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Great was Philip's joy in consequence. "You cannot imagine my satisfaction," he wrote, "at the news you give me concerning last Easter." With a ruined country, starving and mutinous troops, a bankrupt exchequer, and a desperate and pauper population, Alexander Farnese was not unwilling to gain time by simulated negotiations for peace.
I then out and by coach to White Hall and to the Treasury chamber, where did a little business, and thence to the Exchequer to Burges, about Tangier business, and so back again, stepping into the Hall a little, and then homeward by coach, and met at White Hall with Sir H. Cholmly, and so into his coach, and he with me to the Excise Office, there to do a little business also, in the way he telling me that undoubtedly the peace is concluded; for he did stand yesterday where he did hear part of the discourse at the Council table, and there did hear the King argue for it.
If we only adopted the same attitude towards Premiers and Chancellors of the Exchequer, if we genially encouraged their stammering and delightful attempts at human speech, we should be in a far more wise and tolerant temper. A child has a knack of making experiments in life, generally healthy in motive, but often intolerable in a domestic commonwealth.
It was urged, moreover, that three or four thousand Spaniards would not be sufficient to coerce all the provinces, and that there was not money enough in the royal exchequer to pay the wages of a single company of the troops. "It cuts me to the heart," wrote the Bishop to Philip, "to see the Spanish infantry leave us; but go they must.
It was a mere chance whether what was called a shilling was really tenpence, sixpence or a groat. The results of some experiments which were tried at that time deserve to be mentioned. The officers of the Exchequer weighed fifty-seven thousand two hundred pounds of hammered money which had recently been paid in. The weight ought to have been above two hundred and twenty thousand ounces.
Sir Francis Dashwood was remarkable as having been the worst and stupidest Chancellor of the Exchequer known to history. Lord Sandwich was made First Lord of the Admiralty. As for the third in this triumvirate of blackguards, Mr. Thomas Potter was a son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he was soon afterwards made Vice-Treasurer for Ireland.
When he had first arrived in the provinces, his exchequer was overflowing, and he was even supposed to devote a considerable portion of the military funds to defray the expenses of his magnificent housekeeping at Brussels. But those halcyon days were over.
After holding the offices of Pres. of the Board of Trade, Colonial Sec., and Chancellor of the Exchequer, he attained the position of Prime Minister, which he held four times 1868-74, 1880-85, 1885-86, and 1892-93.
It has now become obvious to all men that the Government must look to its own means for supplying its wants, and it is consoling to know that these means are altogether adequate for the object. The exchequer, if adopted, will greatly aid in bringing about this result.
As Chancellor of the Exchequer he was the Minister most interested in knowing that Palmerston, Russell, and himself were banded together by mutual pledge to make the Confederacy a nation the next week, and that the Southern leaders had as yet no hope of "making a nation" but in them. Such thoughts occurred to every one at the moment and time only added to their force.
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