Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr Pope | Page 6

together. It will, therefore, be proper to descend
under this head to a more particular relation.
In the summer of the year 1710 the Queen was prevailed upon to
change her Parliament and her Ministry. The intrigue of the Earl of
Oxford might facilitate the means, 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,