Thomas Babington Macaulay

“ The estates of Papists are very few, crumbling into small parcels, and daily diminishing; their common people are sunk in poverty, ignorance and cowardice, and of as little consequence as women and children. Their nobility and gentry are at least one half ruined, banished or converted. They all soundly feel the smart of what they suffered in the last Irish war. ”

“ View of the Court of Saint Germains. The account given in this View is confirmed by a remarkable paper, which is among the Nairne MSS. Some of the heads of the Jacobite party in England made a representation to James, one article of which is as follows: "They beg that Your Majesty would be pleased to admit of the Chancellor of England into your Council; your enemies take advantage of his not being in it." James's answer is evasive. "The King will be, on all occasions, ready to express the just value and esteem he has for his Lord Chancellor." ”

“ Saint Simon too had every opportunity of forming a correct judgment; for he saw Portland in a situation full of difficulties; and Saint Simon says, in one place, "Benting, discret, secret, poli aux autres, fidele a son maitre, adroit en affaires, le servit tres utilement;" in another, "Portland parut avec un eclat personnel, une politesse, un air de monde et de cour, une galanterie et des graces qui surprirent; avec cela, beaucoup de dignite, meme de hauteur, mais avec discernement et un jugement prompt sans rien de hasarde." Boufflers too extols Portland's good breeding and tact. ”

“ Of the Naturalisation Bill no copy, I believe exists. The history of that bill will be found in the Journals. From Van Citters and L'Hermitage we learn less than might have been expected on a subject which must have been interesting to Dutch statesmen. Knight's speech will be found among the Somers Papers. He is described by his brother Jacobite, Roger North, as "a gentleman of as eminent integrity and loyalty as ever the city of Bristol was honoured with." ”

“ The common people without leaders, without discipline, or natural courage, being little better than hewers of wood and drawers of water, are out of all capacity of doing any mischief, if they were ever so well inclined." In the Drapier's Sixth Letter, written in 1724, he says: "As to the people of this kingdom, they consist either of Irish Papists, who are as inconsiderable, in point of power, as the women and children, or of English Protestants." ”

“ Swift, in his Inquiry into the Behaviour of the Queen's last Ministry, mentions Somers as a person of great abilities, who used to talk in so frank a manner that he seemed to discover the bottom of his heart. In the Memoirs relating to the Change in the Queen's Ministry, Swift says that Somers had one and only one unconversable fault, formality. It is not very easy to understand how the same man can be the most unreserved of companions and yet err on the side of formality. ”

“ The narrative of James requires no confirmation; but it is strongly confirmed by the Burnet MS. Harl. 6584. "Marleburrough," Burnet wrote in September 1693, "set himself to decry the King's conduct and to lessen him in all his discourses, and to possess the English with an aversion to the Dutch, who, as he pretended, had a much larger share of the King's favour and confidence than they,"--the English, I suppose,--"had. This was a point on which the English, who are too apt to despise all other nations, and to overvalue themselves, were easily enough inflamed. ”

“ It was rumoured at the time (see Boyer's History of King William III. 1703) that Portland and Boufflers had agreed on a secret article by which it was stipulated that, after the death of William, the Prince of Wales should succeed to the English throne. This fable has often been repeated, but was never believed by men of sense, and can hardly, since the publication of the letters which passed between Lewis and Boufflers, find credit even with the weakest. Dalrymple and other writers imagined that they had found in the Life of James (ii. 574, 575.) ”

“ See Commons' Journals, Dec. 3. 1691; and Grey's Debates. It is to be regretted that the Report of the Commissioners of Accounts has not been preserved. Lowther, in his letter to his son, alludes to the badgering of this day with great bitterness. "What man," he asks, "that hath bread to eat, can endure, after having served with all the diligence and application mankind is capable of, and after having given satisfaction to the King from whom all officers of State derive their authoritie, after acting rightly by all men, to be hated by men who do it to all people in authoritie?" ”

