Is heard no more in heaven.”
The defection of Strafford from the popular party contributed mainly to
draw on him the hatred of his contemporaries. It has since made him an
object of peculiar interest to those whose lives have been spent, like
his, in proving that there is no malice like the malice of a renegade;
Nothing can be more natural or becoming than that one turncoat should
eulogize another.
Many enemies of public liberty have been distinguished by their private
virtues. But Strafford was the same throughout. As was the statesman,
such was the kinsman and such the lover. His conduct towards Lord
Mountmorris is recorded by Clarendon. For a word which can scarcely be
called rash, which could not have been made the subject of an ordinary
civil action, the Lord Lieutenant dragged a man of high rank, married to
a relative of that saint about whom he whimpered to the peers, before a
tribunal of slaves. Sentence of death was passed. Everything but death
was inflicted. Yet the treatment which Lord Ely experienced was still
more scandalous. That nobleman was thrown into prison, in order
to compel him to settle his estate in a manner agreeable to his
daughter-in-law, whom, as there is every reason to believe, Strafford
had debauched. These stories do not rest on vague report. The historians
most partial to the minister admit their truth, and censure them in
terms which, though too lenient for the occasion, was too severe. These
facts are alone sufficient to justify the appellation with which Pym
branded him “the wicked Earl.”
In spite of all Strafford’s vices, in spite of all his dangerous
projects, he was certainly entitled to the benefit of the law; but of
the law in all its rigour; of the law according to the utmost strictness
of the letter, which killeth. He was not to be torn in pieces by a mob,
or stabbed in the back by an assassin. He was not to have punishment
meted out to him from his own iniquitous measure. But if justice, in the
whole range of its wide armoury, contained one weapon which could pierce
him, that weapon his pursuers were bound, before God and man, to employ.
“If he may
Find mercy in the law, ‘tis his: if none,
Let him not seek’t of us.”
Such was the language which the Commons might justly use.
Did then the articles against Strafford strictly amount to high treason?
Many people, who know neither what the articles were, nor what high
treason is, will answer in the negative, simply because the accused
person, speaking for his life, took that ground of defence. The journals
of the Lords show that the judges were consulted. They answered, with
one accord, that the articles on which the earl was convicted amounted
to high treason. This judicial opinion, even if we suppose it to
have been erroneous, goes far to justify the Parliament. The judgment
pronounced in the Exchequer Chamber has always been urged by the
apologists of Charles in defence of his conduct respecting ship-money.
Yet on that occasion there was but a bare majority in favour of the
party at whose pleasure all the magistrates composing the tribunal were
removable. The decision in the case of Strafford was unanimous; as far
as we can judge, it was unbiassed; and, though there may be room for
hesitation, we think, on the whole, that it was reasonable. “It may
be remarked,” says Mr. Hallam, “that the fifteenth article of the
impeachment, charging Strafford with raising money by his own authority,
and quartering troops on the people of Ireland, in order to compel their
obedience to his unlawful requisitions, upon which, and upon one other
article, not upon the whole matter, the Peers voted him guilty, does,
at least, approach very nearly, if we may not say more, to a substantive
treason within the statute of Edward the Third, as a levying of war
against the King.” This most sound and just exposition has provoked
a very ridiculous reply. “It should seem to be an Irish construction
this,” says, an assailant of Mr. Hallam, “which makes the raising money
for the King’s service, with his knowledge, and by his approbation, to
come under the head of levying war on the King, and therefore to be high
treason.” Now, people who undertake to write on points of constitutional
law should know, what every attorney’s clerk and every forward schoolboy
on an upper form knows, that, by a fundamental maxim of our polity, the
King can do no wrong; that every court is bound to suppose his conduct
and his sentiments to be, on every occasion, such as they ought to be;
and that no evidence can be received for the purpose of setting aside
this loyal and salutary presumption. The Lords therefore, were bound to
take it for granted that the King considered arms which were unlawfully
directed against his people as directed against his own throne.
The remarks of Mr. Hallam on the bill of attainder, though, as
usual, weighty and acute, do not perfectly satisfy us. He defends the
principle, but objects to the severity of the punishment. That, on great
emergencies, the State may justifiably pass a retrospective act against
an offender, we have no doubt whatever. We are acquainted with only one
argument on the other side, which has in it enough of reason to bear an
answer. Warning, it is said, is the end of punishment. But a punishment
inflicted, not by a general rule, but by an arbitrary discretion, cannot
serve the purpose of a warning. It is therefore useless; and useless
pain ought not to be inflicted. This sophism has found its way into
several books on penal legislation. It admits however of a very simple
refutation. In the first place, punishments ex post facto are not
altogether useless even as warnings. They are warnings to a particular
class which stand in great need of warnings to favourites and ministers.
