Note 326 — Chapter XVI · ON THE STATE OF THE CONSTITUTION IN THE REIGNS OF ANNE, GEORGE I., AND GEORGE II.

If we may trust to a book printed in 1717, with the title, "Minutes of Monsieur Mesnager's Negotiations with the Court of England towards the Close of the last Reign, written by himself," that agent of the French cabinet entered into an arrangement with Bolingbroke in March 1712, about the Pretender. It was agreed that Louis should ostensibly abandon him, but should not be obliged, in case of the queen's death, not to use endeavours for his restoration. Lady Masham was wholly for this; but owned "the rage and irreconcilable aversion of the greatest part of the common people to her (the queen's) brother was grown to a height." But I must confess that, although Macpherson has extracted the above passage, and a more judicious writer, Somerville, quotes the book freely as genuine (Hist. of Anne, p. 581, etc.), I found in reading it what seemed to me the strongest grounds of suspicion. It is printed in England, without a word of preface to explain how such important secrets came to be divulged, or by what means the book came before the world; the correct information as to English customs and persons frequently betrays a native pen; the truth it contains, as to jacobite intrigues, might have transpired from other sources, and in the main was pretty well suspected, as the Report of the Secret Committee on the Impeachments in 1715 shows; so that, upon the whole, I cannot but reckon it a forgery in order to injure the tory leaders.

But however this may be, we find Bolingbroke in correspondence with the Stuart agents in the later part of 1712. Macpherson, 366. And his own correspondence with Lord Strafford shows his dread and dislike of Hanover (Bol. Corr. ii. 487 et alibi). The Duke of Buckingham wrote to St. Germains in July that year, with strong expressions of his attachment to the cause, and pressing the necessity of the prince's conversion to the protestant religion. Macpherson, 327. Ormond is mentioned in the Duke of Berwick's letters as in correspondence with him; and Lockhart says there was no reason to make the least question of his affection to the king, whose friends were consequently well pleased at his appointment to succeed Marlborough in the command of the army, and thought it portended some good designs in favour of him. Id. 376.

Of Ormond's sincerity in this cause there can indeed be little doubt; but there is almost as much reason to suspect that of Bolingbroke as of Oxford; except that, having more rashness and less principle, he was better fitted for so dangerous a counter-revolution. But in reality he had a perfect contempt for the Stuart and tory notions of government, and would doubtless have served the house of Hanover with more pleasure, if his prospects in that quarter had been more favourable. It appears that in the session of 1714, when he had become lord of the ascendant, he disappointed the zealous royalists by his delays as much as his more cautious rival had done before. Lockhart, 470. This writer repeatedly asserts that a majority of the House of Commons, both in the parliament of 1710 and that of 1713, wanted only the least encouragement from the court to have brought about the repeal of the act of settlement. But I think this very doubtful; and I am quite convinced that the nation would not have acquiesced in it. Lockhart is sanguine, and ignorant of England.

It must be admitted that part of the cabinet were steady to the protestant succession. Lord Dartmouth, Lord Powlett, Lord Trevor, and the Bishop of London were certainly so; nor can there be any reasonable doubt, as I conceive, of the Duke of Shrewsbury. On the other side, besides Ormond, Harcourt, and Bolingbroke, were the Duke of Buckingham, Sir William Wyndham, and probably Mr. Bromley.