VI. 1716. "him!"* He entreated to be heard by counsel, CHA P. which was refused. "Since your Lordships will "not allow my counsel, I don't know nothing!"+ He was found guilty, and sent back to the Tower, from whence he afterwards found means of making his escape. The trials of inferior offenders came on before the ordinary tribunals. A great number were found guilty. Many were pardoned; several, amongst others, Forster and Brigadier MacIntosh, broke from prison; and, on the whole, from the great number of convicts, only twenty-two were hanged in Lancashire, and four in London. Bills of attainder were passed without opposition against Lords Mar, Tullibardine, and many others, in their absence. It may be doubted whether in these proceedings a tone of calmness and forbearance was in all cases sufficiently preserved by the judges. Chief Baron Montagu rebuked a jury for acquitting some persons indicted of treason; and Lord Townshend's secretary, writing to Stanhope, complains of "the "listlessness which reigns in all the courts of jus"tice, except two or three, where men of spirit preside." Lord Chancellor Cowper, in passing sentence on the condemned Catholic peers, could not refrain from inveighing against their religion, and advising them to choose other spiritual guides * Howell's State Trials, vol. xv. p. 847. Ibid. p. 892. t To Secretary Stanhope, Sept. 8. 1716. Coxe's Walpole. CHAP. in their dying moments. Yet no one has ever VI. ventured to assert that any of the condemnations 1716. were legally unjust, nor any of the victims innoThe Tory writers, indeed, raised a loud cry cent. of violence and excessive rigour in the Ministers; they have dyed the royal ermines with blood!" says Bolingbroke. But was not some expiation due to other blood to the blood of those loyal and gallant soldiers who had fallen in conflict with the rebels to the blood still reeking from the field of Sheriffmuir and the streets of Preston? Was it not necessary to crush the growing spirit of Jacobitism by some few severe examples? Would it have been wise to tempt another rebellion, by leaving the last unpunished? Let us not be misled by that shallow humanity which can only reckon the number of punishments inflicted, and quite overlooks the number of crimes thus preventedwhich forgets that rigour to a few may sometimes be mercy to the many. It has indeed been argued, and still more frequently assumed, that the rebellion of 1715, being founded on a conscientious opinion of hereditary right, and on a loyal attachment to the heir of the ancient Kings, was more excusable than ordinary treason. So far as regards the moral guilt of the insurgents, or their estimation with posterity, this argument I admit to be perfectly well founded. But surely no government, providing for its own safety, could possibly admit such a principle for a single moment. On the contrary, the more VI. 1716. specious were the pretexts of insurrection, the CHAP. more were measures of repression called for on the part of the reigning dynasty; and in the words of Gibbon, "The rebel who bravely ventures, has "justly forfeited his life." On the whole, therefore, the execution of the rebels, taken with arms in their hands, seems to me to stand on entirely different ground from the vindictive proceedings against Bolingbroke and Oxford; and while condemning the latter, I cannot but think that the first did not exceed the measure of justice and necessity. Punishment was not, however, the only object of the Ministers; they thought also of prevention. On the 1st of March, Lechmere moved for leave to bring in "A Bill to strengthen the Protestant "Interest in Great Britain by enforcing the Laws "now in being against Papists,"such, in those times, being the panacea for all evils! Lechmere was seconded by Lord Coningsby, and no member venturing to oppose his motion, the bill was passed on the 17th of April; and we find that one of its clauses provided for the "effectual and exemplary punishment of such as being Papists "shall enlist themselves in his Majesty's ser"vice."t 66 But by far the most important and most cele brated measure of the Government was their change in the duration of Parliament. Under the act * Decline and Fall, vol. xii. p. 242. ed. 1820. CHAP. passed in 1694 its period had been fixed at three VI. years. The cause of that narrow limitation may 1716. probably be found in the enormous period of seventeen years, to which Charles the Second had prolonged his second Parliament, and which, by a natural revulsion, drove the minds of men into the opposite extreme.* The triennial system had now been tried for upwards of twenty years, and found productive of much inconvenience without any real benefit. There is no evidence whatever to show that the House of Commons had even in the smallest degree shown itself more watchful or public-spirited during that epoch than either before or since; nay, on the contrary, it may be asserted that the grossest and most glaring cases of corrup tion that could be gleaned out of our whole parliamentary annals belong to those twenty years. The Speaker (Sir John Trevor), on one occasion, accepted a bribe of 1000 guineas from the city of London, and, on its detection, was himself obliged to put to the vote that he had been guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour. The Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. Guy), on another occasion, was sent to the Tower for a similar offence. ‡ A shameful system of false endorsement of Exchequer bills on the part of several members was detected in 16985, and even Burnet, the apolo * See Hallam's Const. Hist. vol. iii. p. 201. + Parl. Hist. vol. v. p. 906. + Ibid. p. 886. § Ibid. p. 1170. gist of those times, is reduced to admit the exist- CHA P. ence, and deplore the extent, of the corruption. * It is not to be supposed, however, that this was the cause which principally, if at all, influenced the Ministers in proposing the restoration of septennial parliaments. Theirs was a case of pressing and immediate danger. A rebellion scarcely quelled -an invasion still threatened-parties in the highest degree exasperated -a government becoming unpopular even from its unavoidable measures of defence: such were the circumstances under which, according to the act of 1694, the Parliament would have been dissolved at the risk of tumults and bloodshed a most formidable opposition — and, perhaps, a Jacobite majority. What friend of the Protestant succession could have wished to incur this terrible responsibility?† Even those who may approve of triennial parliaments in general, would hardly, I think, defend them at such a juncture. According to this view of the subject, there was at first some idea of providing only for the especial emerg History of his own Times, vol. ii. p. 42. fol. ed. The Bishop adds, "I took the liberty once to complain to the King of this " method (of buying off votes): he said he hated it as much as any man could do; but he saw it was not possible, considering "the corruption of the age, to avoid it, unless he would endanger "the whole." 66 "It must be owned," says Mr. Moyle, in a letter at that time to Horace Walpole, " the Whigs, when the Septennial "Bill was first proposed, did not relish it at all, but these argu"ments and the necessity of the times converted them." Coxe's Walpole, vol. ii. p. 63. VI. 1716. |