Rising upon this, with inexpressible dignity, and turning to 43. where the queen sat, Marlborough said, “I appeal Marlborough's noble speech to the queen whether I did not constantly, while House of Peers, I was plenipotentiary, give her majesty and her 10th Dec., 1711. council an account of all the propositions which were made, and whether I did not desire instruction for my conduct on this subject. I can declare with a good conscience, in the presence of her majesty, of this illustrious assembly, and of God himself, who is infinitely superior to all the powers of the earth, and before whom, by the ordinary course of nature, I shall soon appear to render account of my actions, that I was very desirous of a safe, honorable, and lasting peace, and was very far from wishing to prolong the war for my own private advantage, as several libels and discourses have most falsely insinuated. My great age, and my numerous fatigues in war, make me ardently wish for the power to enjoy a quiet repose, in order to think of eternity. As to other matters, I have not the least inducement, on any account, to desire the continuance of the war for my own interest, since my services have been so generously rewarded by her majesty and her Parliament; but I think myself obliged to make such an acknowledgment to her majesty and my country, that I am always ready to serve them, whenever my duty may require, to obtain an honorable and lasting peace. Yet I can by no means acquiesce in the measures that have been taken to enter into a negotiation of peace with France, upon the foot of some pretended preliminaries, which are now circulated, since my opinion is the same as that of most of the allies, that to leave Spain and the West Indies to the house of Bourbon will be the entire ruin of Europe, which I have with all fidelity and humility declared to her majesty, when I had the honor to wait upon her after my arrival from Holland.”*

This manly declaration, delivered in the most emphatic manner, produced a great impression; a resolution against ministers, and an address imbodying these sentiments, were car

*Parl. Hist., 10th of December, 1711.

ried in the House of Peers by a majority of twelve.

44. Resolution car

ried against

ministers in

To this address the queen replied, "I take your thanks kindly, but should be sorry that any one the Peers. should think I would not do my utmost to recover Spain and the West Indies from the house of Bourbon." In the Commons, however, they had a large majority, and an address containing expressions similar to those used by Lord Anglesea, reflecting on Marlborough, was introduced and carried.

Counter address

Commons, and irresolution of the queen.

The Whig majority, however, continued firm in the Upper House, and the leaders of that party began to en- 45. tertain sanguine hopes of success. The queen carried in the had let fall some peevish expressions in regard to her ministers. She had given her hand, in retiring from the House of Peers on the 15th of December, to the Duke of Somerset instead of her own lord-treasurer; it was apprehended that her old partiality for Marlborough was about to return; Mrs. Masham was in the greatest alarm; and St. John declared to Swift that the queen was false.* The ministers of the whole alliance seconded the efforts of the Whigs, and strongly represented the injurious effects which would ensue to the cause of European independence in general, and the interests of England in particular, if the preliminaries which had been agreed to should be made the basis of a general peace. The Dutch made strong and repeated representations on the subject, and the Elector of Hanover delivered a memorial strongly urging the danger which would ensue if Spain and the Indies were allowed to remain in the hands of a Bourbon prince.

Deeming themselves pushed to extremities, and having failed in all attempts to detach Marlborough from the Whigs, Bolingbroke and the ministers resolved on the desperate measure of bringing forward an accusation against him, of fraud

SWIFT's Journal to Stella, Dec. 8, 1711. Swift said to the lord-treasurer, in his usual ironical style, "If there is no remedy, your lordship will lose your head; but I shall only be hung, and so carry my body entire to the grave."-COXE, vi., 148-157.

BB

46.

The Tories dismiss Marlbor

ough, charge, him with peculation, and swamp the

House of Peers, 31st Dec.

