clesiastics, new oath of ence, were unable to admit without confusion the new theory that the houses could depose one king and set up another at will. Passive obedience, it is true, had come to be regarded as a dead heresy, since the clergy themselves had been forced to resist the persecution to which they were subjected by James; but to the doctrine of divine right a large number of the higher many of the dignitaries, with Sancroft, the primate, at their head, resolved greater ecto be faithful when the time came for them to take the new including Sancroft, oath of allegiance to William and Mary, imposed by an act of refused the parliament upon all public functionaries in church and state. allegiance; An amendment made by the lords exempting the clergy from the oath was rejected by the commons, and so the act as passed provided not only for the expulsion from office of all civil officers who should refuse it, but also for the suspension suspension and depriand finally for the deprivation of all priests and bishops who vation the after a certain time should persist in declining it. When the penalty of final test came, while about twenty-nine thirtieths of the pro- ence; fession reluctantly complied, eight bishops, including Sancroft, Sancroft and about four hundred clergymen, some of them highly distinguished, resolved to give up their sees and their livings accepted rather than admit that the sovereign parliament could not only, than depose a king, but deprive a bishop and expel a priest. Those refusing to take the oath, and their adherents, came to be known as non-jurors, who claimed to be the only true members of the Church of England. The sees thus made vacant were promptly their places filled, however, by the appointment of new incumbents, who latitudinawere for the most part latitudinarians, Tillotson, the new arch- rians. bishop of Canterbury, being then at the head of that school. ་ disobedi and his followers both rather submit; filled by treason: 4. In order to defend more perfectly the new dynasty against Legislation the Jacobites, including the non-juring clergy, who persisted concerning in regarding the exiled king as their real sovereign, and who propagated their opinions through secret printing-presses of their own, it was deemed necessary to so enlarge the law of law treason as to cover every contingency that might arise out of acts passed such circumstances. Thus, in 1698, it was made in substance from 1698 treason for those who had followed James into France to re 1 I Will. & Mar. c. 8. Lords' Journals, April 17, 1689; Parl. Hist., p. 218. 3 Macaulay, vol. i. pp. 704-711; vol. ii. pp. 99, 100, 102-110, 256. "It was indeed only among Whigs and Latitu- enlarged by to 1709; remedial turn to England without a license;1 in 1701, it was made treason to correspond with "the pretended prince of Wales ;" and after the accession of Anne such precautions were made still more stringent by an act passed in 1702, making it treason to attempt to prevent the succession as established by the Act of Settlement.3 In 1705, two more acts were passed, the first making it treason to return without license into England after going without license into France; the second making it treason to maintain, by writings, the title of the Prince of Wales or others; and in 1709 still another was enacted making it treason for officers to hold correspondence with rebels or enemies. Nevertheless, before the substantive law of treason was thus statute for extended, parliament had been careful to enact a highly remedial statute, which protected more perfectly than ever before the rights of those who were subject to trial for the highest of all offences. It seems that the all-important act of 5 & 6 Edw. VI. c. II, whose terms have been heretofore set forth, had been for a century after its passage practically ignored in criminal trials by the judges, some of whom went so far as to contend that as a rule of evidence it had been repealed by 1 & 2 Phil. & Mar. c. 10, which provided that "all trials for treason shall be according to the due order and course of the common law and not otherwise." "8 And yet it was frankly admitted upon the trial of the regicides that the law required two witted in trials nesses, and upon Lord Stafford's trial in 1680 that fact was of regi- "treated as a point beyond all doubt, . . . his lordship insistStafford; ing that there ought to be two to each overt act. . . . One wit protection of those tried for treason; act of 5 & 6 Edw. VI. for a long time ignored; said to cides and of ness to one overt act, and another to another overt act of the same species of treason, are two sufficient witnesses within the statutes." In order to put that construction beyond all doubt, confirmed it was confirmed by 7 & 8 Will. III. c. 3,9 which also provided by 7 Will. that a copy of the indictment against a prisoner charged with high treason should be delivered to him at least five days III. c. 3; ard limited on trial of before the trial,1 and a copy of the panel of jurors two days before the trial; that he should be entitled to process to compel the attendance of witnesses to be examined on oath, and throughout the trial to the assistance of counsel. Then to power of remedy the evil arising out of the power of the high steward high stewto constitute his court for the trial of a peer by summoning only such members of the peerage as he might see fit to select, it was enacted that all peers having the right to vote in parliament shall be summoned on the trial of any peer for treason, and that upon such trial every peer so summoned and appearing shall vote.2 peers. ments, became 5. A brief reference must here be made to certain measures Taxation of national taxation and finance originating in this reign whose and finance: influence has been permanent. An explanation has already been attempted of the manner in which the old Tudor subsidy old Tudor subsidy was superseded during the great civil war, by a system of superseded monthly assessments under which a fixed sum to be raised was by assesspartitioned between the several counties and towns wherein the taxpayers were rated by the local authorities at what they were really worth. But that method, which was employed in which also 1688, became inequitable by reason of the "exorbitant ine- inequitable; quality of