intemperate and unwise. On the guilt of the former administration, in transacting the Peace of Utrecht, I have already expressed no qualified opinion. But, in the first place, did that guilt amount to high treason? Waving their intercourse with the Pretender, which there was not sufficient evidence to prove, the stress of the accusation for treason lay in their seeking to obtain Tournay for the French, which was construed to be within the Act of Edward the Third, an adhering to the Queen's enemies. Now, it must, I think, be admitted, not only that this interpretation seems a straining of the Act, but that the motives of the Ministers, in the cession of Tournay, however culpable, were not precisely either treasonable or rebellious. So clear is this view of the subject, that, above a year after the impeachment of Oxford, we find even the Cabinet Council-the same which had directed the impeachment "of opinion that the charge of high treason should be dropped, it being very certain that there is not sufficient evidence to convict him of that crime: but that he should be pushed with all possible vigour upon the point of misdemeanor." But further; it was surely no very safe or constitutional course (as was forcibly urged by Sir William Wyndham) to found charges of treason on the transactions of a peace which had already been approved by two

⚫ See Blackstone's Comment., vol. iv. p. 82, ed. 1825.

Despatch from Lord Townshend to Secretary Stanhope, dated Nov. 2, 1716, and printed in Coxe's second volume of the Life of Walpole. The Archdeacon, when he refers to this passage in his first volume (p. 70), draws an entirely erroneous inference from it as to the original accusation: "It is a justice due to Townshend and Walpole to observe, that they strenuously insisted Oxford should not be accused of high treason, but only tried for high crimes and misdemeanors." He previously (p. 68), with the same view, descants upon "the approved humanity of such men as Townshend, Devonshire, Stanhope, and Walpole." Now, neither in the passage he alleges from the correspondence nor in any other, is there the slightest evidence that any one of these statesmen disapproved of the original accusations for treason, although in the course of the trial they all modified their views. As to Walpole, the only testimony (that of Bolingbroke, in his letter to Wyndham) speaks of him as the one who most warmly urged the ori ginal impeachments; but this statement appears just as vague and unsupported as that of Coxe upon the other side. The real truth seems to be, that Walpole, not being then a member of the Cabinet, had not much hand in either checking or urging these most impolitic measures.

successive Parliaments. Even if I could admit the justice of such impeachments, I should still utterly deny their policy. From the violence of party feeling, the King could not, it is true, at first, call any even of the moderate Tories to his counsels; but he ought, nevertheless, to have applied himself to allay that violence, and to detach those Tories from their banner, instead of making them cling closely together by the point of honour and exasperation which always spring from persecution. Was it not his interest to invite faithful services in future by a generous oblivion to the past? Was it not the duty of his ministers to draw at least one advantage from his foreign birth, and keep his name clear from their own party rancour and resentment? That resentment might, no doubt, be justifiable: they had, when out of office, undergone much personal persecution from their triumphant rivals; they had to avenge the exile of Marlborough and the imprisonment of Walpole. But they ought to have remembered that the only mode by which such injustice could be excused in the eyes of posterity was by its retaliation; and that their headlong vengeance would incur the charge of supplying the fuel and stirring the flames of the smouldering civil war.

And all this, let us ask, for what? Was anything gained, or could anything be gained, by these impeachments? We may, perhaps, be told of the demands of justice against the late Ministers—of the necessity of deterring future ones from similar misconduct. But surely, in this case, the failure of their misconduct, and their consequent exclusion from office, would have been sufficient as punishment for themselves, or as warning to others. Unsuccessful guilt seldom makes imitators. Or, if it be alleged that Bolingbroke or Oxford, by their popularity in the country, or the number of their friends in Parliament, might, perhaps, at some future time, overcome the Whigs and reinstate themselves in office, could there be a stronger argument to show the impolicy of assailing men so formidably backed, and of driving a large and formidable party to despair?1

It is to be observed, however, that, in these impeachments, the Ministers, so far from outrunning the wishes and demands of their own party, rather fell short of them. The language of some of their adherents was much stronger than their own. Thus, for instance, Lord Stanhope of Shelford, afterwards the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield, making his first speech on one of these occasions, said, "he never wished to spill the blood of any of his countrymen, much less the blood of any nobleman; but he was persuaded that the safety of his country required that examples should be made of those who had betrayed it in so infamous a manner." To this speech, Lord Chesterfield, in after-life, looked back with just regret. "Had I not been a young member," he observes, "I should certainly have been, as I own I deserved, reprimanded by the House for some strong and indiscreet things that I said."*

1

* Letter to his son, March 15, 1754. Dr. Maty says in his Life,-"As soon as he had

[See Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. iv. p. 371, chap. cxvi. Life of Lord Cowper.]

Meanwhile, riots and outrages were increasing in several parts of the country. Staffordshire, above all, a county long remarkable for its Tory politics,* was the scene of disturbance. "High Church, and Ormond for ever!" was the cry. The mob, inflamed with zeal for their ecclesiastical establishment, and persuaded that its security would be very much promoted by pulling down Dissenters' meetinghouses, assembled in great numbers for that object. Many buildings were destroyed, and many sectarians insulted. Against such proceedings it was thought requisite to point a sharper law; and recourse was had to the Riot Act, a statute passed in the reign of Mary, and limited to the Queen's life; and, in like manner, enacted by Elizabeth, but never since revived. It was now made perpetual, and with increased powers. It provides, that if any twelve persons are unlawfully assembled to the disturbance of the peace, and any one justice shall think proper to command them, by proclamation, to disperse; if they contemn his orders, and continue together for one hour afterwards, such contempt shall be felony without benefit of clergy. By a subsequent clause, the pulling down of chapels or houses even before the proclamation, is made subject to the same penalty. This act, which still continues, though bearing a harsh and arbitrary aspect, has, I believe, in practice, never given rise to any deeds of oppression, nor well grounded causes of complaint.

From the great amount of public business, the Houses sat this year till the 21st of September. Even then-the rebellion, which I shall detail in the next chapter, being on the point of rising-Parliament was not prorogued, but only adjourned at short intervals, till it met again next year; so that what was called its first session extends from March, 1715, till June, 1716.

This spring died two of the Ministers; first, the Marquis of Wharton, Privy Seal, a man of great talents but profligate character, and succeeded by a son still more able, and still more abandoned than himself; secondly, Lord Halifax. No one had basked more largely in the sunshine of the new Court: he had received from its bounty an earldom, the Garter, and the office of First Lord of the Treasury. Other men murmured at this rapid accumulation of favours. To himself, on the contrary, they all seemed inferior to his merit. He aimed at the great post of Lord Treasurer, a post never revived under the Georges; and, finding this withheld from him, did not scruple to enter into negotiations with his political opponents, and

done speaking, one of the opposite party took him aside, and having complimented him upon his coup d'essai, observed that he was exactly acquainted with the date of his birth, and could prove that when he was chosen a member of the House he was not come of age, and that he was not so now: at the same time he assured him that he wished to take no advantage of this, unless his own friends were pushed, in which case, if he offered to vote, he would immediately acquaint the House with it. Lord Stanhope, who knew the consequences of this discovery, answered nothing; but making a low bow, quitted the House directly, and went to Paris!"

Boswell observes in 1778: "I drank chocolate this morning with Mr. Eld, and, to my no small surprise, found him to be a Staffordshire Whig-a being which I did not believe had existed!" Life of Johnson, Croker's ed., vol. iv. p. 185.

Blackstone's Comment. vol. iv. p. 142, ed. 1825.