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movements of the property of the country, and, no CHAP. longer struggling to control events, ranged itself gen-. erally, yet without enthusiasm, on the side of the more liberal and tolerant party of the aristocracy.

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1667.

The ministry of Clarendon, the first after the resto- 1660 ration, acknowledged the indefeasible sovereignty of the king, and sought in the prelates and high nobility the natural allies to the royal prerogative. Its policy, not destitute of honest nationality, nor wholly regardless of English liberties, yet renewed intolerance, and, while it respected a balance of powers, claimed the preponderance for the monarch. But twenty years of freedom had rendered the dominion of the Church of England impossible. England was dissatisfied; ceasing to desire a republic, she still demanded greater security for freedom. But as no general election for parliament was held, a change of ministry could be effected only by a faction within the palace. The royal council sustained Clarendon; the rakes about court, railing at his moroseness, echoed the popular clamor against him. His overthrow "was certainly designed in Lady Castlemaine's chamber;" and, as he retired at noonday from the audience of dismission, she ran undressed from her bed into her aviary, to enjoy the spectacle of the fallen minister, and "bless herself, at the old man's going away." The Pepys gallants of Whitehall crowded to "talk to her in her bird-cage."-"You," said they to her, as they glanced at the retiring chancellor, "you are the bird of passage.'

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The administration of the king's cabal followed. 1668 England had demanded a liberal ministry; it obtained a 1671. dissolute one: it had demanded a ministry not enslaved to prelacy; it obtained one indifferent to all religion, and careless of every thing but pleasure. Buckingham, the noble buffoon at its head, debauched other men's

XVII.

CHAP. Wives, fought duels, and kept about him a train of voluptuaries; but he was not, like Clarendon, a tory by 1668 system; far from building up the exclusive Church of 1671. England, he ridiculed bishops as well as sermons; and

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when the Quakers went to him with their hats on, to discourse on the equal rights of every conscience, he Penn. told them, that he was at heart in favor of their principle. English honor was wrecked; English finances became bankrupt; but the progress of the nation towards internal freedom was no longer opposed with steadfast consistency; and England was better satisfied than it had been with the wise and virtuous Clarendon.

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North.

As the tendency of the cabal became apparent, a new division necessarily followed: the king was surrounded by men who still desired to uphold the prerogative, and stay the movement of the age; while 1671 Shaftesbury, always consistent in his purpose, "unwill1673. ing to hurt the king, yet desiring to keep him tame in a cage;" averse to the bishops, because the bishops would place prerogative above liberty; averse to democracy, because democracy would substitute freedom for privilege,-in organizing a party, afterwards known as the whig party, suited himself to the spirit of the times. It was an age of progress towards liberty of conscience; Shaftesbury favored toleration it was an age when the vast increase of commercial activity claimed for the moneyed interest an influence in the government; Shaftesbury always lent a willing ear to the merchants. Commerce and Protestant toleration were the elements of his power over the public mind. He did not so much divide dominion with the merchants and the Presbyterians, as act as their patron; having Locke. himself for his main object to keep "the bucket” of 1672. the aristocracy from sinking. The declaration of in

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213.

dulgence, an act of high prerogative, yet directed CHAP. against the friends of prerogative, was his measure. Immediately freedom of conscience awakened in Eng- Penn lish industry unparalleled energies, and Shaftesbury, the skeptic chancellor, was eulogized as the savior of religion. Had the king been firm, the measure would probably have succeeded. The king wavered; for he feared the dissenters: the Presbyterians wavered also; for how could they be satisfied with relief dependent on the royal pleasure? The seal of the declaration was broken in the king's presence; and Shaftesbury, confiding no longer in the favor of his fickle sovereign, courted a popular party by securing the passage of a test act against Papists, and advocating with power a bill for the ease of Protestant dissenters. Shaftesbury 1673. fell.