the old proportions of charge, both between county and county, division and division, and parish and parish."4 Therefore, in 1689, a new plan was adopted, which consisted of in 1689 a a rate of so many shillings in the pound in respect to incomes derived from personal property, offices, and employment, and so many lands; and in 1692, a rate then imposed of 4 s. in the pound the pound; produced about £1,922,000. When that sum began to decline through imperfect assessments, parliament "abandoned the parliament principle of a rate by fixing what a rate should produce. . . the "rate Henceforth the assessment of 1692 was to determine the by fixing quota of the district towards making up the sum charged in should the Act upon the particular county or town of which it formed produce;" an integral part. . . . So now after the Revolution, when a rate im posed of shillings in abandoned what a rate the rate after the Revolution; how apportioned; character of rate had again been tried, it fell into the same groove as the subsidy and the fifteenth and tenth; and, though still nominally a rate of 1 s. or 2 s. or 3 s. or 4 s. in the pound, was, in effect, but a sum of about half a million, a million, a million and a half, or two millions, charged in specific amounts on particular counties and towns, and within those counties and towns portioned out between particular parishes or districts, according to the assessment of 1692."1 Such was the origin William's and character of the land tax of William's reign, which continued in force down to 1798, when Mr. Pitt, prior to the introduction of his income tax, made it perpetual at 4 s. in the form of a redeemable rent charged on the several districts. In 1694 a tax was imposed on the hackney coach business of London, which was a mere extension of the licensing system first impo- introduced in the reign of Charles I.; and in the same year stamp duties were first introduced into England, modelled after those of Holland, where it was necessary to use for legal documents paper impressed with the greater or lesser seal of the states, according to the nature of the transaction.2 land tax continued down to 1798; tax on hackney coaches; sition of stamp duties. Origin of the national debt; At the moment when the nation began to rebel against this alarming growth of taxation made necessary by the prolonged struggle with France, Charles Montague, afterwards Lord Halifax, who as a commissioner of the treasury had developed skill as a financier, proposed in December, 1692, that England should adopt the Continental plan of lightening the annual burden resulting from war by contracting a national debt. And in order to improve upon the old method of borrowing from the London goldsmiths, whose credit with capitalists had been seriously shaken through the closing of the exchequer by the Montague's Cabal, Montague resolved to utilize a plan of a national bank, a national such as already existed in Holland and in Genoa, previously suggested by a Scotchman, William Patterson. Thus it was that in the spring of 1694, when another great loan became necessary for the sustenance of the war, Montague introduced a bill for the incorporation of the Bank of England. A loan 1 Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, vol. ii. PP. 49, 50, and 51. scheme of bank; Bank of England incorporated in 1694 2 5 & 6 Will. & Mar. c. 21; 9 & 10 Will. III. c. 25. Cf. Dowell, pp. 52, 60. 8 His "Life" is embraced in his Poetical Works, published in 1716. His Miscellaneous Works were published in 1704; and his Life and Miscellaneous Works in 1715, London. 4 The bill, which originated in the commons as a money bill, passed the lords without amendment in April. See Lords' Journals, 23d, 24th, and 25th of April, 1694. purposes, financial state; of £1,200,000 had already been proposed and accepted at for comeight per cent., and the subscribers were then organized under mercial the act as a chartered company, which became not only an and as ordinary commercial bank, but also the financial agent of the agent of the state in procuring loans from the people in exchange for its obligations. The complete success of the enterprise was followed by Montague's appointment as chancellor of the exchequer; and in the next year, when it became necessary in the execution of his scheme for the reform of the currency, reduced far below its nominal value by clipping, to provide for the temporary absence of coin, he issued for the first time exchequer exchequer bills. bills. cabinet govern William 6. A brief account of the inner circle of the privy council Progress of -first reproachfully termed in the reign of Charles I. "the Juncto" or "Cabinet Council," and in that of Charles II. "the ment under Cabal" has been carried down to Temple's fruitless attempt and Anne: to establish such a reform as would revest in the council as a whole those vital functions silently usurped by the favored few who were for the moment specially endowed with the sovereign's confidence.2 The utter failure of Temple's inpracticable scheme was made complete by his consent to become, as secretary of state, a member of the inner circle of his own creation, after which event the executive power was again committed to cabinets, which, as secret committees of the king's personal advisers, directed the royal administration down to the Revolution of 1688. Thus it was that William and Mary inherited nature of the system of government by cabinets composed of ministers, the system each one of whom could be appointed and removed by the king by the without the consent of the rest, and each one of whom as a mere servant of the crown was directly responsible for the performance of his special duties to it alone. While such min- utter lack isters were members of parliament, they could not unite among cohesion. themselves in carrying out any joint scheme of government because there was no internal cohesion growing out of the possession of common political principles. "The truth was that 1 A royal charter was issued under the great seal to "The Governor and Company of the Bank of England," subject to the terms prescribed by parliament. The charter was granted for only eleven years certain, parliament reserving the right to end its existence by paying the debt at any time after as inherited former; of internal |