and peculation in the management of the public moneys intrusted to his management in the Flemish campaign. The charges were founded on the report of certain commissioners to whom the matter had been remitted, and which charged the duke with having appropriated £63,319 of the public moneys destined for the use of the English troops, and £282,366, as a per centage of two per cent. on the sum paid to foreign embassadors during the ten years of the war. In reply to these abominable insinuations, the letter of the duke to the commissioners was published on the 27th of December, in which he entirely refuted the charges, and showed that he had never received any sums or perquisites not sanctioned by previous and uniform usage, and far fewer than had been received by the general in the reign of William III. And in regard to the £282,000 of per centage on foreign subsidies, this was proved to have been a voluntary gift from those powers to the English general, authorized by their signatures and sanctioned by warrants from the queen. This answer made a great impression; but ministers had gone too far to retreat, and they ventured on a step which, for the honor of the country, has never, even in the worst times, been since repeated Trusting to their majority in the Commons, they dismissed` the duke from all his situations on the 31st of December, and in order to stifle the voice of justice in the Upper House, on the following day patents were issued calling twelve new peers to the Upper House. On the following day they were introduced, amid the groans of the House; the Whig noblemen, says a cotemporary annalist, "casting their eyes on the ground. as if they had been invited to the funeral of the peerage.' "* Unbounded was the joy diffused among the enemies of England by these unparalleled measures. On hearing of Marlborough's fall, Louis XIV. said with gland, and gen- triumph, “The dismission of Marlborough will do all we can desire." The court of St. Germain's

47. Universal joy among the enemies of En

erous conduct of Eugene.

* CUNNINGHAM, ii., 367.

was in exultation; and the general joy of the Jacobites, both at home and abroad, was sufficient to demonstrate how formidable an enemy to their cause they regarded the duke; and how destitute of truth are the attempts to show that he had been engaged in a secret design to restore the exiled family. Marlborough disdained to make any defense of himself in Parliament; but an able answer on his part was prepared and circulated, which entirely refuted the whole charges against the illustrious general. So convinced were ministers of this, that, contenting themselves with resolutions against him in the House of Commons, where their influence was predominant, they declined to prefer any impeachment or accusation in the Upper House, swamped even as it was by their recent creations. In the midst of this disgraceful scene of passion, envy, and ingratitude, Prince Eugene arrived in London for the purpose of trying to stem the torrent, and, if possible, prevent the secession of England from the confederacy. He was lodged with the lord-treasurer, and the generous prince omitted no opportunity of testifying, in the day of his tribulation, his undiminished respect for his illustrious rival. The treasurer having said to him at a great dinner, "I consider this day as the happiest of my life, since I have the honor to see "If it be so,"

in house the greatest captain of the age." my replied Eugene, "I owe it to your lordship;" alluding to his dismissal of Marlborough, which had caused him to cease to be one. On another occasion, some one having pointed out a passage in one of the libels against Marlborough, in which he was said to have been "perhaps once fortunate," "It is true," said Eugene, "he was once fortunate, and it is the greatest praise which can be bestowed on him; for, as he was always successful, that implies that all his other successes were owing to his own conduct."*

Alarmed at the weight which Marlborough might derive from the presence and support of so great a commander, and the natural sympathy of all generous minds at the cordial ad

* BURNET'S History of his own Times, vi., 116.

48. Machinations

to inflame the

queen against

miration which these two great men entertained of the Tories for each other, the ministers had recourse to a pretended conspiracy, which it was alleged had been Marlborough. discovered, on the part of Marlborough and Eugene, to seize the government and dethrone the queen, on the 17th of November. St. John and Oxford had too much sense to publish such a ridiculous statement; but it was made the subject of several secret examinations before the Privy Coun cil, in order to augment the apprehensions and secure the concurrence of the queen in their measures. Such as it was, the tale was treated as a mere malicious invention even by the cotemporary foreign annalists,* though it has since been repeated as true by more than one party historian of our own country. This ridiculous calumny, and the atrocious libels as to the embezzlement of the public money, however, pro duced the desired effect. They inflamed the mind of the queen, and removed that vacillation in regard to the measures of government, from which so much danger had been apprehended by the Tory administration. Having answered the desired end, they were allowed quietly to go to sleep. No proceedings in the House of Peers, or elsewhere, followed the resolutions of the Commons condemnatory of Marlborough's financial administration in the Low Countries. His defense, published in the newspapers, though abundantly vigorous, was neither answered nor prosecuted as a libel on the commissioners or House of Commons; and the alleged Stuart conspiracy was never more heard of, till it was long after drawn from its slumber by the malice of English party spirit. Meanwhile the negotiations at Utrecht for a general peace

Louis rises in

49. continued, and St. John and Oxford soon found his demands at themselves embarrassed by the extravagant preUtrecht, which tensions which their own favor had revived in the turns into a pri

tween France

vate treaty be- plenipotentiaries of Louis. So great was the genand England. eral indignation excited by the publication of the

* Mém. De Torcy, iii., 268, 269.

+ SWIFT's Last Years of Queen Anne, 59. Contin. of RAPIN, Xviii., 468, 8vo.