The fall of the Earl of Danby is to be attributed to an artful contrivance by the French Court; which, from revenge against him for his real enmity, accomplished his ruin, by pretending that he was a friend. By means of Montague--who laid before the House of Commons despatches, written to him by the Minister, most unwillingly, but at the King’s command--Louis XIV. established against Danby, charges of intrigues with France for obtaining money, quite sufficient to extinguish for ever all the credit which he had ever had with his own countrymen. His plea of unwillingness to enter into his master’s policy with regard to France, although true, proved inadequate to save him from impeachment by the Commons, who acted upon the constitutional principle--that the King’s Ministers are responsible for what they perform in the King’s name. Danby, though made a victim of revenge, and in truth, suffering “not on account of his delinquency, but on account of his merits,” had put himself in such a false position, that Parliament could do no otherwise than demand his removal from office. How far the extreme step of impeachment can be justified is another question; and, at all events, the charge of his being Popishly affected is truly absurd. The accusation of his concealing the Popish plot, of suppressing the evidence, and of discountenancing the witnesses, could not be made even plausible, for though he had been sceptical at first respecting the story told by Oates, as any sensible man might well be, he had afterwards fully committed himself to the proceedings against the accused Papists; yet perhaps there is some truth in an amusing passage written by one who cherished strong prejudices against him:--“The Earl of Danby thought he could serve himself of this plot of Oates, and accordingly endeavoured at it; but it is plain that he had no command of the engine, and instead of his sharing the popularity of nursing it, he found himself so intrigued that it was like a wolf by the ears: he could neither hold it nor let it go, and for certain it bit him at last, just as when a barbarous mastiff attacks a man, he cries ‘poor cur,’ and is pulled down at last.”[14] The resolution of the Commons on the 19th of December, 1678, to impeach the Lord Treasurer, was followed by a prorogation on the 30th, and a dissolution on the 24th of January, 1679; this Parliament having then sat for the long space of eighteen years. [Sidenote: 1679.]