such cases. That he had been obliged by his office to pass those grants, and to affix the great seal at the command of the king, pleas which would excuse any offences of the kind, however enormous, and which are the only pleas which can be used in these cases from age to age, when the aristocracy about the king are enriching themselves on the national property. By these practices it is that our aristocracy have grown to what they are, and will never be kept from doing the like but by the power of an educated and enlightened people. Somers, therefore, whose character has been so highly extolled by some of our historians, was not ashamed to defend himself by these arguments, which have been in the mouths of all ministers from the days of Henry VIII, when the church and convent lands were thus filched away, to our own, in which the forests of Hainault and Epping, which should remain for parks to the vast metropolis, are fast melting away in the same aristocratic crucible. Somers, again, moreover, threw the blame on the king, asserting that the treaty was the king's own measure, which was only a reason, if it were an unpatriotic or unjust measure, why the chancellor should have delivered up the seals, and not made himself a party to it. As to his own grants, he, of course, did not think them at all exorbitant. He had only, he said, got the manors of Reigate and Howley, and the four thousand pounds a year, the pension being only such as several of his predecessors had received. As ministers never do consider it a crime to get grants of all the lands they can, notwithstanding their solemn oaths on entering office, Somers neither thought himself criminal for only getting the manors of Reigate and Howley, nor for affixing the great seal to the wholesale grants of Irish estates to the king's favourites of from one hundred thousand to two hundred and thirty thousand acres each, for which any minister alone ought to have been impeached. As to enrolling the treaty in the court of chancery, that, he said, was the duty of the prothonotary, as if the chancellor himself had no voice in the matter. All charges of abuse of his power in the court of chancery, of injurious delays and irregular proceedings, he utterly denied. He denied any knowledge of other minor matters, such as alienation of quit and other rents annexed to Windsor Castle; and as to participation in the piracy of captain Kydd, he contended that the fitting-out of that expedition by private funds was a good and patriotic action; that the authors and supporters of the plan were not accountable for Kydd's betrayal of his duty; by it they had lost their property, and for it Kydd had been justly punished. In this last article, undoubtedly, Somers had the most right on his side. The whole of the chancellor's conduct in office and his defence go to convince us that, whilst he was far from being as rapacious and unjust as many who have filled that high and most important office, he was equally far from being that great character which lord Macaulay and others have laboured hard to make him appear.
The lords now demanded that the trial should proceed without any further delay, but the commons proposed that it should be conducted before a committee of both houses. This they probably did to throw an effectual bar in the way of the trial at all, for they appeared rather to desire to destroy the characters of the accused than to proceed to extremities. They were well aware that the accused nobles had a majority in their favour in their own house, and that to impeach them there was to fail. For the same reasons the lords refused to admit the commons to a share in the trial, because in their house there was a majority the other way. They replied, therefore, that such committees were contrary to custom in cases of impeachment for misdemeanour; that the only exception was that in the case of the earl of Dauby and the five popish lords, and that the fate of it was sufficient warning to avoid such a precedent, for the committee Could not proceed for altercations, and the affair could only be got rid of by dissolving parliament. The commons still argued for it, the lords persisted in their refusal, and at this moment the dispute was interrupted by the king calling on both houses to attend to the ratification of the new succession bill.
After this the contest regarding the mode of trial of the impeached nobles was renewed with unabated acrimony. In one of the conferences on the subject lord Haversham declared his opinion that the commons themselves really believed the accused lords innocent, "for there are," he said, "various other lords implicated in the very same business, and yet the commons make no charge against them, but leave them at the head of affairs near the king's person to do any mischief they are inclined to, and impeach others, when they are all alike guilty, and concerned in the same facts." This was a hard hit, for it was the simple truth, and the delegates of the commons, as they could not deny it, could only affect to take violent offence at it. They at once withdrew, with Sir Christopher Musgrave at their head, and reported this sally of lord Haversham to their own house, which thereupon, going into a fit of most virtuous indignation, voted that "Lord John Haversham had uttered most scandalous reproaches and most false expressions, highly reflecting upon the honour and justice of the house of commons." They demanded that lord Haversham should be charged before the lords; that the lords should do justice on him for this unpardonable offence against the commons; and that the commons would proceed no further in the matter of the impeachment till they had this satisfaction. Haversham offered to submit to trial, but insisted on the commons first proving that he had used the words attributed to him. There was fresh correspondence, but the lords cut the matter short by deciding that there should be no committee of both houses for regulating the trials of the impeached nobles.
The commons, however, on the 14th of June sent up their charges against the earl of Halifax, declining to proceed against Portland, as they said, out of respect to his majesty. Halifax they taxed with retaining a grant in Ireland without paying the value of it according to the law lately passed concerning those grants; with possessing another grant in the forest of Dean of waste timber, so used as to be very prejudicial to the navy; and with having held the offices of commissioner of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer at the same time, contrary to the interests of the state; and with advising the two treaties of partition. To this he replied that his grant in Ireland was of debts and sums of money, and not of lands, and was allowed by the act regarding the confiscated estates; that his grant in the forest of Dean was only of weedings or throwing out of timbers, and could not be, therefore, prejudicial to the navy, though any
