THREE:In the Macpherson and Lockhart Papers we have now the fullest evidence of what was going on to this end. The agents of both Hanover and St. Germains were active; but those of Hanover were depressed, those of St. Germains never in such hope. The Jesuit Plunkett wrote: "The changes go on by degrees to the king's advantage; none but his friends advanced or employed in order to serve the great project. Bolingbroke and Oxford do not set their horses together, because Oxford is so dilatory, and dozes over things, which is the occasion there are so many Whigs chosen this Parliament. Though there are four Tories to one, they think it little. The ministry must now swim or sink with France." In fact, Oxford's over-caution, and his laziness, at the same time that he was impatient to allow any power out of his own hands, and yet did not exert it when he had it, had disgusted the Tories, and favoured the ambitious views which Bolingbroke was cherishing. The latter had now managed to win the confidence of Lady Masham from the Lord Treasurer to himself; and, aware that he had made a mortal enemy of the Elector of Hanover by his conduct in compelling a peace and deserting the Allies, he determined to make a bold effort to bring in the Pretender on the queen's decease, which every one, from the nature of her complaint, felt could not be far off. To such a pitch of openness did the queen carry her dislike, that she seemed to take a pleasure in speaking in the most derogatory terms of both the old Electress Sophia and her son. Oxford's close and mysterious conduct disgusted the agents of Hanover, without assuring those of the Pretender, and threw the advantage with the latter party more and more into the hands of Bolingbroke. Baron Schutz, the Hanoverian agent, wrote home that he could make nothing of Oxford, but that there was a design against his master; and when Lord Newcastle observed to the agent of the Pretender that, the queen's life being so precarious, it would be good policy in Harley to strike up with the king and make a fair bargain, the agent replied, "If the king were master of his three kingdoms to-morrow, he would not be able to do for Mr. Harley what the Elector of Hanover had done for him already." Thus Oxford's closeness made him suspected of being secured by the Elector at the very moment that the Elector deemed that he was leaning towards the Pretender.The last-named thinker would, no doubt, repudiate the title of pantheist; and it is certain that, under his treatment, pantheism has reverted, by a curious sort of atavism, to something much more nearly resembling the original doctrine of the Neo-Platonic school. Mr. Spencer tells us that the world is the manifestation of an unknowable Power. Plotinus said nearly the same, although not in such absolutely self-contradictory terms.524 Mr. Spencer constantly assumes, by speaking of354 it in the singular number, that the creative Power of which we know nothing is one; having, apparently, convinced himself of its unity by two methods of reasoning. First, he identifies the transcendent cause of phenomena with the absolute, which is involved in our consciousness of relation; leaving it to be inferred that as relativity implies plurality, absoluteness must imply unity. And, secondly, from the mutual convertibility of the physical forces, he infers the unity of that which underlies force. Plotinus also arrives at the same result by two lines of argument, one posteriori, and derived from the unity pervading all Nature; the other priori, and derived from the fancied dependence of the Many on the One. Even in his use of the predicate Unknowable without a subject, Mr. Spencer has been anticipated by Damascius, one of the last Neo-Platonists, who speaks of the supreme principle as τ? ?γνωστον.525 And the same philosopher anticipates the late Father Dalgairns in suggesting the very pertinent question, how, if we know nothing about the Unknowable, we know that it is unknowable.
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