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Under the Lord Treasurer Danby, the old Cavaliers 1673 recovered power. It was the day for statues to 1679. Charles I., and new cathedrals. To win strength for his party from the favor of Protestant opinion, Danby avowed his willingness to aid in crushing Popery, and he gave his influence to the Popish plot. But Shaftesbury was already sure of the merchants and dissenters. "Let the treasurer," exclaimed the fallen chancellor, 66 cry as loud as he pleases; I will cry a note louder, and soon take his place at the head of the plot ;" and, indifferent to perjuries and judicial murders, he was successful. In the subservient house of commons, there were many corrupt members who would never have been elected but in the first fit of loyalty at the restoration. Danby preferred the unfitness of a perpetual parliament to the hazard of a new election, and, by pensions and rewards, purchased the votes of the profligate. But knavery has a wisdom of its own; the

438 SHAFTESBURY COMPELS AN APPOINTMENT FROM THE KING.

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CHAP. profligate members had a fixed maxim, never to grant so much at once that they should cease to be wanted; and, discovering the intrigues of Danby for a permanent revenue from France, they were honorably true to nationality, and true also to the base instinct of selfishness, Jan. they impeached the minister. To save the minister, this longest of English parliaments was dissolved.

1679.

24.

It

When, after nineteen years, the people of England were once more allowed to elect representatives, the great majority against the court compelled a reorganization of the ministry; and, by the force of public opinion, and of parliament, Shaftesbury, whom, for his mobility and his diminutive stature, the king called Little Sincerity, compelled the reluctant monarch to April 21. appoint him lord president of the council. The event is an era in English history. Ministers had been impeached and driven from office by the commons. is the distinction of Shaftesbury, that he was the first statesman to attain the guidance of a ministry through parliament by means of an organized party, and against the wishes of the king. In the cabinet, the bill of exclusion of the duke of York from the succession was demanded; a bill for that purpose was introduced into the house of commons; and it was observed, that the young men cried up every measure against the duke; "like so many young spaniels, that run and bark at every lark that springs."-" The axe," wrote Charles, "is laid to the root; and monarchy must go down too, or bow exceeding low before the almighty power of parliament;" and just after Shaftesbury, who, as chancellor, had opened the prison-doors of Bunyan, James, now, as president of the council, had procured the 1679. passage of the habeas corpus act, the commons were May

James,

i. 548.

James, i. 551.

Mackintosh.

li. 621.

27 prorogued and dissolved. Shaftesbury was displaced,

and henceforward the councils of the Stuarts inclined CHAP. to absolutism.

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iii. 181.

1679.

Oct. 5.

Immediately universal agitation roused the spirit of Penn, the nation. Under the influence of Shaftesbury's genius, on Queen Elizabeth's night, a vast procession, bearing devices and wax figures representing nuns and monks, bishops in copes and mitres, and also-it should be observed, for it proves how much the Presbyterians were courted-bishops in lawn, cardinals in red caps, and, last of all, the pope of Rome, side by side in a litter with the devil, moved through the streets of Dryden. London, under the glare of thousands of flambeaux, and in the presence of two hundred thousand spectators; the disobedient Monmouth was welcomed with bonfires and peals of bells; a panic was created, as if every Protestant freeman were to be massacred, every wife and daughter to be violated; the kingdom was divided into districts among committees to procure petitions for a parliament, one of which had twenty thousand signatures, and measured three hundred feet; and at last the most cherished Anglo-Saxon institution was made to do service, when Shaftesbury, proceeding 1680. to Westminster, represented to the grand jury the June mighty dangers from Popery, indicted the duke of York as a recusant, and reported the duchess of Portsmouth, the king's new mistress, as "a common neusance. 1680. The extreme agitation was successful; and in two suc- Oct. cessive parliaments, in each of which men who were at 1681, heart dissenters had the majority, the bill for excluding the duke of York was passed by triumphant votes in Penn the house of commons, and defeated only by the lords and the king.

But the public mind, firm, even to superstition, in its respect for hereditary succession, was not ripe for

16.

and

Mar.