ing to her often avowed wish—"Here lies Sophia, Queen of England," engraven on her coffin. The journey of the prince was wholly abandoned; not that the inclination of the prince for the journey was abated, nor that the whigs ceased to urge it. Townshend, Sunderland, Halifax, and others pressed it as of the last importance; and both the elector and his son wrote to the queen, assuring her that, had the prince been allowed to come, he would soon have convinced her majesty of his desire to increase the peace and strength of her reign rather than to diminish them.
Instead of lord Paget, after all, being sent to Hanover, the queen sent over her kinsman, the earl of Clarendon—as weak a personage as his grandfather, the chancellor, had been an able one. He had already been governor of Pennsylvania, and had shown himself so absurd there as that, because he represented the queen, he thought it necessary to receive the council dressed in female apparel. The business of this imbecile was solely to prevent the prince's coming over; and, as it was evident that this journey could not be accomplished, the elector sent baron Bothmar from the Hague to London, the better to watch the progress of events.
The two rival ministers of England became every day more embittered against each other; and Bolingbroke became more daring in his advances towards the pretender, and towards measures only befitting a Stuart's reign. In order to please the high church, whilst he was taking the surest measures to ruin it by introducing a popish prince, he consulted with the high church Atterbury, and they agreed to bring in a bill which should prevent the dissenters educating their own children. This measure was sure to please the Hanoverian tories, who were as averse to the dissenters as the whigs. Thus it would conciliate them and obtain their support at the very moment that the chief authors of it were planning the ruin of their party. This bill was called the Schism Bill, and enjoined that no person in Great Britain should keep any school, or act as tutor, who had not first subscribed the declaration to conform to the church of England, and obtained a license of the diocesan; and, upon failure of so doing, the party might be committed to prison without bail; and that no such license should be granted before the party produced a certificate of his having received the sacrament according to the communion of the church of England within the last year, and also subscribed the oaths of allegiance and supremacy.
This act, as disgraceful as any which ever dishonoured the statute-book in the reigns of the Tudors or Stuarts, was introduced into the commons, on the 12th of May, by Sir William Wyndham, and was resolutely opposed by the whigs, amongst whom Sir Peter King, Sir Joseph Jekyll, Mr. Hampden, Robert Walpole, and general Stanhope distinguished themselves. Stanhope showed in particular the ill consequences of this law, as it would, of course, occasion foreign education, which, on the one hand, would drain the kingdom of great sums of money, and, which was still worse, would fill the tender minds of young men with prejudices against their own country. He illustrated and strengthened his argument by the example of the English popish seminaries abroad, which, he said, were so pernicious to Great Britain, that, instead of making new laws to encourage foreign education, he could wish those in force against papists were mitigated, and that they should be allowed a certain number of schools.
Strikingly just as were these observations, we can well imagine that, in that bigoted time, they would rather injure the cause which the general was advocating than forward it; at all events they did not convince the majority, which amounted to no less than two hundred and thirty-seven to one hundred and twenty-six. In the lords, Bolingbroke himself moved the second reading, and it was ably opposed by the lords Cowper, Wharton, Halifax, Townshend, Nottingham, and others. Lord Wharton observed that it was somewhat strange that they should call schism in England what was the established religion in Scotland; and, therefore, he added, "If the lords who represent the nobility of that part of Great Britain are for the bill, I hope that, in order to be even with us and consistent with themselves, they will move for the bringing in another bill to prevent the growth of schism in their own country." This was a keen blow to the Scotch lords, but did not prevent them voting with government for a measure which, if extended to Scotland, would have soon made the church of England the religion of the country. Lord Wharton then made as sharp a thrust at the bench of bishops. Turning towards them, he said—"Precedents and authorities have been cited in favour of the present measure, but there is against it an authority of the highest weight, which has not been yet mentioned. I acknowledge that it would have come with more force and propriety from that venerable bench, but, since their lordships have been wholly silent in this debate, I will myself tell them that it is the rule of the gospel to do unto others as we would be done unto."
Lord Halifax drew an animated contrast betwixt the humane and enlightened policy of queen Elizabeth, who protected the protestant Walloons when flying from the persecutions of the Spanish inquisition, and of William III. towards the French Huguenots, and pointed out the benefits to our trade and manufactures which resulted from that noble conduct; at the same time he warned them solemnly against following the fatal example of Charles I. and Laud, which brought destruction on them both, and misery on the nation. Lord Townshend advocated toleration from his observation abroad. He said he had lived a long time in Holland, had observed that the wealth and strength of that great and powerful commonwealth lay in the number of its inhabitants; that he was convinced that, if the States-General should cause the schools of any one sect to be shut up, the United Provinces would soon be as thin of people as Sweden or Spain. Lord Cowper treated the bill as a gross breach of the act of toleration, as it was. He asserted that there were dissenters in many country towns who supported the schools, and that to forbid them to teach or be taught by any but churchmen amounted to the suppression of the reading of the Bible amongst them. Lord Nottingham, who had been grossly lampooned by Swift, especially in his ballad, "An Orator dismal of Nottinghamshire," and who apprehended that that truculent churchman might yet get a bishopric through Bolingbroke, said, with much feeling—"My lords, I have many children, and I know not whether God Almighty will vouchsafe to let me live to give them the education I could wish they had; therefore, my lords, I own
