SIR,
You may easily believe I am not at all surprised at what you tell
me, since it is but a confirmation of my own conjecture that I sent you
last week, and made you my reproaches upon it at a venture. It looks
exceeding strange, yet, I believe it to be a great truth, that, in
order to carry a point in your house, the two following circumstances
are of great advantage; first, to have an ill cause; and, secondly, to
be a minority. For both these circumstances are extremely apt to unite
men, to make them assiduous in their attendance, watchful of
opportunities, zealous for gaining over proselytes, and often
successful; which is not to be wondered at, when favour and interest
are on the side of their opinion. Whereas, on the contrary, a majority
with a good cause are negligent and supine. They think it sufficient to
declare themselves upon occasion in favour of their party, but, sailing
against the tide of favour and preferment, they are easily scattered
and driven back. In short, they want a common principle to cement, and
motive to spirit them; For the bare acting upon a principle from the
dictates of a good conscience, or prospect of serving the public, will
not go very far under the present dispositions of mankind. This was
amply verified last sessions of Parliament, upon occasion of the money
bill, the merits of which I shall not pretend to examine. 'Tis enough
that, upon the first news of its transmission hither, in the form it
afterwards appeared, the members, upon discourse with their friends,
seemed unanimous against it, I mean those of both parties, except a
few, who were looked upon as persons ready to go any lengths prescribed
them by the court. Yet with only a week's canvassing among a very few
hands, the bill passed after a full debate, by a very great majority;
yet, I believe, you will hardly attempt persuading me, or anybody else,
that one man in ten, of those who changed their language, were moved by
reasons any way affecting the merits of the cause, but merely through
hope, fear, indolence, or good manners. Nay, I have been assured from
good hands, that there was still a number sufficient to make a majority
against the bill, if they had not apprehended the other side to be
secure, and therefore thought it imprudence, by declaring themselves,
to disoblige the government to no purpose.
Reflecting upon this and forty other passages, in the several Houses
of Commons since the Revolution, makes me apt to think there is nothing
a chief governor can be commanded to attempt here wherein he may not
succeed, with a very competent share of address, and with such
assistance as he will always find ready at his devotion. And therefore
I repeat what I said at first, that I am not at all surprised at what
you tell me. For, if there had been the least spark of public spirit
left, those who wished well to their country and its constitution in
church and state, should, upon the first news of the late Speaker's
promotion, (and you and I know it might have been done a great deal
sooner) have immediately gone together, and consulted about the fittest
person to succeed him. But, by all I can comprehend, you have been so
far from proceeding thus, that it hardly ever came into any of your
heads. And the reason you give is the worst in the world: That none
offered themselves, and you knew not whom to pitch upon. It seems,
however, the other party was more resolved, or at least not so modest:
For you say your vote is engaged against your opinion, and several
gentlemen in my neighbourhood tell me the same story of themselves;
this, I confess, is of an unusual strain, and a good many steps below
any condescensions a court will, I hope, ever require from you. I shall
not trouble myself to inquire who is the person for whom you and others
are engaged, or whether there be more candidates from that side, than
one. You tell me nothing of either, and I never thought it worth the
question to anybody else. But, in so weighty an affair, and against
your judgment, I cannot look upon you as irrevocably determined.
Therefore I desire you will give me leave to reason with you a little
upon the subject, lest your compliance, or inadvertency, should put you
upon what you may have cause to repent as long as you live.
You know very well, the great business of the high-flying Whigs, at
this juncture, is to endeavour a repeal of the test clause. You know
likewise that the moderate men, both of High and Low Church, profess to
be wholly averse from this design, as thinking it beneath the policy of
common gardeners to cut down the only hedge that shelters from the
north.[3] Now, I will put the case; If the person to whom you have
promised your vote be one of whom you have the least apprehension that
he will promote or assent to the repealing of that clause, whether it
be decent or proper, he should be the mouth of an assembly, whereof a
very great majority pretend to abhor his opinion. Can a body, whose
mouth and heart must go so contrary ways, ever act with sincerity, or
hardly with consistence? Such a man is no proper vehicle to retain or
convey the sense of the House, which, in so many points of the greatest
moment, will be directly contrary to his; 'tis full as absurd, as to
prefer a man to a bishopric who denies revealed religion. But it may
possibly be a great deal worse. What if the person you design to vote
into that important post, should not only be a declared enemy of the
sacramental test, but should prove to be a solicitor, an encourager, or
even a penner of addresses to complain of it? Do you think it so
indifferent a thing, that a promise of course, the effect of
compliance, importunity, shame of refusing, or any the like motive,
shall oblige you past the power of retracting?
Perhaps you will tell me, as some have already had the weakness to
do, that it is of little importance to either party to have a Speaker
of their side, his business being only to take the sense of the House
and report it, that you often, at committees, put an able speaker into
the chair on purpose to prevent him from stopping a bill. Why, if it
were no more than this, I believe I should hardly choose, even among my
footmen, such a one to deliver a message, whose interest and opinions
led him to wish it might miscarry. But I remember to have heard old
Colonel Birch[4] of Herefordshire say, that “he was a very sorry
Speaker, whose single vote was not better than fifty common ones.” I am
sure it is reckoned in England the first great test of the prevalency
of either party in the House. Sir Thomas Littleton[5] thought, that a
House of Commons with a stinking breath (supposing the Speaker to be
the mouth) would go near to infect everything within the walls, and a
great deal without. It is the smallest part of an able Speaker's
business, what he performs in the House, at least if he be in with the
court, when it is hard to say how many converts may be made in a circle
of dinners, or private cabals. And you and I can easily call to mind a
gentleman in that station, in England, who, by his own arts and
personal credit, was able to draw over a majority, and change the whole
power of a prevailing side in a nice juncture of affairs, and made a
Parliament expire in one party who had lived in another.
