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CHAPTER XIII.

IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE.

[1695-1700.]

HOUGH Locke resolved to have as little as possible

THO

to do with politics from the time when the Earl of Carmarthen became William the Third's chief adviser, with Sir John Trevor, the new speaker of the house of commons, for his willing agent in wholesale bribery and national demoralisation, neither his own patriotic temper nor that of his friends allowed him to keep clear of business. While at Oates he continued to watch closely the course of public affairs, and during these years of retirement and special devotion to literary pursuits he spoke out by proxy, on at least some of the great questions that had to be decided, quite as emphatically and expressively as he could have done had he been living constantly within the purlieus of Whitehall, or personally taking part in the debates and divisions at Westminster. For occasional, if not very regular, exponents of his opinions in the house of lords, he had the Earl of Monmouth and the Earl of Pembroke. And in the commons house he undoubtedly had many zealous disciples and spokesmen besides the two, Edward Clarke and Lord Ashley, about whom we are best informed, and whom we know most positively to have sought his guidance as to their action. in political affairs.1

It is not clear whether the following letter had special reference to

The two ablest, most honest, and, ultimately, most influential statesmen in the house of commons may be looked upon as, in at least some respects, his disciples. We have no extant correspondence, for this period, between him and Sir John Somers-who in May, 1692, exchanged the solicitor-generalship for the attorneygeneralship, and in the following March became lord keeper of the great seal-but in his correspondence with public business, but it may be taken as an illustration of the way in which Locke acted as counsellor, and on occasion and in courteous style as the dictator, of men taking an active part in politics. It is addressed to Sir Edward Harley, the father of the great statesman of Queen Anne's reign who became Earl of Oxford. For a transcript of the original, among the Marquis of Bath's papers at Longleat, I am indebted to Canon Jackson. "London, 25 Sept., '94.

"SIR, Though I cannot doubt but you are assured there is nobody more your servant than I, yet I cannot but think a letter from me, especially of the kind this will be, will somewhat surprise you. For it is no less than to desire you lay by all that country business which you had reserved to the little time is now between this and the parliament, and to come up to town immediately. So bold a presumption as this, without farther explaining myself, will possibly appear very odd to you, and I myself think it so extravagant that I should not venture to send it you were I not satisfied I should be able to justify myself to you for having done it when you come to town, and should condemn myself for having failed in that respect and service which I owe you if I had done otherwise. It is but a little anticipating your journey up to the parliament, and I conclude you will, when you are here, think it time not lost. I therefore earnestly press you again, and, if you do not think me a vain man, I beseech you to believe that I would not have writ to you after this fashion had I not had some reason. I should be very glad to see you here without any answer. But, if you think fit to honour me with a line or two, pray let it be to assure me of your being speedily here.

"I am, sir, your most humble and most faithful servant,

"J. LOCKE.

"I lodge at Mr. Pawling's, over against the Plough Inn, in Little Lincoln's Inn Fields."

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others we find frequent allusions to their interviews, and from what we know of their antecedent and subsequent relations we may safely assume that those interviews were supplemented by letters, and that the younger man now, as at other times, took frequent counsel with the elder one on the difficult business that came before him. When Locke made acquaintance with Charles Montaguwho was made Baron Halifax in 1701 and Earl of Halifax in 1714, and who was ten years younger than Somers, thirty years younger than Locke-we do not know, nor have we any record of their connection before 1695; but there can hardly be any doubt that the acquaintance began in 1689, when Montagu was a member of the convention parliament, and was continued from that time. Certain it is, at any rate, that in nearly all their political action both Somers and Montagu were actuated by the principles that Locke advanced, and gave utterance to opinions with which he agreed. In two very important reforms, effected while Locke resided chiefly at Oates, we are able to trace his hand; though the details of the first, as regards the whole subject as well as Locke's part in it, are unfortunately very scanty.