“ The first writer who noticed the fact that, where good money and bad money are thown into circulation together, the bad money drives out the good money, was Aristophanes. He seems to have thought that the preference which his fellow citizens gave to light coins was to be attributed to a depraved taste such as led them to entrust men like Cleon and Hyperbolus with the conduct of great affairs. ”

“ Some specimens of Harley's poetry are in print. The best, I think, is a stanza which he made on his own fall in 1714; and bad is the best.
"To serve with love, And shed your blood, Approved is above; But here below The examples show 'Tis fatal to be good."
[485] The character of Harley is to be collected from innumerable panegyrics and lampoons; from the works and the private correspondence of Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Prior and Bolingbroke, and from multitudes of such works as Ox and Bull, the High German Doctor, and The History of Robert Powell the Puppet Showman. ”

“ Isaac Newton, public Professor of the Mathematicks in Cambridge, the greatest philosopher, and one of the best men of this age, was, by a great and wise statesman, recommended to the favour of the late King for Warden of the King's Mint and Exchanges, for which he was peculiarly qualified, because of his extraordinary skill in numbers, and his great integrity, by the first of which he could judge correctly of the Mint accounts and transactions as soon as he entered upon his office ”

“ That Locke was not a party to the attempt to make gold cheaper by penal laws, I infer from a passage in which he notices Lowndes's complaints about the high price of guineas. "The only remedy," says Locke, "for that mischief, as well as a great many others, is the putting an end to the passing of clipp'd money by tale." Locke's Further Considerations. That the penalty proved, as might have been expected, inefficacious, appears from several passages in the despatches of L'Hermitage, and even from Haynes's Brief Memoires, though Haynes was a devoted adherent of Montague. ”

“ When, having attained their ungodly desires, whether ambitious kings by bringing any country into their subjection, or disloyal subjects by rebellious rising against their natural sovereigns, they have established any of the said degenerate governments among their people, the authority either so unjustly established, or wrung by force from the true and lawful possessor, being always God's authority, and therefore receiving no impeachment by the wickedness of those that have it, is ever, when such alterations are thoroughly settled, to be reverenced and obeyed ”

“ Lockhart's Memoirs.
[222] "What under heaven was the Master's byass in this matter? I can imagine none." Impartial Account, 1695. "Nor can any man of candour and ingenuity imagine that the Earl of Stair, who had neither estate, friendship nor enmity in that country, nor so much as knowledge of these persons, and who was never noted for cruelty in his temper, should have thirsted after the blood of these wretches." Complete History of Europe, 1707.
[223] Dalrymple, in his Memoirs, relates this story, without referring to any authority. His authority probably was family tradition. ”

“ The editor's account of the contents of this letter is as follows
"Arts used to embroil matters with reference to the affair of Glencoe." Again, Johnstone, in a letter written some weeks later, complained that the liberality and obsequiousness of the Estates had not been duly appreciated." Nothing, he says, "is to be done to gratify the Parliament, I mean that they would have reckoned a gratification." The editor's account of the contents of this letter is as follows: "Complains that the Parliament is not to be gratified by an inquiry into the massacre of Glencoe." ”

“ Gloria Cambriae, or Speech of a Bold Briton against a Dutch Prince of Wales 1702; Life of the late Honourable Robert Price, &c. 1734. Price was the bold Briton whose speech--never, I believe, spoken--was printed in 1702. He would have better deserved to be called bold, if he had published his impertinence while William was living. The Life of Price is a miserable performance, full of blunders and anachronisms.
[652] L'Hermitage mentions the unfavourable change in the temper of the Commons; and William alludes to it repeatedly in his letters to Heinsius, Jan 21/31 1696, Jan 28/Feb 7. ”

“ In the Life of James it is asserted that the French Doctors changed their opinion, and that Bossuet, though he held out longer than the rest, saw at last that he had been in error, but did not choose formally to retract. I think much too highly of Bossuet's understanding to believe this.
[432] Life of James, ii. 505.
[433] "En fin celle cy--j'entends la declaration--n'est que pour rentrer: et l'on peut beaucoup mieux disputer des affaires des Catholiques a Whythall qu'a Saint Germain."--Mazure, Appendix. ”