I am far from an inclination to multiply party causes, but surely
the best of us can with very ill grace make that an objection, who have
not been so nice in matters of much less importance. Yet I have heard
some persons of both sides gravely deliver themselves in this manner;
“Why should we make the choosing a Speaker a party cause? Let us fix
upon one who is well versed in the practices and methods of
parliament.” And I believe there are too many who would talk at the
same rate, if the question were not only about abolishing the
sacramental test, but the sacrament itself.
But suppose the principles of the most artful Speaker could have no
influence either to obtain or obstruct any point in Parliament, who can
answer what effects such a choice may produce without doors? 'Tis
obvious how small a matter serves to raise the spirits and hopes of the
Dissenters and their high-flying advocates, what lengths they run, what
conclusions they form, and what hopes they entertain. Do they hear of a
new friend in office? That is encouragement enough to practise the
city, against the opinion of a majority into an address to the Queen
for repealing the sacramental test; or issue out their orders to the
next fanatic parson to furbish up his old sermons, and preach and print
new ones directly against Episcopacy. I would lay a good wager, that,
if the choice of a new Speaker succeeds exactly to their liking, we
shall see it soon followed by many new attempts, either in the form of
pamphlet, sermon, or address, to the same, or perhaps more dangerous
purposes.
Supposing the Speaker's office to be only an employment of profit
and honour, and a step to a better; since it is in your own gift, will
you not choose to bestow it upon some person whose principles the
majority of you pretends to approve, if it were only to be sure of a
worthy man hereafter in a high station, on the bench or at the bar?
I confess, if it were a thing possible to be compassed, it would
seem most reasonable to fill the chair with some person who would be
entirely devoted to neither party: But, since there are so few of that
character, and those either unqualified or unfriended, I cannot see how
a majority will answer it to their reputation, to be so ill provided of
able persons, that they must have recourse for a leader to their
adversaries, a proceeding of which I never met with above one example,
and even that succeeded but ill, though it was recommended by an
oracle, which advised some city in Greece to beg a general from their
enemies, who, in scorn, sent them either a fiddler or a poet, I have
forgot which; but so much I remember, that his conduct was such, as
they soon grew weary of him.
You pretend to be heartily resolved against repealing the
sacramental test, yet, at the same time, give the only great employment
you have to dispose of to a person who will take that test against his
stomach (by which word I understand many a man's conscience) who
earnestly wisheth it repealed, and will endeavour it to the utmost of
his power; so that the first action after you meet, will be a sort of
contravention to that test: And will anybody go further than your
practice to judge of your principles?
And now I am upon this subject, I cannot conclude without saying
something to a very popular argument against that sacramental test,
which may be apt to shake many of those who would otherwise wish well
enough to it. They say it was a new hardship put upon the Dissenters,
without any provocation; and, it is plain, could be no way necessary,
because we had peaceably lived together so long without it. They add
some other circumstances of the arts by which it was obtained, and the
person by whom it was inserted. Surely such people do not consider that
the penal laws against Dissenters were made wholly ineffectual by the
connivance and mercy of the government, so that all employments of the
state lay as open to them as they did to the best and most legal
subjects. And what progress they would have made by the advantages of a
late conjecture, is obvious to imagine; which I take to be a full
answer to that objection.
I remember, upon the transmission of that bill with the test clause
inserted, the Dissenters and their partisans, among other topics, spoke
much of the good effects produced by the lenity of the government, that
the Presbyterians were grown very inconsiderable in their number and
quality, and would daily come into the church, if we did not fright
them from it by new severities. When the act was passed, they presently
changed their style, and raised a clamour, through both kingdoms, of
the great numbers of considerable gentry who were laid aside, and could
no longer serve their queen and country; which hyperbolical way of
reckoning, when it came to be melted down into truth, amounted to about
fifteen country justices, most of them of the lowest size, for estate,
quality, or understanding. However, this puts me in mind of a passage
told me by a great man, though I know not whether it be anywhere
recorded. That a complaint was made to the king and council in Sweden,
of a prodigious swarm of Scots, who, under the condition of pedlars,
infested that kingdom to such a degree, as, if not suddenly prevented,
might in time prove dangerous to the state, by joining with any
discontented party. Meanwhile the Scots, by their agents, placed a good
sum of money to engage the offices of the prime minister in their
behalf; who, in order to their defence, told the council, he was
assured they were but a few inconsiderable people, that lived honestly
and poorly, and were not of any consequence. Their enemies offered to
prove the contrary, whereupon an order was made to take their number,
which was found to amount, as I remember, to about thirty thousand. The
affair was again brought before the council, and great reproaches made
the first minister, for his ill computation; who, presently took the
other handle, said, he had reason to believe the number yet greater
than what was returned; and then gravely offered to the king's
consideration, whether it were safe to render desperate so great a body
of able men, who had little to lose, and whom any hard treatment would
only serve to unite into a power capable of disturbing, if not
destroying the peace of the kingdom. And so they were suffered to
continue.