could have
acted otherwise with safety to himself. It would have been idle to try
to conciliate the Tories. The more active spirits among the Tories
were, in point of fact, conspirators on behalf of the Stuart cause.
The {92} colorless Tories were not men whose influence or force of
character would have been of much use to the king in endeavoring to
bring about a reconciliation between the two great parties in the
State. The civil war was not over, or nearly over, yet, and there were
still to come some moments of crisis, when it seemed doubtful whether,
after all, the cause supposed to be fallen might not successfully lift
its head again. As the words of Scott's spirited ballad put it, before
the Stuart crown was to go down, "there are heads to be broke." For
George the First to attempt to form a Coalition Cabinet of Whigs and
Tories at such a time would have been about as wild a scheme as for M.
Thiers to have formed a Coalition Cabinet of Republicans and of
Bonapartists, while Napoleon the Third was yet living at Chiselhurst.

[Sidenote: 1714--The Treaty of Utrecht]

The Tories had been much discredited in the eyes of the country by the
Peace of Utrecht. The long War of the Succession had been allowed to
end without securing to England and to Europe the one purpose with
which it was undertaken by the allies. It was a war to decide whether
a French prince, a grandson of Louis the Fourteenth, and whose
accession seemed to threaten a future union of Spain with France,
should or should not be allowed to ascend the throne of Spain. The end
of the war left the French prince on the throne of Spain. Yet even
this fact would not in itself have been very distressing or alarming to
the English people, however it might have pained others of the allied
States. The English people probably would never have drawn a sword
against France in this quarrel if it had not been for the rash act of
Louis the Fourteenth in recognizing the chevalier, James Stuart, as
King of England on the death of his father, James the Second. But
England felt bitterly that the Peace of Utrecht left France and Louis
not only unpunished, but actually rewarded. All the campaigns, the
victories, the sacrifices, the genius of Marlborough, the heroism of
his soldiers, had ended in nothing. Peace was secured at any price.
It was not that {93} the people of England did not want to have a peace
made at the time. On the contrary, most Englishmen were tho