23. It was these

general causes which overturned Marl

iled dynasty. Being actuated by such principles, it is not surprising that they viewed with jealousy, and at last with open and undisguised aversion, borough. the course of Marlborough's victories, and lent all the weight of their talents and influence to aid in the propagation of the libels calculated to destroy him. Those triumphs, however glorious to England, however vital to its existence as an independent state, were all adverse to their political principles. They threatened to extinguish the monarchical and Roman Catholic principles in the person of Louis XIV., and erect in supremacy, in their stead, the morose doctrines of the Covenanters, the solemn league and covenant, the principles of the Dutch Republicans. Queen Anne, with the usual instinct of crowned heads, when in secure possession of power, inclined to the same opinions. She felt the same repugnance to the Whigs, who had placed her after William on the throne, that Louis Philippe, in after times, did to Lafayette and the patriots of 1830, who had erected the throne of the Barricades. The warmest partisans of royalty in Great Britain and Ireland were to be found in the French ranks; they embraced many of the most generous and exalted, because disinterested, persons in the British dominions. Their appearance excited profound sympathy and admiration wherever they appeared on the Continent.* The Pretender him

* "Leurs aventures furent dignes des beaux jours de Sparte et d'Athènes. Ils étaient tous d'une naissance honorable; attachés à leurs chefs, et affectionnés les uns aux autres; irréprochables en tout. Ils se formaient en une compagnie de soldats au service de France. Ils furent passés en révue par le Roi à St. Germain en Laye: le roi salua les troupes par une inclination de la tête et le chapeau bas. Il révint, salua de nouveau, et fondit en larmes. Ils se mirent à genoux, baissants la tête contre la terre, puis se rélevants tout à la fois, ils lui firent le salut militaire. Ils furent envoyés delà à les frontières d'Espagne, ce que formait un marché de 900 milles. Partout où ils passaient ils tiraient des larmes des yeux des femmes, obtenaient le respect de quelques hommes, et en faisant rire d'autres par la moquerie qui s'attache au malheur. Ils étaient toujours les premiers dans une bataille, et les derniers dans une retraite. Ils manquerent souvent des choses les plus necessaires à la vie, cependant on ne les entendit jamais se plaindre, excepté des souffrances de celui qu'ils regardaient comme leur

self combated at Malplaquet against Marlborough in the midst of the chivalry of France. It would be erroneous, therefore, to consider the intrigues and animosity which at length effected the downfall of Marlborough and brought about the peace of Utrecht as entirely the result of a revolution du Palais-a bed-chamber affair, in which the interests and glo ry of nations were sacrificed to the spite or the jealousies of women; and still more unjust would it be to stigmatize Bolingbroke and Harley as worthless adventurers, who were actuated in their opposition to the great hero of the age by mere personal envy or political hostility. Mrs. Masham's bed-chamber intrigue and Bolingbroke's cabinet measures were merely the form which a great principle, at all times strong in English society, and then peculiarly active, took in order to avert a danger with which, in their estimation, English institutions were threatened. And that principle is expressed in the words, "Fear God and honor the King."

Great violations

of moral recti

tude in the mode

It is evident, from what has been said, that the Tory party had much argument on their side in this great 24. controversy; and that though we, instructed by the event, may now see very clearly that they of their attack on erred on the occasion, yet there is much to be said Marlborough. on their behalf; and the strongest judgment, as well as the purest patriotism, might at the time have found it difficult to say to which side the scales of reason preponderated. But there is one point for which no apology can be made, and for which all the heat of party and all the reality of impending danger can afford no excuse. This was the manner in which they prosecuted their hostility against Marlborough and the war. They did not dispossess the one and terminate the other, as they might have done, by a simple vote of the House of Commons. They did not venture for long on any open attack on either. They were afraid to measure their strength open combat with the conqueror of Blenheim. They pre

in

Souverain."-CHATEAUBRIAND, Mémoires sur le Duc de Berry, Œuvres,

ii., 68.

