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1702.]

BILL AGAINST OCCASIONAL CONFORMITY.

263

Charles II. was roused from its long sleep. Not only were holders of office to be subject to the Test Act, but also all electors for boroughs. To enter a Dissenting place of worship after having once taken the sacrament according to the rites of the Church, was to be punished with heavy fines, and with transportation upon a repetition of the offence. The Bill was quickly passed by large majorities of the Commons. In the House of Lords, where the majority of spiritual peers were distinguished for their moderation-where the learning of Somers and the eloquence of Halifax had their due weightthe factions of the Lower House were met with a firm and temperate resistance, although the Whigs were not strong enough to throw out the Bill. Amendments were introduced by the Peers, which the Commons indignantly rejected. Conferences then took place between the two Houses, in which the question was debated with great pertinacity on both sides; but in which the Lords manifested a regard for civil rights, a hatred of extreme penalties, and a respect for religious liberty, which ought to be borne in mind by those who are inclined to believe that the power in the state which does not directly represent the popular interest is necessarily indifferent to the welfare of the people. We may judge of the masterly reasoning upon which the Peers defended their amendments by the following passage: "The Lords think an Englishman cannot be reduced to a more unhappy condition, than to be put by law under an incapacity to serve his prince and country; and therefore nothing but a crime of the most detestable nature ought to put him under such a disability: they who think the being present at a Meeting to be so high a crime, can hardly think that a toleration of such Meetings ought to continue long; and yet the Bill says, 'The Act of Toleration ought to be kept inviolate.'"*

The chief business of the Session was this great battle of principle. The Lords insisted on adhering to their amendments. The Commons persisted in rejecting them. The Court made every effort to get the Bill passed in the Lords, the prince of Denmark, though not of the Church of England, and being an occasional conformist himself, having voted for it as a peer of Parliament. But the vote of adhering was carried in the Lords by a majority of one. The battle of the Press was as violent as that of the Parliament. The most remarkable production of the time was Defoe's "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters." It is seldom that irony can be sustained through many pages; but the power which this great writer possessed in his fictitious narratives, of giving a reality to imaginary events and persons, enabled him to adopt the tone of a violent high-churchman, and carry forward the declamation of the party into an extravagance which made the general argument odious and ridiculous. It was the most successful literary hoax ever perpetrated. Furious Churchmen applauded the pamphlet. Sensitive Dissenters were indignant at the terms in which they were denounced. Dull moderate men stood aghast at the monstrous cruelty and wickedness of these "Proposals for the establishment of the Church," which thus argued: "If the gallows instead of the compter, and the gallies instead of the fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle to preach or hear, there would not be so many sufferers; the spirit of martyrdom is over; they that go to

* "Parliamentary History," vol. vi. p. 71.

264

DEFOE'S SHORTEST WAY WITH THE DISSENTERS.

[1703. church to be chosen sheriffs and mayors would go to forty churches rather than be hanged." When the hoax was discovered, the rage of the followers of Sacheverell and other haters of toleration was unbounded. A reward of Fifty Pounds was offered by proclamation for the apprehension of Daniel Defoe, "charged with writing a scandalous and seditious pamphlet entitled The Shortest Way with the Dissenters: "-" a middle aged spare man, about forty years old." The House of Commons voted the little book to be burnt by the hangman. Defoe was indicted at the Old Bailey Sessions in February, 1703, and was brought to trial in July. He acknowledged himself to have written this piece of exquisite banter. To us who live in better times, which we owe as much to the Press as to the Parliament, it is inconceivable that all parties did not laugh at Defoe's wit. He was found guilty; and was sentenced to a fine, to stand three times in the Pillory, and to be imprisoned during the queen's pleasure. Defoe was pilloried, on three successive days, at the Royal Exchange, at the Conduit at Cheapside, and at Temple Bar. On the first day of this exhibition he published his "Hymn to the Pillory." His was the spirit that, in every age in England, has made oppression recoil upon the oppressor. The Hymn was read as its author stood before the crowd not ignominiously:

"Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe."

Pope meant this for contempt. The more equal judgment of another age receives it as praise, and reads "fearless," not "earless "-" unabashed by, and unabated in his contempt for, Tyranny and Dulness." *

