Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/374

 Campbell  for life is not probable, although this possibly brought it to a head. It is not unlikely that its source was Argyll's personal ambition. After the battle of Malplaquet his reputation in the army ranked very high, and he had also the advantage of a strong personal ascendency over the troops, won by his headstrong valour and the bonhomie with which he shared their perils and hardships. It would seem that Argyll's vanity thus strongly flattered led him to regard Marlborough in the light of a rival. At any rate, from this time he set himself to work Marlborough's overthrow with a pertinacity which led Marlborough to write of him, in a letter of 25 March: ‘I cannot have a worse opinion of anybody than of the Duke of Argyll.’ After the fall of the whig ministry Argyll did not fail to express even in the camp very strong sentiments regarding the efforts of Marlborough to prolong the war (Marlborough's letter to Godolphin, 12 June 1710), and when a vote of thanks was proposed to him in parliament started objections, which led to the abandonment of the motion. This procedure so commended Argyll to Harley and the tories that on 20 Dec. 1710 he was installed a knight of the Garter. An opportunity was also granted him for gratifying his military ambition by his appointment, 11 Jan. 1711, as ambassador extraordinary to Spain and commander-in-chief of the English forces in that kingdom. Circumstances were not, however, favourable for displaying his military capacities to advantage. Not obtaining the means of restoring his forces to a satisfactory condition, after the losses in previous campaigns, he was scarcely able to do more than hold his ground, and did not even venture on any enterprise of moment. After the peace of Utrecht in 1712 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces of Scotland and governor of Edinburgh castle. This did not, however, by any means console him for the treatment he had experienced from the government during the Spanish campaign, and he had soon an opportunity of manifesting his resentment. In the debate on the question as to whether the protestant succession was in danger ‘under the present administration,’ he openly charged the ministry with remitting money to the highland chiefs, and with removing from the army officers' merely on account of their known affection for the house of Hanover.' Soon afterwards he adopted a course of procedure which might have laid him open to the charge of furthering the schemes of the Jacobites, although he was undoubtedly actuated by entirely opposite motives. When a malt tax was imposed on Scotland, he became one of the most marked supporters of the motion in June 1713 for the dissolution of the union, not only on the ground that the imposition of the tax was in violation of the union, but because ‘he believed in his conscience’ that the dissolution of the union ‘was as much for the interests of England’ as of Scotland. The motion was lost by a majority of only four votes. The agitation led Swift in his pamphlet on the ‘Public Spirit of the Whigs’ to refer to the Scots in such contemptuous terms, that the whole Scottish peers, with the Duke of Argyll at their head, went in a body to petition the crown for redress. A proclamation was thereupon issued, offering a reward of 300l. for information as to the author. The matter caused an irrevocable breach in the relations between Swift and Argyll, who had for many years been on a footing of warm friendship. It also sufficiently explains the terms in which Swift expressed himself regarding Argyll in a manuscript note in Macky's ‘Memoirs,’ as an ‘ambitious, covetous, cunning Scot, who has no principle but his own interest and greatness. A true Scot in his whole conduct.’ His previous impressions of Argyll were entirely the opposite of this. In the ‘Journal to Stella,’ 10 April 1710, he writes: ‘I love that duke mightily,’ and in a congratulatory letter to him, 16 April 1711, on his appointment to Spain, he says: ‘You have ruined the reputation of my pride, being the first great man for whose acquaintance I made any great advances, and you have need to be what you are, and what you will be, to make me easy after such a condescension.’

The course which the Duke of Argyll had taken in regard to the union, and the pamphlet on the ‘Public Spirit of the Whigs,’ was at least instrumental in completely restoring his character in Scotland as a patriotic statesman. That he had not been actuated in the course which he took by any hostility to the Hanoverian cause was also soon afterwards manifested, when Queen Anne was struck by her mortal illness. Suddenly presenting himself along with the Duke of Somerset at the privy council, previously summoned to meet that morning at Kensington Palace, he stated that, although not summoned thither, he had felt himself bound to hasten to the meeting to afford advice and assistance in the critical circumstances. Taking advantage of the perturbation caused by their arrival, Argyll and Somerset suggested that the Duke of Shrewsbury should be recommended to the queen as lord high treasurer, a proposition which the Jacobites were not in a position to resist. This prompt action practically annihilated the Stuart cause at the very moment when its prospects, seemed most hopeful, and finding themselves