The address of the Queen, on the dissolution of Parliament, showed great anger. Triumphant in war with the Whigs, and in politics with the Tories, Queen Anne nevertheless failed on a commercial question before her Parliament. It was the precursory symptom of a great disquietude and profound distrust.
The general elections took place in August, 1713. The country vaguely felt, without fully realizing the serious reasons, the danger concealed under the indolence of the Earl of Oxford and the intrigues of Lord Bolingbroke, which threatened one of the questions which had gravely occupied it for fifteen years.
I have desired to recount without interruption the events of the continental war, and that series of successes which carried England to the summit of power and influence in Europe. I have shown her powerful enough to sustain the struggle against Louis XIV., and wise enough to put an end, for a time, to the evils which her people endured, without exacting the ruin of her enemies. I have not wished to mix in this recital the complications of her internal policy: active and powerful regarding the military affairs of Europe, while the Whigs remained and Marlborough was at the head of the armies, but without serious effect upon the fate of Europe. The Tories gave peace to France; this was their supreme effort and triumph. The two great internal questions which agitated the reign of Queen Anne: the Protestant succession and the political union of Scotland with England, were regulated at the foundation, by a tacit accord between the moderates of both parties.
We have seen King William III., in concert with his Parliament, in 1701, decide the question of the succession to the throne of England, by an act of foresight and political sagacity worthy of the monarch who inspired it, and resolutely maintained by the nation, in spite of great obstacles, and notwithstanding serious objections. The intrigues of the Jacobites had never entirely ceased; they had lessened during the first part of Queen Anne's reign, while the war absorbed all thoughts, and seemed to widen the gulf between England and that young prince who aspired to govern her, even though fighting in the ranks of the enemy at Malplaquet. { 122} The gradual enfeeblement of the health of the queen, who had lost her husband on the 28th of October, 1708, the interest which she manifested regarding her brother, and the indifference that she felt towards the House of Hanover, all contributed to revive the hopes of the Jacobites, as well as the anxieties of those who remained attached to the great work of William III.