of great powers of argument; greater still of sarcasm; thoroughly acquainted with human nature, and unfettered by any of the delicacies which, in men of more refined minds, often prevent the stirring of its passions, he knew how to excite the public mind by awakening their jealousy in regard to matters which came home to every understanding. Disregarding all remote considerations adapted only for the thoughtful, drawn from the balance of power, matters of foreign policy, or the ultimate danger of England, he at once fastened on Marlborough the damning charge of pecuniary cupidity; held forth the continuance of the war as entirely owing to his sordid thirst of gain; and all the wealth which flowed into the coffers of the great commander as wrung from the labors of hardwrought Englishmen. Concealing and perverting what he knew was the truth of ancient history, he represented the Roman consul as rewarded for his victories by a triumph which cost less than a thousand pounds, and Marlborough enjoying five hundred thousand as the fruit of his laurels. He forgot to add, that such were the means of amassing a fortune which victory gave to the Roman proconsuls, that Cæsar, before obtaining the province of Gaul, was enabled, on its prospect, to contract £2,500,000 of debt. It may be conceived what ef fect such misrepresentations had upon a people already groaning under new taxes, terrified at the growth of the national debt, and inflamed with that envy which the rapid rise, even of the most exalted merit, scarce ever fails to produce in the great majority of men. The Whigs had able writers, too, on their side, but they were no match for their adversaries in the power of producing a present effect on the multitude, whatever they might be on the cultivated in future ages; and the elegant papers of Addison and Steele, in the Spectator and Freeholder, were but a poor set-off to the coarse invectives and withering sarcasms of Swift.

Bolingbroke and Harley were Tory and monarchical in their ideas they belonged to the High-Church party in religion; and in secret, they dreamed of the restoration of the ex

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23.

It was these

which over

turned Marl

iled dynasty. Being actuated by such principles,

general causes 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 glory 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."

24. Great violations

of moral recti

tude in the mode

of

It is evident, from what has been said, that the Tory party had much argument on their side in this great controversy; and that though we, instructed by the event, may now see very clearly that they 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 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 in open combat with the conqueror of Blenheim. They presouverain."-CHATEAUBRIAND, Mémoires sur le Duc de Berry, Œuvres,

war.

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.

25.

What was the danger to be

guarded against in the peace.

And the result has now decisively proved that Bolingbroke and the Tories were as wrong on this occasion in their general policy, as in the means for its accomplishment; 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 regard

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 К к 2

ing it.