That the church had a right to control the printing and publishing of books, was an assumption as old as the invention of the printing-press, and when, under Henry the Eighth, the church became a limb of the state, it was not strange that the state should have arrogated this function to itself. Scholarship and general education, as well as freedom of opinion, suffered grievously, with benefit to no one but the monopolists of the stationers' company, but with hardly a note of protest, for a century and a half before the famous "decree of star chamber concerning printing" was issued in 1637, to be followed

in 1643 by the "order of the lords and commons for the regulating of printing," which provoked Milton's splendid condemnation. Charles the Second's licensing act was more stringent than any of its predecessors, and, enforced as it had been by James the Second's agents, it might have been supposed that it would have been one of the first monuments of Stuart tyranny to be overturned by William the Third. James Fraser quietly replaced Sir Roger Lestrange, however, as censor, and, as Fraser used his office temperately, suppressing nothing but tory sedition, the act, which lapsed in 1693, was actually then renewed for two years, no regard being paid to the mild petitions sent in by the printers, booksellers and bookbinders, and the feeble opposition of the tories.

What Locke, who was at Oates at the time, thought of that proceeding is not recorded, but we have a very important paper which he drew up some time after, probably in the spring of 1694-5, when parliament was considering whether the act should be again renewed or should be allowed to disappear from the statute book. He here scornfully criticised, one after another, all the chief clauses of the act.

"Heretical, seditious, schismatical, or offensive books," said the second section of the act, "wherein anything contrary to Christian faith or the doctrine or discipline of the church of England is asserted, or which may tend to the scandal of religion, or the church, or the government, or governors of the church, state, or of any corporation, or particular person, are prohibited to be printed, imported, published, or sold." "Some of these terms," Locke urged, are so general and comprehensive, or at least so submitted to the sense and interpretation of the governors of church and state for the time being, that it is impossible any book should pass but just what suits their humours. And who knows but that the motion of the earth may be found to be heretical, as asserting antipodes once was? I know not why a man should not have liberty to print whatever he would speak; and to be answerable for the one, just as he is for the other, if he

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transgresses the law in either. But gagging a man, for fear he should talk heresy or sedition, has no other ground than such as will make gyves necessary, for fear a man should use violence if his hands were free, and must at last end in the imprisonment of all who, you will suspect, may be guilty of treason or misdemeanour. To prevent men being undiscovered for what they print, you may prohibit any book to be printed, published, or sold without the printer's or bookseller's name, under great penalties, whatever be in it. And then let the printer or bookseller whose name is to it be answerable for whatever is against law in it, as if he were the author, unless he can produce the person he had it from, which is all the restraint ought to be upon printing." That suggestion, it should be noted, was adopted in the law now in force.

Locke commented at some length upon the mischievous effect of the act in conferring upon the stationers' company a monopoly in the publication of most of the classics, supplemented by such a heavy tax upon foreign editions that it was almost impossible for poor scholars to procure them, and they had to be content, if they could afford to pay the high price charged even for these, with the English "authorised" editions "scandalously ill-printed, both for letter, paper, and correctness." "Upon occasion of this instance of the classic authors," he added, "I demand whether, if another act for printing should be made, it be not reasonable that nobody should have any peculiar right in any book which has been in print fifty years, but any one as well as another might have the liberty to print it; for by such titles as these, which lie dormant and hinder others, many good books come quite to be lost. But, be that determined as it will in regard of those authors who now write and sell their copies to booksellers, this certainly is very absurd at first sight, that any person or company should now have a title to the printing of the works of Tully, Cæsar, or Livy, who lived so many ages since, in exclusion of any other; nor can there be any reason in nature why I might not print them as well as the company of stationers, if I thought fit. This liberty, to any one, of printing them, is certainly the way to have them the cheaper and the better; and it is this which, in Holland, has produced so many fair and excellent editions of them, whilst the printers all strive to outdo one another, which has also brought in great sums to the trade of Holland, whilst our company of stationers, having the monopoly here by this act and their patents, slobber them over as they can cheapest, so that there is not a book of them vended beyond seas, both for their badness and dearness; nor will the scholars beyond seas look upon a book of them now printed at London, so