Ter si resurgat murus aheneus,--Ter pereat!
The second revival of these principles,for enough hath been said of the first,happened soon after the dissolution of the long Parliament;and there,I think,we must place the birth of Whig and Tory,though these parties did not grow up into full maturity,nor receive their names till about two years afterwards.The dissolution of this Parliament was desired by men of very different complexions;by some,with factious views;by others,on this honest and true maxim,that a standing Parliament,or the same Parliament long continued,changes the very nature of the constitution,in the fundamental article on which the preservation of our whole liberty depends.But whatever motives others might have to desire this dissolution,the motives which prevailed on the King,were probably those.This Parliament not only grew more reserved in their grants of money,and stiff and inflexible in other matters,but seemed to have lost that personal regard which they had hitherto preserved for him.They brought their attacks home to his family;nay,to himself,in the heats which the discovery and prosecution of the Popish Plot occasioned.
That on the Queen provoked him.That on his brother embarrassed him.But that which provoked and embarrassed him both,was the prosecution of the Earl of Danby,in the manner in which it was carried on.I will not descend into the particulars of an affair,at this time so well understood.This minister was turned out,and might have been punished in another manner,and much more severely than I presume any one,who knows the anecdotes of that age,thinks that he deserved to be.But the intention of this attack,according to Rapin,was to show that the King,as well as his brother,was at the head of a conspiracy to destroy the government,and the Protestant religion.This is a very bold assertion,and such a one as I do not pretend to warrant.But thus much is certain;that if the Earl of Danby's impeachment had been tried,he must have justified himself,by showing what every one knew to be true,that the secret negotiations with France,and particularly that for money,were the King's negotiations,not his.
Now,whether the King hoped,by dissolving the Parliament,to stop this prosecution;or to soften that of the Popish Plot;or to defeat the project of excluding the Duke of York;his hopes were all disappointed.The following Parliaments trod in the steps of this.How,indeed,could they do otherwise in those days,when the temper of the people determined the character of the Parliament;when an influence on elections by prerogative,was long since over,and private,indirect means of gaining another more illegal influence were not yet found,or the necessary supports of such means were not yet acquired;when any man,who had desired people,who knew neither his fortune,his character,nor even his person,to choose him their representative in Parliament,that is,to appoint him their trustee,would have been looked upon and treated as a madman;in short,when a Parliament,acting against the declared sense of the nation,would have appeared as surprising a phenomenon in the moral world,as a retrograde motion of the sun,or any other signal deviation of things from their ordinary course in the natural world.
There was indeed one point,which this Parliament had taken extremely to heart,and which was no longer open to the Parliaments that followed;I mean the conduct of the King in foreign affairs,during the war between France,and Holland and her allies,which ended by the Treaty of Nijmegen.
This war was not made in remote countries.It was made at our door.The motives to it,on the part of the aggressor,were neither injuries received,nor rights invaded;but a spirit of conquest,and barefaced usurpation.The interest we had in it was not such as depended on a long chain of contingencies,and required much subtlety to find out,but plain and immediate.The security,and at one time,the very existence of the Dutch commonwealth depended on the event of it.No wonder then,if the conduct of the King,who joined openly with France at first,and served her privately to better purpose at last,furnished ample matter to the public discontent,and helped to increase the ill humour of succeeding Parliaments on two other points,which were still open,and continued to draw their whole attention,as long as King Charles suffered any to sit,during the rest of his reign.
