CHAPTER XV

PARTY GOVERNMENT UNDER QUEEN ANNE

THE death of William placed on the throne an English princess, who at once secured, by the mere fact of her birth, the popularity which all the extraordinary abilities of the foreign ruler had never won for him. Anne was a well-intentioned but not over-wise woman, who, while holding high ideas of her own prerogative and thinking but meanly of party government, was by the irony of fortune always at the mercy either of court intrigue or of party faction. At her accession the former force predominated, and Sarah, Countess of Marlborough, whose influence over Anne was almost boundless, was able to place her great husband in supreme authority. The Earl of Marlborough, who was now made Captain-General of her Majesty's forces, had been employed by William in high military commands during the first years of his reign, and in important diplomatic negotiations at its close. But, despite the recognition which his great qualities had already won for him, it was as much upon court intrigue as upon them that his power ultimately depended. Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark, was techni cally generalissimo of the forces and Lord High Admiral; but the supreme direction of military and foreign affairs really lay in the hands of the man who was to show that he could out-match King Louis and his agents in diplomacy, and rival Prince Eugene in war.

Marlborough declared that he would not command the army until he saw Godolphin at the Treasury; and thus were associated the two men who were to form and to control a Ministry whose record is one of the most glorious in English history. Neither of them escaped condemnation in his own day; but modern criticism has passed by the meanness of Godolphin to assail the glory of Marlborough. Yet an application of the same critical standards to both would place Marlborough on a far higher plane. The most shameful transaction of Marlborough's public life is admittedly that concerned with his giving information to James about the dispatch of an English expedition to Brest (1694). But, inasmuch as a portion of the expedition started the day after the date of his letter, Marlborough may plausibly be assumed to have astutely

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1688-1708] Characters of Marlborough and Godolphin 461

communicated intelligence which he knew to be worthless. He may also have been aware that the whole plan had already been disclosed by Godolphin, and was known at Versailles at least three days before he began to write his own letter. The perfidy of Godolphin is enhanced by the fact that he was at this moment a Minister and favourite of William, while Marlborough, having been dismissed from all his offices, and imprisoned, had every reason for personal resentment. Hence in this transaction, always reckoned the most questionable of his acts, the guilt of Marlborough cannot be proved, while that of Godolphin is established in all particulars. In other respects Godolphin has a worse than doubtful record; before the Revolution he had been the Minister of James and the correspondent of William; after it he was the correspondent of James and the Minister of William. He had tried so often to balance between the two Kings and the two parties, that at length very few, except Marlborough himself, thoroughly believed or trusted him. Nevertheless, this insidious schemer was now to impair his private fortune in the public service, and to show financial talents, not indeed comparable to the bold genius and resource of Montagu, yet not unequal to the problems created by a gigantic debt and a great financial

crisis.

Godolphin was a shrewd and plausible man of affairs; Marlborough possessed at once a finer character and a greater mind. Criticism has ceased to question the domestic virtues and the religious sincerity of Marlborough, but still assails his political character. Yet, under William, his secret correspondence with St Germain cannot be treated too seriously; under Anne, it was chiefly addressed to his nephew Berwick and is largely personal in character. When he does touch on politics, as in a letter of July 17, 1708, he assures Berwick that he would serve the King (the "Old Pretender") with all his heart, without prejudice to the interest of the (English) nation; "mais qu'il faut toujours s'opposer à tout ce qui est de intérêt de la France." That Power must in no way benefit from a Stewart Restoration. Subsequently (August 24, 1708) he airily explains that he will only be ready to act, "quand le Roi sera appelé par la nation.” It is obvious that Marlborough could, by advancing one or other of these saving-clauses, discountenance almost any Jacobite attempt. Hence he was, in all probability, merely deluding Berwick with polite expressions of regret and hope, which would doubtless have served as evidence of his loyalty to the Jacobite cause, had the "Pretender" ever obtained the throne. These intrigues seem therefore to be ignoble attempts to make the best of two political worlds, rather than acts of real treason to the de facto sovereign. No one desires to credit Marlborough with the political purity of a Chatham; but, by the standards of own age, he must be held superior in political virtue to Godolphin, the two Sunderlands, Bolingbroke, or Russell.

The supreme gifts which never failed Marlborough in leading an army

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Party government under Anne

[1702-14 or in conducting a negotiation were not conspicuous in his management of party. Nor can the excuses be advanced that absence, lack of time, or the temper of his Duchess explain his failure; for the main principles. upon which he proceeded were fundamentally unsuited to the Parliament of the day. The survival of the idea that the Ministers were the personal and individual servants of the sovereign, the lack of unity in the Ministry, the absence of sympathy between leaders and followers, made the art of government particularly difficult. But it had been evident, on the whole, under William that Parliament was most easily managed when party discipline was good, and when the Ministry was in political sympathy with the majority of the Commons. These lessons were now forgotten; the pursuit of a policy which was national and not partisan suited alike Anne's timid jealousy of her authority and Marlborough's bold confidence in his own powers. Like William, Halifax and Harley, they believed in a national party, to be formed by the combination of moderate Whigs and Tories. Anne wished to avoid being the servant of a faction, Marlborough to hold his course along that central line which each party sometimes approached, but which neither rigidly pursued. Hence their policy was to balance between extremes, in order that, as violent politicians fell out, the nation might come by its own. But, however agreeable to Marlborough and to Anne, this idea was difficult to carry into effect.

