1711.] PROPERTY QUALIFICATIONS. 371 knight of the shire was to have the property qualification of a real estate of six hundred a year, and every member for a borough a similar qualification of half the value. The wealth and influence of that large portion of the community employed in liberal professions and in commerce were rapidly increasing. The land-owners and agriculturists had not yet discovered that capital applied to improvements in cultivation might yield as large a profit as capital applied to the extension of trade. The landed interest would not bestir itself for its own advantage; and it opened its half-shut eyes to gaze with envy and dislike upon the mercantile interest that was up and doing. Burnet says of the Qualification Bill, "Our gentry was become so ignorant and so corrupt, that many apprehended the ill effects of this; and that the interest of trade, which indeed supports that of the land, would neither be understood nor regarded. But the new minister resolved to be popular with those who promoted it, so it passed." Like all other expedients for setting the interests of one class above those of another class, this measure for making the land paramount was defeated in practice by fabricated qualifications at which all parties connived; and it was finally repealed as utterly useless for good or evil, beyond the encouragement of a debasing system of chicanery. Harley laboured hard to please "the country gentlemen of his party; "* but, as the case has ever been, an English minister has more difficulty with his violent supporters than with those who are thoroughly adverse to him. "In the House of Commons there appeared a new combination of Tories of the highest form, who thought the Court was yet in some management with the Whigs, and did not come up to their height, which they imputed to Mr. Harley; so they began to form themselves in opposition to him."† Lord Nottingham, at a conference with the ministers, which is recorded by Lord Dartmouth, the secretary of state, urged them to prosecute the Whigs, so as "to make it impracticable for them ever to rise again." They said "the queen would never be brought into such measures; " and from that day Nottingham "was most indefatigable in persecuting the queen and all her servants, with all the art that he was master of." Swift saw the storm coming: "the ministry is upon a very narrow bottom, and stands like an isthmus between the Whigs on one side and violent Tories on the other. They are able seamen, but the tempest is too great, the ship too rotten, and the crew all against them." This keen looker-on upon the game in which he had sometimes to fag for the upper boys, wrote, on the 14th of March, the above dolorous comment upon the low spirits which Harley displayed. Four days after, an event occurred which changed the face of affairs as regarded Harley. "An odd accident, that had been almost fatal, proved happy to him." § On the 8th of March he was stabbed at a sitting of the Privy Council. The assassin, whom Swift calls "a desperate French Popish villain," conferred such a benefit upon Harley, that the partizans of his rival St. John insisted that the blow was meant for the Secretary and not for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The minister who had to bear the pain had a fair right to whatever compensations were to follow. But it seems somewhat * Onslow, Note on Burnet, p. 36. Burnet, vol. vi. p. 37. § Burnet, ibid. 372 HARLEY STABBED BY GUISCARD. [1711. unreasonable that the random stroke of a suspected traitor should have made Mr. Harley earl of Oxford and lord high treasurer; and, to use the words of a historian of these times, should have "blasted the hopes of his ministerial rivals; fixed his presidency in the cabinet; and have given firmness to an administration which had been tottering from inherent jealousies and dissensions." The accident which produced such results may be briefly related. The marquis de Guiscard, who had been an abbé séculier in France, and who is represented as having committed enormous crimes which compelled him to fly his country, came to England; and appears to have had a command in an expedition, in 1707, connected with the discontents of the Huguenots in the Cevennes. In a book which he then published he calls himself "lieutenant-general of the forces gone upon the present descent." Burnet says, " he had a pension assigned him for some years, but it did not answer his expense; so when he was out of hope of getting it increased, he wrote to one at the court of France, to offer his services there."† His services consisted in his acting as a French spy. Dartmouth relates that Guiscard had been with the queen on the evening of the 7th, "and nobody in the outer room but Mrs. Fielding, or within call but Mrs. Kirk, who was commonly asleep." He says, "if Guiscard had any design upon the queen, his heart failed him." Very mysterious it seems that such a person should have had access to the queen, although he was one of St. John's boon companions. Her majesty told Dartmouth that "he was very pressing for an augmentation of his pension; and complained that he was ill paid." ‡ He was arrested in St. James's Park on the morning of the 8th; for a letter which he had written having been opened at the Postoffice, his communications with the French court were discovered. He was taken to the office where the Council were sitting; and having given up his sword, he contrived to secrete a penknife which was upon the table of an outer room. Dartmouth, who was present, says, "He behaved himself with great confidence before the Council; and denied everything, till he was shown one of his own letters, which he endeavoured to snatch out of lord Harcourt's hand." He asked to speak in private with St. John, who very