TWO:The Parliament was punctually opened on the 16th of February, 1714, by the queen, as she had promised at Windsor, though she was obliged to be carried there; for during last autumn she had been obliged, by her gout and obesity, to be raised into her chamber by pulleys, and so let down again, like Henry VIII. After congratulating the two Houses on the peace with Spain, she turned to the subject of the Press, and the rumours spread by it regarding the danger of the Protestant succession. Bolingbroke had been active enough in prosecuting the Press because it was dangerous to the designs which he was cherishing, notwithstanding the affected warmth which he and Oxford had put into the queen's mouth. They had taxed the penny sheets and pamphlets which agitated these questions; but this, according to Swift, had only done their own side mischief. Bolingbroke had, further, arrested eleven printers and publishers in one day. But now the war was opened in Parliament, Lord Wharton, in the House of Peers, called for the prosecution of "The Public Spirit of the Whigs," and the printer and publisher were brought to the bar. These were John Morphew, the publisher, and one John Bache, the printer. But Lord Wharton, who was aiming at higher quarry, said, "We have nothing to do with the printer and publisher, but it highly concerns the honour of this august assembly to find out the villain who is the author of that false and scandalous libel." Oxford denied all knowledge of the author, yet, on retiring from the debate, he sent one hundred pounds to Swift, and promised to do more. Lord Wharton then turned upon the printer, whom he had first affected to disregard, and demanded that he should be closely examined; but the next day the Earl of Mar, one of the secretaries of State, declared that her Majesty had ordered his prosecution. This was to shield him from the Parliamentary inquiry. Here the matter dropped, for Swift was too well screened by his patrons, who had lately rewarded him by Church preferment, and shortly afterwards made him Dean of St. Patrick's, in Dublin.SEIZURE OF SIR WILLIAM MACNAGHTEN. (See p. 495.)
TWO:The great philosopher of this period was John Locke (b. 1632; d. 1704). Locke had much to do with the governments of his time, and especially with that extraordinary agitator and speculator, Ashley, Lord Shaftesbury, whom he attended in his banishment, and did not return till the Revolution. Yet, though so much connected with government, office, and the political schemers, Locke remained wonderfully unworldly in his nature. His philosophical bias, no doubt, preserved him from the corrupt influences around him. He was a staunch advocate of toleration, and wrote three letters on Toleration, and left another unfinished at his death. In these he defended both religious and civil liberty against Jonas Proast and Sir Robert Filmer, advocates of the divine right of kings. His "Thoughts on Education" and his "Treatises on Government" served as the foundations of Rousseau's "Emile" and his "Contrat Social." Besides these he wrote numerous works of a theological kind, as "The Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity;" and in his last years, "A Discourse upon Miracles," "Paraphrases of St. Paul," and "An Essay for the Understanding of St. Paul's Epistles;" a work "On the Conduct of the Understanding," and "An Examination of Father Malebranche's Opinion of Seeing all Things in God." But his great work is his "Essay concerning the Human Understanding." This may be considered the first pure and systematic treatise on metaphysics in the English language; and though the pursuit of the science since his time has led to the rejection of many of his opinions, the work will always remain as an able and clearly-reasoned attempt to follow the method of Bacon in tracing the nature and operations of the understanding.A Commission had been appointed to inquire into the Department of Naval Affairs. The Commissioners, at whose head was Mr. Whitbread, had extended their researches so far back as to include the time when Lord Melville, as Mr. Dundas, had presided over that Department. They there discovered some very startling transactions. Large sums of money had been drawn out of the Bank of England on the plea of paying accounts due from the Naval Department; these sums had been paid into Coutts's Bank in the name of the Treasurer of the Navy, Mr. Trotter, who, for long periods together, used these sums for his own benefit. Other large sums had been drawn in the name of Dundas, and had been employed for his profit. Other sums had disappeared, and there was no account showing how they had vanished; but these were scored under the name of Secret Service Money, and Melville declared that the money paid into his account had gone in the same way. As much as forty-eight thousand pounds had been paid over to Pitt at once, and no account given of its expenditure. Indeed, as Pitt had nothing to do with that Department, the payment to him was altogether irregular. These discoveries created a great sensation. George Rose, who had begun life without a sixpence, but who, after attracting the attention of Pitt, had rapidly thriven and become extremely wealthy, had confessed to Wilberforce that some strange jobs had come under his notice as a member of that Department. There was a loud outcry for the impeachment of Melville. Melville appears to have been a jovial, hard-drinking Scotsman, of a somewhat infidel turn, according to Scottish philosophy of that period. Amongst Melville's faults, however, it does not appear that he was of an avaricious character, but rather of a loose morale, and ready to fall in with the licence practised by the officers of all departments of Government in the duties entrusted to them.