A consideration of the circumstances of the time seems to show that two methods of government were possible-personal government by the sovereign, and party government, depending in the main upon a Ministry agreeable to a majority in the Commons, a type similar but not coinci dent with that in practice in England to-day. The sovereign possessed immense indirect power, since at least one hundred members of the Commons depended absolutely on the Crown for the enjoyment of places and sinecures. Any member who held such office and proved recalcitrant could be dismissed at once by the sovereign. If the two parties were evenly balanced, or if the Commons were broken up into a number of groups or small parties, the Crown held the balance and had the castingvote in all affairs of importance. It was by thus playing off one group against another in a divided House of Commons that George III afterwards broke the tyranny of parties, and became King in fact as well as name. But Anne had not equal advantages; owing to her sex she could not personally direct affairs, or administer patronage in minute detail; again, she had not to contend with a group-system, but with a system of two parties, divided from one another by great principles, and tolerably homogeneous in their respective composition. It would have been difficult, in her day, for even the most careful parliamentary tactician to break loose from party ties, and to avoid strengthening one party at the expense of the other. Though the experience of William's reign was unfavourable to this system, it was none the less steadfastly

1702-4] Formation of Godolphin & Marlborough's Ministry 463

pursued, if not always realised, by both Marlborough and Godolphin. William had already shown that a balancing policy was all but impossible; Marlborough, Godolphin, and Harley illustrated the same lesson at a later date and on a larger scale. Their comparative failure, as contrasted with the temporary success of Bolingbroke and the long ascendancy of Walpole, seems to point the moral. Bolingbroke and Walpole introduced the system of unsparingly enforcing party discipline, and carried their principles so far as to deprive political opponents of military commissions and commands. Their proceedings were founded on the principle that lukewarm supporters or deserters should receive no quarter. The great soldier who governed Anne confined his military discipline to the battlefield, only to discover that his gentler parliamentary methods were unsuited to the temper of the Commons, the violence of party spirit, and the general character of the age. It was only the steadfast support of his sovereign, the disunion of his opponents at home, and his dazzling triumphs abroad, that secured Marlborough so long from the disastrous effects of a policy, which was in its very nature one of tacks and shifts, of balances and adjustments, of expediency and opportunism.

At first the political heavens were unclouded. A Tory majority had voted for the war, a Whig majority had confirmed their decision. The moment was therefore as favourable to the balancing policy as it ever could be. Marlborough and Godolphin, though Tories in name, were moderate in both principle and action. Marlborough had always aimed at having no enemies; Godolphin had for long been the only Tory in a Whig Ministry under William, and, though a strong Churchman, had befriended Dissenters. Hence, though the Ministry was at first composed mainly of Tories, Marlborough and Godolphin refused to dismiss all Whigs from the higher offices, or to purge the departments of Whig clerks and tide-waiters, as the ultra-Tories suggested. The feelings of patriotism stimulated by the accession of a Queen who declared her heart to be entirely English, and by the successes of an English general, rendered all opposition for a time ineffective. After the moderate success of the campaign of 1702, Parliament passed a vote that "the wonderful progress of your Majesty's arms, under the conduct of the Earl of Marlborough, has signally retrieved the ancient honour and glory of the English nation." Carried away by insular patriotism, the majority of the Commons thus levelled an undeserved insult at the fame of their late ruler. Marlborough almost immediately afterwards received a dukedom and a pension of £5000 for life. Many people held him to be very well paid for his services; but when this national investment produced its dividends in Blenheim and Ramillies, the carping voices were hushed. English pride swelled high when a hundred French flags were borne through the streets of London to celebrate a victory as renowned as that of Agincourt. For some years after Blenheim the

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Nottingham and the "tack"

[1702-4

War was genuinely national and popular; and debates in Parliament were mainly concerned with maladministration in the army or navy, with quarrels between the two Houses, or disputes about Occasional Conformity. Only one solid measure affecting internal politics (save the most important Act of Union elsewhere described) was passed. Parliament repealed two futile clauses in the Act of Settlement-one excluding all place-holders and pensioners under the Crown from sitting in the Commons, and the other forcing all Privy Councillors to sign the measures they advised and approved. Had the first remained law, the Commons would have become merely a house of critics; had the second gone unrepealed, the development of the most subtle and illusive of modern constitutional forms, the Cabinet, would have been indefinitely retarded. Apart from these wise measures, which attracted little attention, the subjects of debate in the Commons were the prey of faction. On but a single object, though that was the most important of all-the prosecution of the war was there genuine national agreement between 1702 and 1708.

Such being the case, the chief internal interest centres in the obscure ministerial negotiations and in the dark intrigues of palace and closet. Here the first event of prime significance was the resignation of Nottingham. As a leader of the High Churchmen, less bitter and partisan than Rochester, who had resigned in 1703, he commanded great respect, and his fall was connected with their cause. One of the measures, most constantly urged by them, was the Occasional Conformity Bill, intended to prevent Dissenters evading the Test Act and thus securing to themselves civil rights. In 1703 the measure, which had passed the Commons, was thrown out by the Lords. Accordingly in 1704 Nottingham instigated the Commons to "tack" it to the Land Tax Bill, in order to force the Lords to pass it. A Commons majority voted against the "tack"; whereupon Marlborough announced that he would give no quarter to the supporters of the tack. On May 18, 1704, therefore, Nottingham and two other Tory Ministers were forced to resign. Their places were filled by Robert Harley, at this moment Speaker of the Commons, who became Secretary of State, and Henry St John, who was made Secretary at War. The latter was a young man, supposed to be a moderate Tory, whose parliamentary talents were already giving him a personal influence in the Commons which no man had equalled since the days of Pym. Harley was a veteran intriguer, of much the same kind of placable temperament and political moderation as Godolphin. Neither he nor Marlborough realised that the two politicians, whom they now admitted to the Ministry, were to be the chief instruments of its downfall.

The Ministry, which had at first been almost wholly Tory, was now turning into a coalition between moderate Tories and moderate Whigs. The Queen, whose natural inclination, tempered by a desire for her own