wisely refused. When," says Dartmouth," Mr. St. John refused to speak with him, he bent down, as if he would have whispered with Mr. Harley, and gave him two or three violent blows upon the breast before anybody could stop him." Harley bleeding rose up; and St. John and the other counsellors drew their swords, and inflicted many wounds upon the assassin. Swift, in his Journal of the 17th, writes, "Guiscard died this morning at two; and the coroner's inquest have found that he was killed by bruises received from a messenger, so to clear the cabinet-counsellors, from whom he received his wounds." What a sight was there now to be seen in London, where, of old, “not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver" to gaze upon any strange beast. "When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian." § How much more exciting to see a dead French Papist, who was killed by noble English Protestants! "We have let Guiscard be buried at last, after showing him pickled in a trough this fort 66 * Somerville, p. 129. Note, ibid. p. 39. "Own Time," vol. vi. p. 38. Tempest," act ii. sc. 2. 1711.] HARLEY STABBED BY GUISCARD. 373 night for two pence a-piece; and the fellow that showed would point to his body, and 'See, gentlemen, this is the wound that was given him by his grace the duke of Ormond; and this is the wound, &c.,' and then the show was over, and another set of rabble came in."* Both Houses went up with an Address to the queen, to express how deeply they were affected "to find such an instance of inveterate malice against one employed in your majesty's council, and so near your royal person; and we have reason to believe that his fidelity to your majesty, and zeal for your service, have drawn upon him the hatred of all the abettors of popery and faction." Harley slowly recovered. When he attended in his place on the 11th of March, the Speaker congratulated him upon his escape and restoration to health. His attempted assassination was an undeniable evidence of his extraordinary merits. This was party-logic, very agreeable to Harley, but not equally gratifying to one who had a lurking contempt for his fortunate brother in office. "Mr. St. John affected to say in several companies that Guiscard intended the blow against him." Swift adds, "I am apt to think Mr. St. John was either mistaken or misinformed. However, the matter was thus represented in the weekly paper called The Examiner,' which Mr. St. John perused before it was printed, but made no alteration in the passage. This management was looked upon at least as a piece of youthful indiscretion in Mr. St. John; and perhaps was represented in a worse view to Mr. Harley."+ Strange, that two great statesmen should have their "first misunderstanding" about the honour which was proposed to be conferred upon one of them by a stab from a French spy! Singular, that the man of the greatest intellect in that period of political dishonesty, should grudge the White Staff and a Peerage, to him who had the lucky misfortune to have a penknife blade broken upon the rib beneath his embroidered waistcoat; and should envy the fulsome addresses of Parliament about papists and factions, of the utter falsehood of which he was perfectly conscious. Was it thus? Swift says, "I remember very well that, upon visiting Mr. Harley as soon as he was in a condition to be seen, I found several of his nearest relatives talk very freely of some proceedings of Mr. St. John." Was he intriguing to be first. minister at which Swift hints-during the time when Harley's recovery was somewhat doubtful? St. John's great power and influence in the House of Commons as its best orator, might have commanded this, without seeking to assume what Swift terms "the merit" of Guiscard's attempt. "This accident," says Burnet, "was of great use to Harley; for the party formed against him was ashamed to push a man who was thus assassinated by one that was studying to recommend himself to the court of France." It averted suspicion from the secret correspondence that Harley was himself carrying on with that court, if not directly with the court of St. Germains. St. John would be equally desirous to have the same cover for his own designs, and to smother the fact mentioned by Dartmouth, that the correspondence of Guiscard, which was read at the Council, contained "intelligence which few of the cabinet had any knowledge of before they read his letters; and he was never asked who he had it from, the answer being evident." St. John was doubtless the discloser of secrets thus pointed at. A clandestine negotiation 374 MARLBOROUGH'S LAST CAMPAIGN. [1711. for peace was at that time going forward with the French minister, Torcy, under the immediate direction of St. John, through the Abbé Gautier, whilst the queen was made to pledge herself to the Dutch government that no step towards a pacification should be taken but in concert with them. How far St. John was at that time concerned in the schemes which the Jacobite party had for setting aside the Act of Settlement, and for bringing back the Pretender, in connection with these advances for peace, is a matter of inference from his subsequent conduct. "It is remarked by sir James Mackintosh in one of his note-books (we know not on what authority) that the first introduction of Bolingbroke into the secret negotiation was during the illness of Harley after he had been stabbed by Guiscard."