Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr Pope | Page 6

the violent prosecution of Sacheverel, and other unpopular measures, might create the occasion and encourage her in the resolution; but the true original cause was the personal ill-usage which she received in her private life and in some trifling instances of the exercise of her power, for indulgence in which she would certainly have left the reins of government in those hands which had held them ever since her accession to the throne.
I am afraid that we came to Court in the same dispositions as all parties have done; that the principal spring of our actions was to have the government of the state in our hands; that our principal views were the conservation of this power, great employments to ourselves, and great opportunities of rewarding those who had helped to raise us, and of hurting those who stood in opposition to us. It is, however, true that with these considerations of private and party interest there were others intermingled which had for their object the public good of the nation--at least what we took to be such.
We looked on the political principles which had generally prevailed in our government from the Revolution in 1688 to be destructive of our true interest, to have mingled us too much in the affairs of the Continent, to tend to the impoverishing our people, and to the loosening the bands of our constitution in Church and State. We supposed the Tory party to be the bulk of the landed interest, and to have no contrary influence blended into its composition. We supposed the Whigs to be the remains of a party formed against the ill designs of the Court under King Charles II., nursed up into strength and applied to contrary uses by King William III., and yet still so weak as to lean for support on the Presbyterians and the other sectaries, on the Bank and the other corporations, on the Dutch and the other Allies. From hence we judged it to follow that they had been forced, and must continue so, to render the national interest subservient to the interest of those who lent them an additional strength, without which they could never be the prevalent party. The view, therefore, of those amongst us who thought in this manner was to improve the Queen's favour, to break the body of the Whigs, to render their supports useless to them, and to fill the employments of the kingdom, down to the meanest, with Tories. We imagined that such measures, joined to the advantages of our numbers and our property, would secure us against all attempts during her reign, and that we should soon become too considerable not to make our terms in all events which might happen afterwards: concerning which, to speak truly, I believe few or none of us had any very settled resolution.
In order to bring these purposes about, I verily think that the persecution of Dissenters entered into no man's head. By the Bills for preventing Occasional Conformity and the growth of schism, it was hoped that their sting would be taken away. These Bills were thought necessary for our party interest, and, besides, were deemed neither unreasonable nor unjust. The good of society may require that no person should be deprived of the protection of the Government on account of his opinions in religious matters; but it does not follow from hence that men ought to be trusted in any degree with the preservation of the Establishment, who must, to be consistent with their principles, endeavour the subversion of what is established. An indulgence to consciences, which the prejudice of education and long habits have rendered scrupulous, may be agreeable to the rules of good policy and of humanity, yet will it hardly follow from hence that a government is under any obligation to indulge a tenderness of conscience to come, or to connive at the propagating of these prejudices and at the forming of these habits. The evil effect is without remedy, and may, therefore, deserve indulgence; but the evil cause is to be prevented, and can, therefore, be entitled to none. Besides this, the Bills I am speaking of, rather than to enact anything new, seemed only to enforce the observation of ancient laws which had been judged necessary for the security of the Church and State at a time when the memory of the ruin of both, and of the hands by which that ruin had been wrought, was fresh in the minds of men.
The Bank, the East India Company, and in general the moneyed interest, had certainly nothing to apprehend like what they feared, or affected to fear, from the Tories--an entire subversion of their property. Multitudes of our own party would have been wounded by such a blow. The intention of those who