"The earl of Marlborough is Grand Vizier, as you may imagine," writes a political observer at the time of the accession of Anne.† The successes of his first campaign encouraged the queen to shower honours upon her favourite's husband, which left nothing higher in her gift for the triumphs of his subsequent career. On the 10th of December, 1702, her majesty announced to the Commons that for the eminent services of the earl of Marlborough, she had thought fit to grant him the title of Duke. But the queen went further. She said she had granted the duke five thousand a year from the revenues of the Post Office. The Commons demurred to this grant; and Marlborough received the first check to that avidity for money, which was one of the conspicuous faults of his character. The cold support he obtained from his Tory friends was not to be readily forgiven. His views, moreover, as to the conduct of the war were far more comprehensive than the views of the administration. Louis XIV. had renewed the horrible persecutions of the French Protestants in Languedoc. In his anxiety to conclude the peace of Ryswick, William III. had made no stipulations for the free exercise of the reformed faith in the provinces of France. His attention was called to this omission by Heinsius, as the States were on the point of signing the Treaty. But the communication to William was too late: "God grant," he replies, “ that some expedient may have been found before you can receive this letter, for it will probably not reach you till after midnight, and consequently not till after the expiration of the term fixed for the signature of the Treaty. In 1702 a

*

"Historical and Biographical Essays," by John Forster, vol. ii. p. 50. It is curious that Mr. Wilson quotes the line as if Pope had really written "fearless," and had not falsified the fact by assuming that Defoe had his ears cut off, as Prynne's were.

+ Kemble.

"State Papers." Ellis to Stepney, p. 259.

Grimblot, vol. i. p. 32.

1703.]

REVOLT IN THE CÉVENNES.

265

serious revolt of the persecuted Protestants broke out in the Cévennes, a mountainous district of Languedoc. The poor mountaineers, who held their religious meetings in solitary places, were again to be converted by the "booted missionaries" of the Roman Catholic Church. Their dangers called forth a spirit of fanaticism, such as had characterized the Cameronians of Scotland. They had prophets amongst them. They looked for miracles to be wrought in their favour. There was a ruthless bigot in the Cévennes, the Arch-priest Du Chaila, who had been the persecutor of the Protestants there from the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In 1702 this detestable fanatic was endeavouring to tread out the fanaticism of his victims by unheard-of cruelties. He subjected his prisoners to frightful tortures. He flogged and mutilated young children, to obtain information of the concealment of preachers. His atrocities at length received their reward. He had imprisoned in his château-a strong place, capable of resisting any ordinary attack-a number of Protestants, whom he intended to put to death, as he had put to death a young girl six months before. The peasantry surrounded the château; forced the gates with a rude battering-ram; set the building on fire; and murdered the Arch-priest as he attempted to escape. The insurrection now became general. Leaders sprang up, who organized the embittered mountaineers. The contest seriously distracted the attention of the French government, and was so far favourable to the Allies. Marlborough desired to render assistance to the insurgents. Nottingham, and the other Tory ministers, would not sanction any rebellion against a legitimate king. The civil war in the Cévennes, when it first broke out, was looked upon as an effort of despair, which would quickly end in massacres and executions. It was at its height in 1703, when the Camisards, as the insurgents were denominated, were opposed, under the leadership of a young man named Cavalier, to a Marshal of France, with twelve thousand veteran troops under his command. Cavalier, who as a boy had tended sheep on his native hills, had fled from the persecution which threatened his home, and had apprenticed himself to a baker at Geneva. He was in his twentieth year when he suddenly appeared again in his birth-place, and became the head of the most daring band of insurgents. There is no romance more interesting than the adventures of this baker's boy, who displayed a courage, a sagacity, and a military genius, which compelled Marshal de Montrevel to give up in despair his system of terror and wholesale destruction by fire and sword. He was recalled, and Marshal Villars was substituted, who adopted milder measures. Cavalier concluded a negotiation with Villars in 1704. The allies could render him no assistance, such as he had expected. The revolt had, in some degree, worn itself out. Villars promised amnesty, with free egress to those who chose to emigrate, and a toleration of religion. The youth on whom the marshal of France looked with wonder, that he should have succeeded so long in defying the armies of the great monarch, trusted to French diplomacy without receiving any guarantees for the performance of the conditions which he required. They were partially adhered to; but the promise to the Protestants of the free exercise of their religion was soon broken. Cavalier's own comrades were indignant with him for making terms at all. Another chief, Roland, continued the war. Roland was killed in 1704. The fire in the Cévennes " was covered up rather than extinguished,"

266

MARLBOROUGH'S SECOND CAMPAIGN.

[1703.

says Burnet. Cavalier afterwards served in Spain; subsequently entered the English service; and died at a very advanced age as governor of Jersey, with the rank of a major-general.*

