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5 - Security, Stability and Credit: The Hanoverian Succession and the Politics of the Financial Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2020

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Summary

In the early summer of 1714, John Toland, the heterodox freethinker best known for his anticlerical principles, published a pamphlet outlining how enemies of Queen Anne and the intended Hanoverian Succession attempted to split the Protestant interest and promote Catholicism in Britain and Ireland. The Grand Mystery Laid Open was not just a call to good Protestants to be wary of confessional enemies of the state, however. The last third of the pamphlet contained a section titled ‘The Sacredness of Parliamentary Securities; Against those, Who wou’d indirectly this Year, or more directly the next (if they live so long) attack the Publick Funds.’ In it, Toland condemned those who wanted the government to negotiate lower interest payments it made to stakeholders in the national debt. These politicians, although they claimed to be concerned with the staggering state of the debt, were nothing better than Jacobites who wanted the return of the house of Stuart to the throne. Such schemes would require altering existing laws and would therefore have disastrous consequences for Britain and its constitution. No one would trust the government to keep its financial promises and lenders would withhold their money. The country would no longer be in a position to fight the wars that the national debt had been created to fund. Ultimately, the only way to guarantee Britain's creditworthiness was to support Queen Anne and the Hanoverian Succession:

[T]he house of HANOVER will be for the punctual payment of all the advantages granted by Parliament, and be as religiously exact in preserving the Publick Funds untouch’d, as in all things else they’ll be for GOVERNING BY LAW, without which they have neither any right to the Throne, nor security in it.

In addition to these warnings, Toland's pamphlet offered a particular view of the Glorious Revolution and its consequences. In discussing the importance of the national debt and public credit to Britain's economy, Toland emphasised their connections to the constitutional settlement that had been reached in 1689. It was only after removing King James II from the throne that Parliament and the political nation were able to establish new financial mechanisms that provided much-needed revenues for the state. In this view, the creation of national debt, public credit and the Bank of England were all inextricably linked to the Revolution Settlement.

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Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2019

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