Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/66

52 it was not till the French revolution scattered its volcanic fires through Europe, that Ireland again began to shake the yoke on her galled neck. Yet, during all this time, a burning sense of her subjection glowed in her blood, and the name of the Luttrel who went over to the Saxon at the dividing day at Limerick, and received for his apostasy the estates of his absent brother, remained a term of execration amongst the Irish. Meantime the Irish regiments which went to France won high reputation in the wars of the continent, and many of the officers rose to high rank in France, in Spain, in Austria, and Prussia. Their descendants still rank with the nobility of those countries.

For his services in this war Ginckell received from parliament its solemn thanks, and from the king and queen the title of baron Aghrim and earl of Athlone.

On the 19th of October William arrived from Holland, and on the 22nd he opened parliament. He congratulated it on the happy termination of the war in Ireland, and on the progress of our arms generally, both at land and sea. It was true that on the continent there had been no very decisive action, but the allies had compelled the French to retreat before them, and to confess their power by avoiding a general engagement with them. At sea, though perhaps not so much had been effected in some directions as might have been hoped, yet the French had been driven from the sea to their own ports, and an English fleet had conveyed a great merchant fleet from the Mediterranean in safety. This was very different to previous years, when their cruisers had made great captures of our merchantmen. We had also sent a fleet up the Shannon, which prevented them aiding the insurgents in Ireland, and were now in undisputed supremacy again on the ocean. Of course William had to demand great supplies to maintain the fleet in this position, and to pursue the war with vigour against Louis. All this the members of both houses listened to with apparent satisfaction, and voted him cordial thanks.

On the 6th of November it was unanimously voted in the commons that the supplies asked for by the crown should be granted; and first they voted £1,575,898 for the service of the navy, including the building of three new blocks at Portsmouth, one dry and two wet ones. On the 16th they resolved that the army, in compliance with William's recommendation, should be raised to 61,924 men; and on the 4th of January they voted £2,100,000 for the maintenance of the army, of which Ireland was to pay £165,000. Thus the army and navy alone cost this year no less than £3,676,685—much more than the whole business of government had often cost in the reigns of Charles and James. But we are now entered on that stupendous system of continental interference, which grew and grew from William's time, till, towards the close of the Buonaparte wars, we spent in a single year, not three or four millions, but three or four hundred millions!

But though a large majority in both houses supported warmly the endeavour to curb the inordinate ambition of Louis XIV., these sums were not passed by the commons without searching inquiries into the accounts and into the abuses which, notwithstanding William's vigilance, abounded in all departments of government. No doubt the party in opposition, as is generally the case, did much of this work of reform more to gratify their private resentments, and to make their rivals' time of office anything but agreeable, than from genuine patriotism; but at the same time there was plenty of ground for their complaints. There were serious charges made against admiral Russell for his lukewarm conduct at sea, and of the management of the admiralty. The fact was that Russell, as was strongly suspected, and as we now know from documents since come to light, was no less a traitor than Torrington, Dartmouth, and Marlborough. He was in active correspondence with James, and ready, if some turn in affairs should serve to make it advantageous, to go over to him with the fleet, or as much of it as would follow him, and others of the admirals; for Delaval, Killigrew, and other admirals and naval officers were as deep in the treason.

There were loud complaints of the vileness of the commissariat still, and it was declared that far more of our men fell by disease from bad and adulterated food than in battle. The complaints against Russell, who was called to the bar of the house, he threw upon the admiralty, and the admiralty on the commissariat department. Russell complained also of the ministry, and particularly of the earl of Nottingham; and thus, by this system of mutual recrimination, exactly resembling what we have seen lately, all parties contrived to escape. The commons, however, were not so to be silenced. They charged on the officers of the army, on its commissariat, on the men in office, and on the government officials almost universally, the same monstrous system of corruption, peculation, and negligence of everything but making money for themselves. They insisted on a rigorous examination of all the accounts by their own members, and they voted that all salaries and profits arising from any place or places under the crown should not amount to more for any one person than five hundred pounds, except in the cases of the speaker of the house of commons, the commissioners of the great seal, the judges, ambassadors, and officers of the army and navy.

There were plenty of posts in which this restriction would have been most salutary, for people in some of the most trivial and useless of them were pocketing many thousands a year; but it was soon found that the whole nation could not furnish sufficient people patriotic enough to serve their country for five hundred pounds a year each; and, therefore, in a few weeks a fresh resolution was taken, which negatived this.

The business of the year 1691 closed by the passing a bill to exclude all catholics, in pursuance of the treaty of Limerick, from holding any office in Ireland, civil, military, or ecclesiastical, or from practising in any profession, or sitting in the Irish parliament, before they had taken the oath of allegiance. The commons attempted by this bill to make it necessary for a catholic to take also the oath of supremacy, and the oath against transubstantiation; but the lords showed that this was contrary to the first article of the treaty of Limerick, and this clause was struck out, and the bill then passed. When the agitation for catholic emancipation commenced, loud complaints were made that by this bill the treaty of Limerick had been violated. But this was a mistake; the violation of it took place some years afterwards by another bill. The first article of the treaty