Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/67

.] provided that on a catholic taking the oath of allegiance, he should be admitted to all the privileges specified, according to the law in Charles II.'s time; and this law, whether always enforced or not, empowered the crown to tender this oath to all subjects.

The year 1692 was opened by parliament bringing forward several important bills, which were, however, too much contested to be carried this year. The first of these was a bill for regulating the trade of the East India Company, increasing the number of shareholders, restricting the amount of stock in the hands of individuals, and incorporating a new company, which had sprung up with the old one. The East India Company had become a most flourishing concern. From the restoration to this time, only twenty-three years, its annual imports had risen in value from eight thousand pounds to three hundred thousand pounds. Its capital amounted only to three hundred and seventy thousand pounds, but it yielded an annual profit of thirty per cent., besides having, up to 1676, doubled the value of the whole capital. The company, however, instead of increasing in shareholders, was rapidly sinking into a monopoly of a few individuals. Amongst these Sir Josiah Child, whom we lately quoted in our review of the commerce of the period, stood chief, and was become, as it were, the king and despot of the whole concern. Five members were said to possess or hold a sixth of all the votes, and amongst these Child had the predominant amount. His income from the company was stated at twenty thousand pounds a year, and his word was law in it.

These enormous profits naturally called forth a rival company, and the contest betwixt these companies grew from year to year, till it came to occupy and divide the spirit of the whole mercantile world. The new company insisted on the right of trading also to many parts of India, the old one stood on their charter as a charter of exclusion to all others. The favour of government was purchased by the old company by well applied gifts of money to government, and by sharing with government the profitable patronage. The question was now brought before parliament and hotly debated; but the bill was dropped for the present, and a proposition to William to grant a charter to the new company was evaded, on the plea of requiring deep consideration.

The next important bill was for regulating trials in cases of high treason. It was high time that great reforms should take place on this head. During the Stuart times men had been most easily and conveniently put out of the way, by counsel being refused them under charge of high treason, and by refusal to allow them the perusal of the bill of indictment previous to the trial. Juries were packed by sheriffs, and state prisoners were thus murdered at will. The same gross injustice extended to prisoners charged with other offences; but the great strain towards injustice was in the case of those charged by the state with treason, and against whom it employed the ablest lawyers of the realm. By this machinery, all through the reigns of the Stuarts, as well as of their predecessors, whole throngs of men, and many of them of extraordinary endowments and high rank, had been judicially destroyed. The proposed bill, therefore, provided that every person charged with high treason should be allowed to have his own counsel, to have a copy of the indictment, ten days before the trial, delivered to him, along with a list of the freeholders from whom his jury were to be selected, that he might have opportunity to challenge any of them. The bill was most desirable, but it was frustrated for the time by the lords insisting on an extension of their own privileges regarding such trials. Instead of being tried by the court of the lord high steward—who could summon twelve or more peers at his discretion if the parliament was not sitting—they demanded that, during the recess, as during the session, every peer should be summoned to attend any such trial. The commons somewhat unreasonably opposed this very proper reform, on the ground that the peers had too many privileges already, and the bill dropped for the time.

Besides these the commons sent up various other bills, which were nearly all rejected by the lords. There was a bill for reducing the rate of interest on money; a bill investing in the king the forfeited estates in both England and Ireland as a fund for the war; a bill to proportion the pay in the army to the real complement of men; for there was a practice, in which Marlborough was especially engaged, of returning regiments as complete which were far from complete, and pocketing the pay of the men wanting. There was a bill to continue the commissioners of public accounts, most unreasonably rejected by the lords, whilst they allowed to pass an act which has always been regarded with peculiar hostility in England—a poll-tax, levying on all persons except servants, children, and paupers, a shilling a quarter; on every peer of parliament, ten pounds; on non-jurors, twenty pounds; on all persons possessing income from any sum of three hundred pounds a year, ten shillings, and on all gentlemen of three hundred pounds a year income from real property, and on all clergymen or teachers with incomes of eighty pounds, one pound each. On the 29th of February William prorogued the parliament, and made active preparations for his departure for the continent. Before he took his leave, however, he made various changes in his cabinet and ministry, which showed that the whigs were still losing ground with him, and the tories, or the "Trimmers," who veered, according to circumstances, to one party or the other, acquiring favour. The earl of Rochester, younger brother of lord Clarendon, one of Mary's uncles; lord Ranelagh, lord Cornwallis, and Sir Edward Seymour, who had all along hitherto opposed the king, were made members of the privy council, and the earl of Pembroke privy seal. Charles Montague was made a commissioner of the treasury, and Sidney lord Lieutenant of Ireland. But the circumstance which occasioned the greatest sensation, and wonder, and mystery was the sudden dismissal of lord Marlborough from all his offices under the king, both in the court and the army. As Marlborough had been manifestly rising in William's estimation from the successful display of his military talents, this abrupt dismissal excited the keenest curiosity of both court and country, which William took no means to gratify, and for which he has been greatly blamed, even by historians most laudatory to him. But, from what we now know of the causes of this striking expression of William's displeasure, we can well understand that there was more in it than William could, without implicating the princess Anne, make known.