The campaign of 1703 was as barren of any signal advantages to the arms of the Allies as to the arms of France. The Parliament had voted an augmentation of troops, and there was no want of decision on the part of Marlborough, to employ the forces of which he had the command in the manner most likely to be productive of a great result. "Our affairs go very ill in Germany," he wrote to Nottingham on the 26th of March. The elector of Bavaria had now proclaimed his adhesion to France; had surprised the strong fortress of Ulm; and by effecting a communication with the French on the Upper Rhine, had opened a way for the armies of Louis to the centre of Germany. The French forces under Boufflers in the Netherlands threatened Holland; and Marlborough was desirous of attacking them, whilst the stronger French armies were otherwise engaged. The States-General pressed upon him the desirableness of securing Bonn, which capitulated after a short siege. Three months later Huy was surrendered to the Allies. But these successes were of comparatively small import. Marlborough had been in anxious correspondence with Coehorn on a matter which he repeatedly terms "le grand dessein," and "la grande affaire."+ Marlborough and Coehorn had matured a plan for attacking Antwerp, and carrying the war into Flanders. The failure is attributed by Marlborough to "M. de Coehorn's stubbornness, and the dissensions amongst the generals." He, therefore, had to return towards the Maese; and having taken Huy, to propose some other plan that would have terminated the year with an energetic operation that promised success. The duke proposed, in a council of war, on the 20th of August, to attack the French lines between Mehaigne and Leuwe. This plan was agreed to by the generals in command of the forces of Denmark, Luneburg, and Hesse, as well as by the English generals. The French carefully avoided a battle, and were safe beyond their lines, which Marlborough desired to force. The plan was submitted to the StatesGeneral, and was by them rejected. They wanted another fortress, Limbourg, to be taken, which Marlborough said could be accomplished by a detachment of the army. The great general was naturally irritated by this interference with his plans; but he submitted. Marlborough wrote to their High Mightinesses that, from the undoubted information he had received of the situation of the enemy, the design was not only practicable, but almost sure of success. "The opportunity is lost, and I wish from my heart that there will be no cause for repentance when it is too late." § He attacked Limbourg, which surrendered after a short siege. In the next campaign, Marlborough laid his plans with such secresy, and carried them out with such promptitude, that the States-General had scarcely time to find fault with the independence of his movements before they heard of their complete success.

On the 9th of November, the queen opened the second Session of her

*Cavalier wrote an account of the Wars in the Cévennes. There is an excellent notice of this remarkable man by Mr. Kemble, "State Papers," p. 384 to 431.

"Dispatches," vol. i. p. 74,

Ibid., pp. 113, 118.

§ Ibid., p. 173.

1703.]

THE METHUEN TREATY WITH PORTUGAL.

267

first Parliament. The foreign policy which she announced assumed larger proportions than the object which had been originally defined for the war. Its object was no longer simply "to resist the great power of France," but "for recovering the monarchy of Spain from the House of Bourbon, and restoring it to the House of Austria." The queen announced that she had made a treaty for this object with the king of Portugal; and that subsidies would be required for the duke of Savoy, who had declared his intention to join the Alliance. The principles of the agreement with Portugal were laid down in what is known as the Methuen Treaty,-called after the name of the ambassador who negotiated it,-and that treaty, and its effect upon the commerce of England and the habits of her people, lasted through five generations even to the present time. The wines of Portugal were to be admitted upon the payment of a duty 33 per cent. less than the duty paid upon French wines; and the woollen cloths of England, which had been prohibited in Portugal for twenty years, were to be admitted upon terms of proportionate advantage. Up to that time the Claret of France had been the beverage of the wine-drinkers of England. From 1703 Port established itself as what Defoe calls "our general draught." In all commercial negotiations with France the Methuen Treaty stood in the way; for the preferential duty was continued till 1831. France invariably pursued a system of retaliation. It was a point of patriotism for the Englishman to hold firm. to his Port. The habit was established; and even now, when the vinegrowers of France, and the iron-masters of England, are equally desirous that commercial restrictions should be removed, it is in vain to say, as Hume said more than a century ago, " We lost the French markets for our woollen manufactures, and transferred the commerce of wine to Spain and Portugal, where we buy worse liquor at a higher price." *

The arch-duke Charles of Austria was now hailed as king Charles of Spain. He came to England on the 26th of December. On the 29th he was entertained for two days by the queen at Windsor. Her majesty, according to the official account in the London Gazette, received at their first meeting the compliment of the king of Spain, "acknowledging his great obligations to her for her generous protection and assistance." He was all courtesy and humility. He would scarcely take the right hand of the queen at table; and "after supper he would not be satisfied till after great compliments he had prevailed with the duchess of Marlborough to give him the napkin, which he held to her majesty when she washed." Had the new king, without a kingdom, stayed long enough in England to observe the temper of the Parliament and the people, he might have felt that her majesty's "generous protection and assistance" was not the only thing to be considered in our insular politics. At this time, the famous Leibnitz, whose acquirements as a philosopher did not interfere with his keen calculations upon political affairs, wrote from Berlin, "the great animosity that prevails between the Whigs and the Tories gives many people a bad opinion of the affairs of England." How could the people of the continent understand these affairs? Here was England engaged in the greatest war, and committed to the most

* "Essay on the Balance of Trade."
Kemble. "State Papers," p. 306.

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