Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/176

162 ministry, which they think would ruin England and hang them."

Sunderland, after this plain speaking, told the king that he approved of the act of indemnity, though he warned him that neither party would like it, as the tories would not be satisfied without ruining Somers, nor the whigs without ruining the tories. He then advised him to lose no time in coming to England and sending for Somers.



"For," said he, "he is the life, the soul, and spirit of his party, and can answer for it—not like the present ministers, who have no credit with theirs, any further than they can persuade the king to be undone." He counsels him to speak plainly to Somers, and tells him that he may rely upon him; that he will take as much care not to perplex the king's affairs as his present ministers do to confound them; that if he cannot serve the king, he will remain still zealously affectionate to his person and government; and he throws in this concluding bon bouche:—"It is a melancholy thing that the king, who has more understanding than anybody who comes near him, is imposed on by mountebanks, or by such as he himself knows hate both his person and his government."

Sunderland sent a copy of this letter to Somers himself, and there followed a brisk correspondence betwixt the two whig statesmen. Somers thought Sunderland's counsel admirable, but urged him to accept the premiership instead of himself. To this Sunderland would not listen; he probably felt that the people remembered too much of his antecedents; and in accordance with this idea he hints that he intends to keep in the background for some time yet. William on the 10th of October wrote to Somers, and also sent to him the Huguenot Ruvigny, now earl of Galway, to talk the matter over. Somers, in consequence, promised largely for the whigs, and as pointedly threw suspicion on the tories. To trust the tories, he said, was to put the fate of Europe into their hands; and he asked whether it was likely that a party made up greatly of Jacobites would take effectual measures against France or the prince of Wales? If the tories, he contended, abandoned the Jacobites, they would remain no party at all, unable to carry anything; if they did not abandon them, they could only serve their objects; and nothing could induce the whigs to support a tory ministry which had neither mercy nor justice.

The reasonings of Sunderland and Somers seem to have determined William. He arrived in England on the 4th of November, where he found the two factions raging against each other with unabated rancour, and the public in a ferment of indignation at the proclamation of the king of the French, acknowledging the pretender, and still more at an edict which Louis had published on the 16th of September, prohibiting all trade with England, except in beer, cider, glass bottles, and wool, and the wearing of any English manufacture after the 1st of November next. William closeted himself with some of his ministry whom he still hoped might be disposed to different measures; but finding them still as determined as ever to pursue their former course, and to insist on their impeachments, he dissolved parliament on the 4th of November, and called a new one for the 31st of December.

The two parties went to the election for the new parliament with the same fierce bitterness with which they had fought