an enemy has been strong enough at sea to attack it from the water, the attempt was defeated. Besides this there were other victories in Spain, and the English and their friends hoped to be able to conquer the country for the Archduke Charles. The Spaniards were determined not to submit to him. They clung to Philip V., for much the same reason that the English had clung to William. They did not like having a foreign king, but they preferred a king who lived among them to one who tried to force them to obey him by using the help of foreign armies.

4. The Union with Scotland.-In the midst of all these victories a question was raised which was of much greater importance to Englishmen than the question whether the king of Spain was to be Philip or Charles. The Act of Settlement had provided that after Anne's death the throne of England should be occupied by the Electress Sophia or her son. But the Scottish Parliament had not done the same thing. As Scotland was a separate kingdom, with a Parliament and laws of its own, it might make arrangements for having a king after Anne's death who might be a different person from the king of England. Of course the English did not like this. They did not want to have Scotland again unconnected with Fngland, and perhaps ready to make war upon it as it used to do before James I. had come to rule in England. The Scotch did not in reality want this any more than the English did, but they had hitherto been forced to pay heavy duties whenever they brought goods to England to sell, as if they had been foreigners, and they were determined that

they would not do as the English asked them to do about the throne, unless they could have freedom of trade with England. The English fancied that if they allowed the Scots to buy and sell in England without paying duties, they would be able to sell goods much more cheaply than the English did, because Scotchmen lived so much more economically than Englishmen, who fed upon bread and beef instead of feeding on oatmeal porridge. The English were therefore very much frightened lest they should all be ruined, because every one would buy goods from the Scots. At last, however, the English gave way, and in 1707 the Act of Union was passed, by which England and Scotland became one people with one Parliament, and with free trade between the two countries, though Scotland kept its own laws and its own Presbyterian Church. After all, the English did not find that they were ruined.

5. The Whig Ministry. The war was still going on. Marlborough won two more great battles, one at Oudenarde, and another at Malplaquet. In both the French fought desperately, and there was less advantage gained by the conquerors after these battles than had been gained after those of Blenheim and Ramilies. As the war went on the Tories

began to get tired of it. They thought that it would be quite enough if the French could be driven out of the Netherlands, and that it did not matter to England whether a French prince were king of Spain or not. Ever since the great war in William's time a practice had been growing up of giving the chief offices in the State to men who

agreed together in their political opinions. These officers-a Lord Chancellor, who was at the head of the law; the First Lord of the Treasury, who looked after the payment of the public money; the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who looked after the raising of taxes; the First Lord of the Admiralty, who looked after the Navy; the Secretaries of State who gave orders on behalf of the Government in various matters at home and abroad-met together with one or two other officials to consult about affairs of State. They were themselves called Ministers, and their meetings were called the meetings of the Cabinet. The Cabinet in reality governed England. As the Whigs were in favour of the war, and as for some time the war was popular, the Whigs gained a majority in the House of Commons after the Battle of Blenheim; and Marlborough, who wanted the war to go on, persuaded the queen to appoint a Whig Cabinet. Before long, however, there came a change in the feelings of the people. Many thought that the time had come to make peace, and this made the Whigs as unpopular in 1709 as they had been popular in 1704, the year of the battle of Blenheim.

6. The Sacheverell Trial. At the end of 1709, when people were getting tired of the war, a certain Dr. Sacheverell preached a sermon against the Dissenters and the Whigs who favoured them. In the course of the sermon, he declared his belief that all resistance to a king was unchristian as well as unlawful. The Whig ministers considered this to be an attack on the resistance which had brought about the Revolution at the end of the reign of James II.

They had not yet learned that liberty of speech was a good thing when things were said against themselves, and they were unwise enough to impeach Sacheverell. The preacher became at once popular with the London mob. Crowds ran about the streets, pulling down the Dissenters' chapels and shouting for the Church and Dr. Sacheverell. The House of Lords condemned Sacheverell's sermon to be burnt, and forbade him to preach for the next three years. It was not a very hard punishment, and Dr. Sacheverell did not lose much by it. As he went about the country he found himself received as if he had been a king making a progress amongst a loyal people. The church bells were rung, healths were drunk, and bonfires lighted up in his honour. It was quite plain that the people had grown tired of the Whigs.

7. The Tory Ministry. The queen, too, had never really liked the Whigs, and had only been persuaded by Marlborough to favour them. Just at this time. she quarrelled with the Duchess, who had been her great friend ever since she was a child. The Duchess was proud and violent in temper, and treated the queen so haughtily that Anne could bear it no longer. The queen sent away the Duchess and dismissed the ministers. A new Tory ministry was formed, of which the principal members were Harley, a diligent, plodding man of no great powers of mind, and St. John, a man of very great ability, who could make better speeches than any one in the House of Commons, and who looked on politics as a very amusing game, which was particularly amusing if it brought riches and power to himself.

8. The Peace of Utrecht.-The first thought of the new ministers was to make peace with France. It was quite right that they should do this, for France had become so weak by its many defeats that nothing more was to be gained by war. In 1713 the Treaty of Utrecht was signed. The Archduke Charles, who had failed to conquer Spain, was now Emperor and ruler of the Austrian dominions, and

he was allowed to add to his other territories the Spanish lands in Italy and the Netherlands Philip V., the grandson of Lewis XIV., kept Spain itself and the Spanish colonies in America and elsewhere.

9. The Last Days of Queen Anne.-Besides making peace, the new ministers had been doing all they could against the Dissenters. Parliament had at last made a law against Occasional Conformity, and