them during the campaign, was a most substantial

15. Increase of

difficulties at

advantage, and could not fail to have a most im- Marlborough's portant effect on the final issue of the war, yet these home. results were not productive of so much natural exultation as the victories of the preceding campaigns. There had been no brilliant victory like Blenheim, Ramillies, or Oudenarde, to silence envy and defy malignity; the successes, though little less real, had not been so dazzling. The intriguers about the court, the malcontents in the country, eagerly seized on this circumstance to calumniate the duke, and accused him of unworthy motives in the conduct of the war: he was protracting it for his own private purposes, reducing it to a strife of lines and sieges, when he might at once terminate it by a decisive battle, and gratifying his ruling passion of avarice by the lucrative appointments which he enjoyed himself, or divided among his friends.

16. General alarm

at the augmen

tation of the

The great increase in the public burdens of the country, a subject which never fails to find a responsive echo in the English breast, added tenfold weight to these representations. Such was the clamor public burdens. against the augmentation of the public debt and taxes, that it had become absolutely stunning. It must be confessed there was great foundation for the complaints so generally made on this subject. The annual expenditure of the nation in the last year of the reign of James II. had been, as Bolingbroke tells us, about £2,000,000; and the supplies voted by the Commons had already for several years been six, and had this year reached the unprecedented amount of seven millions. Large loans were annually contracted, the interest of which was not only burdensome in itself, but threatened, as it was thought, at no distant period entirely to swallow up the whole landed and realized property of the country. Men could see no end to this constant increase of taxation and such additions to the public debt. They began to think they might pay too dear for glory, for independence, or even for freedom. The public debt, which was only £664,000 at the Revolution, had

Z

since increased so rapidly that it was swelled by £16,000,000 during the reign of William, and that contracted in the reign of Anne already exceeded £34,000,000, while at her death it amounted to £37,000,000.* The public taxes had nearly tripled during the same period. Where, it was asked, is this to end? Of twenty-two years which have elapsed since the Revolution, eighteen have been spent in constant and expensive wars. What national resources, what public freedom

can stand such a strain ?

166

17.

Argument of Bolingbroke on the subject.

'It is impossible," says Bolingbroke, "to look back without indignation at the mysterious iniquity by which this system has been matured, or horror to the consequences that may ensue from it. The ordinary expenses of government are defrayed, even in time of peace, in great part by anticipations and mortgages. In time of peace--in days of prosperity, as we boast them to be-we contract new debts, we create new funds. What must happen when we go to war, or are in national distress? What will happen when we have mortgaged and funded all we have to mortgage and fund; when we have mortgaged all the produce of land, and all the land itself? Who can an

swer that, when we come to such extremities, or have them more nearly in prospect, ten millions of people will consent to be mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, to maintain the two hundredth part of that number in ease and plenty? Who can answer that the whole body of the people will suffer themselves to be treated, in favor of a handful of men, as the poor Indians are in favor of the Spaniards; to be parceled out in lots, as it were, and to be assigned, like these Indians, to the Spanish planters, to toil and starve for the proprietors

ALISON'S Europe, v., 538. Revenue Tables, 70-89.

of the several funds?"* Probably most persons will be of opinion that these questions suggest matter for serious and anxious thought, even with all the experience we have since had of the prodigious resources which the industry and activ ity of Great Britain can develop. It may be conceived, then, what a sensation they produced, when the funding system, introduced with the Revolution, was yet in its infancy; when the capability of the nation to bear an increase of burdens was unknown, and when all the obloquy arising from so rapid and alarming an increase of the public debts and burdens was, alike by friends and enemies, directed against the victo rious general, who alone, it was said, profited by them!

18.

Real causes of

the evils com

plained of.