* It was for the interest of both these unscrupulous ministers, that their undoubted duplicity to the Allies, and their possible treason to the Constitution, should be covered by the pretence that each was meant to be assassinated by a French agent, for their zeal and fidelity to their sovereign and their country. They became rivals even for the honour of this miserable delusion. The attempt of Guiscard upon the life of Harley led to the passing of the Statute, by which it was enacted that if any person or persons "shall unlawfully attempt to kill, or shall unlawfully assault, or strike or wound, any person, being one of the most honourable Privy Council of her majesty, her heirs or successors, when in the execution of his office of a Privy Counsellor in Council, or on any Committee of Council, that then the person or persons so offending, being thereof convicted in due form of law, shall be and are hereby declared to be felons, and shall suffer death as in cases of felony, without benefit of clergy.” † On the 4th of March Marlborough left England, to resume his command of the Allied forces in the Netherlands, but without a remnant of the political power which had once been entrusted to him. Yet the weakness of the ministry had induced Harley and Bolingbroke to relax somewhat in their hostility to the great general; and Swift evidently had his cue, when he wrote thus on the 15th of February: "Nobody that I know of did ever dispute the duke of Marlborough's courage, conduct, or success; they have been always unquestionable, and will continue to be so, in spite of the malice of his enemies, or, which is yet more, the weakness of his advocates. The nation only wishes to see him taken out of ill hands, and put in better."‡ Three weeks after the attempt upon Harley's life, St. John wrote a letter to Marlborough, full of professions of respect: "Your grace may be assured of my sincere endeavours to serve you; and I hope never again to see the time when I shall be obliged to embark in a separate interest from you." § Marlborough was too experienced in the value of such professions not to be on his guard. He wrote to beg the duchess not to name any of the ministers in her letters to him, all of which he had certain assurance that they opened. "The concern you have for me must in kindness oblige you never to say anything of them which may give offence; since whilst I am in the service I am in their power, especially by the villainous way of printing, which stabs me to the heart." || This moral cowardice is a curious revelation of human * "Edinburgh Review," vol. lxii. p. 19. § Coxe, vol. vi. p. 7. +9 Annæ, c. 21. "Examiner." Ibid. vol. vi. p. 8. 1711.] MARLBOROUGH'S LAST CAMPAIGN. 375 inconsistency. "The villainous way of printing" was ever a terror to the man who would charge a redoubt with the utmost coolness. "Paper-bullets of the brain" were far more terrible to him than a volley of grape-shot. But Marlborough very speedily had far more serious embarrassments than the discomfort produced by his dreaded enemies, the London pamphleteers. The emperor Joseph was attacked by small-pox, and died on the 17th of April, in his thirty-fourth. year. His brother Charles would succeed to the hereditary dominions of. Austria, and all the political interests of Germany would be concentrated upon the election to the empire. The British cabinet instantly sent orders to Marlborough to co-operate with the States of Holland and with Eugene, in forwarding the election of the Austrian prince, in preference to that of the king of Bavaria. Louis secretly promoted the same object. The governments of England and France saw that the great obstacle to a separate peace would be removed, if Charles were elected emperor; for the danger to the balance of power from the emperor being king of Spain, was really greater than the danger of the crowns of France and Spain being in the family of the Bourbons. Peace would assuredly arise out of these complications, however unwilling the Austrian family might be to withdraw their pretensions to the Spanish monarchy. But the uncertainty of the future was too great to cause any essential difference in the conduct of the war in the Netherlands. Marlborough never stood in a loftier attitude than in the campaign of 1711. The expected co-operation of Prince Eugene in the command of the allied troops was interrupted by the necessity of his presence on the Upper Rhine. A portion of the British force was withdrawn from the Netherlands, to take part in a hopeless renewal of the war in Spain, or to be sent upon an ill-concerted expedition against Quebec. Marlborough, having lost the favour of the queen; distrusted and hated by the ministry; grown odious in the eyes of the people as the supposed obstacle to peace and relief from taxation; went about the performance of his military duties with a vigour and sagacity truly admirable. Marshal Villars, during the preceding autumn and winter, had constructed a series of fortified lines, which appeared well calculated to defy any irruption of the Allies upon the French frontier. They were boastfully asserted to be the ne plus ultra of Marlborough. The French army was also declared to be far stronger than that of the Allies. "The marshal de Villars was pleased to tell my trumpet yesterday, that the death of the emperor would occasion great disorders among the Allies, and that he should be thirty thousand stronger than we." Thus Marlborough writes to Godolphin on the 4th of May; and adds, "If their superiority be as great as he says it will be, I should not apprehend much from them, but that of their being able to hinder us from acting, which, to my own particular, would be mortification enough; for since constant success has not met with approbation, what may I not expect when nothing is done!"* Marlborough was not hindered from acting by the French superiority of numbers, or by their impregnable lines. He had determined to invest Bouchain; but to do this it was necessary that he should pass those lines. By rapid changes of position; by taking an important post in one day, and suffering the enemy to concentrate their * Coxe, vol. vi. p. 24. |