“ According to L'Hermitage, Feb 27/Mar 8,there were two of these fortunate hackney coachmen. A shrewd and vigilant hackney coachman indeed was from the nature of his calling, very likely to be successful in this sort of chase. The newspapers abound with proofs of the general enthusiasm. ”

“ Leslie was always more civil to his brother Jacobite Penn than to any other Quaker. Penn himself says of his master, "As abruptly and brokenly as sometimes his sentences would fall from him about divine things; it is well known they were often as texts to many fairer declarations." That is to say, George Fox talked nonsense and some of his friends paraphrased it into sense. ”

“ Who could have e'er believed, unless in spite Lewis le Grand would turn rank Williamite? Thou that hast look'd so fierce and talk'd so big, In thine old age to dwindle to a Whig! Of Kings distress'd thou art a fine securer. ”

“ Narcissus Luttrell's Diary is filled with accounts of these executions. "Le metier de rogneur de monnoye," says L'Hermitage, "est si lucratif et paroit si facile que, quelque chose qu'on fasse pour les detruire, il s'en trouve toujours d'autres pour prendre leur place. Oct 1/11. 1695."
[633] As to the sympathy of the public with the clippers, see the very curious sermon which Fleetwood afterwards Bishop of Ely, preached before the Lord Mayor in December 1694. ”

“ Then follows the canon
"If any man shall affirm that, when any such new forms of government, begun by rebellion, are after thoroughly settled, the authority in them is not of God, or that any who live within the territories of any such new governments are not bound to be subject to God's authority which is there executed, but may rebel against the same, he doth greatly err."
↑ A list of all the pieces which I have read relating to Sherlock's apostasy would fatigue the reader. I will mention a few of different kinds. Parkinson's Examination of Dr. Sherlock's Case of Allegiance, 1691 ”

“ Il est difficile d'avoir un point fixe sur les idees qu'on peut se former des emotions du parlement, car il paroist quelquefois de grander chaleurs qui semblent devoir tout enflammer, et qui, peu de tems apres, s'evaporent." That Seymour was the chief manager of the opposition to the bill is asserted in the once celebrated Hush Money pamphlet of that year.
[501] Commons' Journals; Grey's Debates. The engrossed copy of this Bill went down to the House of Commons and is lost. The original draught on paper is among the Archives of the Lords. ”

“ Wood's Athenae Oxonienses under the name Henry Blount (Charles Blount's father) ; Lestrange's Observator, No. 290.
[388] This piece was reprinted by Gildon in 1695 among Blount's Works.
[389] That the plagiarism of Blount should have been detected by few of his contemporaries is not wonderful. But it is wonderful that in the Biographia Britannica his just Vindication should be warmly extolled, without the slightest hint that every thing good in it is stolen. The Areopagitica is not the only work which he pillaged on this occasion. He took a noble passage from Bacon without acknowledgment. ”

“ An Answer to the Late King James's Declaration published at Saint Germains, 1693.
[436] James, ii. 514. I am unwilling to believe that Ken was among those who blamed the Declaration of 1693 as too merciful.
[437] Among the Nairne Papers is a letter sent on this occasion by Middleton to Macarthy, who was then serving in Germany. Middleton tries to soothe Macarthy and to induce Macarthy to soothe others. Nothing more disingenuous was ever written by a Minister of State. ”

“ L'Hermitage, April 2/12 As L'Hermitage says, "La plupart des membres, lorsqu'ils sont a la campagne, estant bien aises d'estre informez par plus d'un endroit de ce qui se passe, et s'imaginant que la Gazette qui se fait sous la direction d'un des Secretaires d'Etat, ne contiendroit pas autant de choses que fait celle-cy, ne sont pas fichez que d'autres les instruisent." The numbers on the division I take from L'Hermitage. They are not to be found in the Journals. But the Journals were not then so accurately kept as at present.
[788] Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, June 1691, May 1693. ”