And, in truth, Marlborough bore the brunt of the whole. Yet nothing could be more unjust than this concentration of the public discontent on his head, when, in reality, the evils complained of were the direct and unavoidable consequences of the great revulsion by which the family on the throne had been changed. It was no fault of Marlborough that the nation since the Revolution had been involved in almost constant wars: they had only to thank him for having rendered them for the last ten years constantly successful. The real cause of the warfare, and of the enormous increase of the debt to which it had given rise, was the ambition of Louis XIV., which had arrayed all Europe in a league against him, and the Revolution of 1688, which had placed England at its head. Great as had been, and were destined to be, the benefits of that change, it was attended in the first instance by most disastrous consequences. No nation, even for the most just of causes, can overturn an existing government without suffering deeply for it, especially in its pecuniary interests. France felt this bitterly after its two successful revolutions in 1789 and 1830; England felt it with almost equal severity after the expulsion of the Stuarts. The "unbought loyalty of men, the cheap defense of nations,"

* A Dissertation upon Parties. BOLINGBROKE'S Works, iii., 296, 297. Ed. 1809.

was at an end. Generous attachment to the crown being no longer to be relied on, the foundations of government required to be laid in the selfish interests of its supporters. Corruption on a great scale became necessary to maintain the authority of government; the contraction of debt became a part of its policy to interest the public creditors in the existing order of things. Parliamentary influence had come in place of prerogative. The king did nothing of his own authority, but he got an obsequious Parliament to do whatever he desired. The national debt and public taxes grew alike with the external dangers and internal insecurity of the new government. These evils had no connection with Marlborough; but they were all imputed to him, because of his great influence and colossal fame, and because he was the visible head of the war party. Hence the general obloquy with which he was assailed. Men will impute evils under which they suffer to any thing but the real cause—their own conduct.

19. Envy of him among his

But it was not only among the populace and his political opponents that these prejudices prevailed; his greatness and fame had become an object of envy to his own party. own party. Orford, Wharton, and Halifax had on many occasions evinced their distrust of him; and even Somers, who had long stood his friend, was inclined to think the power of the Duke of Marlborough too great, and the emoluments and offices of his family and connections immoderate.* The duchess inflamed the discord between him and the queen by positively refusing to come to any conciliation with her rival, Mrs. Masham. The discord increased daily, and great were the efforts made to aggravate it. To the queen, the never failing device was adopted of representing the victorious general as lording it over the throne; as likely to eclipse even the crown by the luster of his fame; as too dangerous and powerful a subject for a sovereign to tolerate. Matters came to such a pass, in the course of the summer of 1710, that Marlborough found himself thwarted in every request he

made, every project he proposed; and he expressed his entire nullity to the duchess by the emphatic expression that he was a mere sheet of white paper, upon which his friends might write what they pleased."*

The envy at the duke appeared in the difficulties which were now started by the Lords of the Treasury in

20.

ties thrown in Paltry difficul

the way of the

regard to the prosecution of the works at Blenheim. This noble monument of a nation's grat- completion of itude had hitherto proceeded rapidly; the stately Blenheim. design of Vanbrugh was rapidly approaching its completion; and so anxious had the queen at first been to see it finished, that she got a model of it placed in the royal palace of Kensington. Now, however, petty and unworthy objections were started on the score of expense, and attempts were made, by delaying payment of the sums from the treasury, to throw the cost of completing the building on the great general. He had penetration enough, however, to avoid falling into the snare, and actually suspended the progress of the work when the treasury warrants were withheld. He constantly directed that the management of the building should be left to the queen's officers; and, by steadily adhering to this system, he shamed them into continuing the work.†

Marlborough

Marlborough's name and influence, however, were too great to be entirely neglected, and the party which was 21. Attempts to now rising into supremacy at court were anxious, if gain over possible, to secure them for their own side. They to the Tories. made, accordingly, secret overtures to him; and it was even insinuated that, if he would abandon the Whigs and coalesce with them, he would entirely regain the royal favor, and might aspire to the highest situation which a subject could hold. Lord Bolingbroke has told us what the conditions of this alliance were to be: 'He was to abandon the Whigs, his new friends, and take up with the Tories, his old friends;

* Marlborough to the Duchess, 26th of July, 1710. COXE, iv., 299.

+ Marlborough to the Duchess, 25th of October and 24th of November, 1710. COXE, iv., 351, 352.