with the island of Sardinia to Charles of Austria, who had
now become Emperor, in satisfaction of his claims; while he handed over
Sicily to the Duke of Savoy. To England he gave up not only Minorca but
Gibraltar, two positions which secured her the command of the
Mediterranean. France purchased peace by less costly concessions. She
had to consent to the re-establishment of the Dutch barrier on a greater
scale than before; to pacify the English resentment against the French
privateers by the dismantling of Dunkirk; and not only to recognize the
right of Anne to the crown, and the Protestant succession in the House
of Hanover, but to consent to the expulsion of the Pretender from her
soil.

[Sidenote: Harley and Bolingbroke.]

The failure of the Queen's health made the succession the real question
of the day, and it was a question which turned all politics into faction
and intrigue. The Whigs, who were still formidable in the Commons, and
who showed the strength of their party in the Lords by defeating a
Treaty of Commerce in which Bolingbroke anticipated the greatest
financial triumph of William Pitt and secured freedom of trade between
England and France, were zealous for the succession of the House of
Hanover in the well-founded belief that the Elector George hated the
Tories; nor did the Tories, though the Jacobite sympathies of a portion
of their party forced both Harley and Bolingbroke to keep up a delusive
correspondence with the Pretender, who had withdrawn to Lorraine, really
contemplate any other succession than that of the Elector. But on the
means of providing for his succession Harley and Bolingbroke differed
widely. Harley, still influenced by the Presbyterian leanings of his
early life, and more jealous of Lord Rochester and the high Tories he
headed than of the Whigs themselves, inclined to an alliance between the
moderate Tories and their opponents, as in the earlier days of
Marlborough's power. The policy of Bolingbroke on the other hand was so
to strengthen the Tories by the utter overthrow of their opponents that
whatever might be the Elector's sympathies they could force their policy
on him as king; and in the advances which Harley made to the Whigs he
saw the means of ruining his rival in the confidence of his party, and
of taking his place at their head. It was with this purpose that he
introduced a Schism Bill, which would have hindered any Nonconformist
from acting as a schoolmaster or a tutor.