ferred the covert attacks of envy, malice, and uncharitableness. Their weapons, with the people, were malignant libels; at court, underhand bed-chamber intrigues. They did not deprive the hero of his command, but they strove to thwart his measures so that they might prove unsuccessful. Openly they declared that any minister deserved to lose his head who should propose to abandon Spain and the Indies to a Bourbon prince; in secret they were negotiating with Louis at that very moment a treaty of peace, the basis of which was that very relinquishment. Ostensibly they still paid to Marlborough the external marks of respect, but they ceased to admit him to their confidential councils; they denied him the thanks of Parliament for his services; they encouraged the circulation of the most malignant falsehoods regarding his character; they did their utmost to load him with indignities and mortifications at court. Their object seems to have been to induce him, through disgust at their ingratitude, to resign, and thus to have spared them the discredit of removing the greatest general of England from a command which he had held with so much glory. And when the temper or patriotism of Marlborough was proof against their attack, they descended to the infamy of charging him with peculation, on grounds so false that they did not venture to bring them to judicial investigation, even in the House of Peers, which they had swamped for his overthrow. At last they drove the greatest general of England, and the most signal benefactor that had ever arisen to his country, into disgrace, in order to bring about a discreditable peace, which deprived the nation of the chief fruit of his victories.

What was the danger to be guarded against in the peace.

And the result has now decisively proved that Bolingbroke 25. and the Tories were as wrong on this occasion in their general policy, as in the means for its accom plishment; and that the course which Godolphin and Marlborough contended for, and, but for the change of ministry, undoubtedly would have carried into effect, was the one imperatively required by the honor and interests of En

gland. Spain and France were the two powers by whom the independence of England had been separately threatened for two centuries. The narrow escape made from invasion, and possibly dismemberment, on occasion of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and the battle of La Hogue in 1692, sufficiently demonstrate this. The Union of the two under one head, therefore, could not but prove in the highest degree perilous to the independence of England. Both parties seemed to admit this; but they proposed different means to avert the danger. Marlborough and the Whigs maintained that it. could be effectually done only by separating, in a permanent manner, the reigning families in France and Spain; and to effect this, they proposed to settle the crown of Spain on Charles VI., archduke of Austria. Provided this was done, they had no objections that an appanage for the Duke of Anjou, the other competitor for the throne, should be carved out of the other possessions of the Spanish crown in Italy and Sicily. This was substantially the basis they assumed in the conferences of Gertruydenberg in 1709. Bolingbroke and the Tories, again, contended that it was necessary to separate the reigning families, provided only that the two crowns were prevented from uniting on one head; and to prevent this, they introduced the stringent clauses into the Treaty of Utrecht, already mentioned, providing that the Salic law, which excludes females from the succession, should be the law of the Spanish throne, and that in no event, and under no circumstanees, should the crowns of Spain and France be united on the same head.

26. The result has

proved the

Tories were

wrong in their policy regarding it.

These provisions appeared, at first sight, to guard, in part at least, against the danger which threatened; and this circumstance, coupled with the natural desire of men to terminate a long and burdensome war, rendered the peace of Utrecht generally acceptable to the nation. It was foreseen, however, at the time, and loudly declared by the Whigs, both in Parliament and the country, that this security was seeming only, and that leaving

a grandson of Louis XIV. on the throne of Spain, with the name of an independent kingdom, was in reality more dangerous to the security of England than the junction of the two crowns on the same head would have been.

The event has

Had the crown

now decisively proved the justice of this view. of Spain been openly placed on the same head as that of France, the alliance of the two powers could not have been of long continuance. Castilian pride would have revolted at the idea of being subjected to the government of Paris; the war of independence in 1808 has shown what results follow the open assertion over the Peninsula of French domination. But by leaving Spain a crown nominally independent, but closely united by blood and interest with the French monarchy, the object of Louis XIV. was gained, and in a way more safe and certain than even the union of the crowns could have afforded. The family compact succeeded. A close and indissoluble alliance between France and Spain, which subsisted unbroken for above a century, was the result. Spanish pride was soothed by the appearance of an independent government at Madrid; French ambition was gratified by the substantial devotion of the whole resources of Spain to the purposes of France.

Disastrous ef

followed the

bon on the

The effects were soon apparent. In every war which en27. sued between France and England for the next fects and seri- century-that of 1739, that of 1756, the Amerious dangers to England which can war, that of 1793-Spain and France ere leaving a Bour- long united in hostilities against Great Britain. Spanish throne. Astonishing exertions of vigor and bravery on the part of our countrymen alone prevented the alliance proving fatal to the independence of England. We were worsted by them in the very next contest which followed the Treaty of Utrecht, that which was terminated by the peace of Aix la Chapelle. The extraordinary genius of Frederic of Prussia and of Lord Chatham, joined to corresponding incapacity in the government of Louis XIV., gave us, indeed, a glorious career of triumphs during the Seven Years' War. But when