dered Dr. Tillotson as the writer of highest authority.
There was formerly sent to me by Mr. Locker, clerk of the Leathersellers
Company, who was eminent for curiosity and literature, a collection of
examples selected from Tillotson's works, as Locker said, by Addison. It
came too late to be of use, so I inspected it but slightly, and remember
it indistinctly. I thought the passages too short. Addison, however,
did not conclude his life in peaceful studies, but relapsed, when he was
near his end, to a political dispute.
It so happened that (1718-19) a controversy was agitated with great
vehemence between those friends of long continuance, Addison and Steele.
It may be asked, in the language of Homer, what power or what cause
should set them at variance. The subject of their dispute was of great
importance. The Earl of Sunderland proposed an Act, called the "Peerage
Bill;" by which the number of Peers should be fixed, and the King
restrained from any new creation of nobility, unless when an old family
should be extinct. To this the Lords would naturally agree; and the
King, who was yet little acquainted with his own prerogative, and, as is
now well known, almost indifferent to the possessions of the Crown,
had been persuaded to consent. The only difficulty was found among
the Commons, who were not likely to approve the perpetual exclusion
of themselves and their posterity. The Bill, therefore, was eagerly
opposed, and, among others, by Sir Robert Walpole, whose speech was
published.
The Lords might think their dignity diminished by improper advancements,
and particularly by the introduction of twelve new Peers at once, to
produce a majority of Tories in the last reign: an act of authority
violent enough, yet certainly legal, and by no means to be compared with
that contempt of national right with which some time afterwards, by the
instigation of Whiggism, the Commons, chosen by the people for
three years, chose themselves for seven. But, whatever might be the
disposition of the Lords, the people had no wish to increase their
power. The tendency of the Bill, as Steele observed in a letter to the
Earl of Oxford, was to introduce an aristocracy: for a majority in the
House of Lords, so limited, would have been despotic and irresistible.
To prevent this subversion of the ancient establishment, Steele, whose
pen readily seconded his political passions, endeavoured to alarm
the nation by a pamphlet called "The Plebeian."
|