They remind persons of this description that there maybe a day of
reckoning for those who ruin and enslave their country in all forms
of the law. But this is not all. Warning is, in ordinary cases, the
principal end of punishment; but it is not the only end. To remove
the offender, to preserve society from those dangers which are to be
apprehended from his incorrigible depravity, is often one of the ends.
In the case of such a knave as Wild, or such a ruffian as Thurtell, it
is a very important end. In the case of a powerful and wicked statesman,
it is infinitely more important; so important, as alone to justify the
utmost severity, even though it were certain that his fate would not
deter others from imitating his example. At present, indeed, we should
think it extremely pernicious to take such a course, even with a worse
minister than Strafford, if a worse could exist; for, at present,
Parliament has only to withhold its support from a Cabinet to produce an
immediate change of hands. The case was widely different in the reign of
Charles the First. That Prince had governed during eleven years without
any Parliament; and, even when Parliament was sitting, had supported
Buckingham against its most violent remonstrances.
Mr. Hallam is of opinion that a bill of pains and penalties ought to
have been passed; but he draws a distinction less just, we think, than
his distinctions usually are. His opinion, so far as we can collect
it, is this, that there are almost insurmountable objections to
retrospective laws for capital punishment, but that, where the
punishment stops short of death, the objections are comparatively
trifling. Now the practice of taking the severity of the penalty into
consideration, when the question is about the mode of procedure and the
rules of evidence, is no doubt sufficiently common. We often see a
man convicted of a simple larceny on evidence on which he would not be
convicted of a burglary. It sometimes happens that a jury, when there
is strong suspicion, but not absolute demonstration, that an act,
unquestionably amounting to murder, was committed by the prisoner before
them, will find him guilty of manslaughter. But this is surely very
irrational. The rules of evidence no more depend on the magnitude of the
interests at stake than the rules of arithmetic. We might as well say
that we have a greater chance of throwing a size when we are playing for
a penny than when we are playing for a thousand pounds, as that a form
of trial which is sufficient for the purposes of justice, in a matter
affecting liberty and property, is insufficient in a matter affecting
life. Nay, if a mode of proceeding be too lax for capital cases, it is,
a fortiori, too lax for all others; for in capital cases, the principles
of human nature will always afford considerable security. No judge is so
cruel as he who indemnifies himself for scrupulosity in cases of blood,
by licence in affairs of smaller importance. The difference in tale on
the one side far more than makes up for the difference in weight on the
other.
If there be any universal objection to retrospective punishment, there
is no more to be said. But such is not the opinion of Mr. Hallam. He
approves of the mode of proceeding. He thinks that a punishment, not
previously affixed by law to the offences of Strafford, should have
been inflicted; that Strafford should have been, by act of Parliament,
degraded from his rank, and condemned to perpetual banishment. Our
difficulty would have been at the first step, and there only. Indeed
we can scarcely conceive that any case which does not call for capital
punishment can call for punishment by a retrospective act. We can
scarcely conceive a man so wicked and so dangerous that the whole course
of law must be disturbed in order to reach him, yet not so wicked as to
deserve the severest sentence, nor so dangerous as to require the last
and surest custody, that of the grave. If we had thought that Strafford
might be safely suffered to live in France, we should have thought it
better that he should continue to live in England, than that he should
be exiled by a special act. As to degradation, it was not the Earl, but
the general and the statesman, whom the people had to fear. Essex said,
on that occasion, with more truth than elegance, “Stone dead hath no
fellow.” And often during the civil wars the Parliament had reason to
rejoice that an irreversible law and an impassable barrier protected
them from the valour and capacity of Wentworth.
It is remarkable that neither Hyde nor Falkland voted against the bill
of attainder. There is, indeed, reason to believe that Falkland spoke in
favour of it. In one respect, as Mr. Hallam has observed, the proceeding
was honourably distinguished from others of the same kind. An act was
passed to relieve the children of Strafford from the forfeiture and
corruption of blood which were the legal consequences of the sentence.
The Crown had never shown equal generosity in a case of treason. The
liberal conduct of the Commons has been fully and most appropriately
repaid. The House of Wentworth has since that time been as much
distinguished by public spirit as by power and splendour, and may at
the present moment boast of members with whom Say and Hampden would have
been proud to act.
It is somewhat curious that the admirers of Strafford should also be,
without a single exception, the admirers of Charles; for, whatever
we may think of the conduct of the Parliament towards the unhappy
favourite, there can be no doubt that the treatment which he received
from his master was disgraceful. Faithless alike to his people and to
his tools, the King did not scruple to play the part of the cowardly
approver, who hangs his accomplice. It is good that there should be such
men as Charles in every league of villainy. It is for such men that the
offer of pardon and reward which appears after a murder is intended.
They are indemnified, remunerated and despised. The very magistrate who
avails himself of their assistance looks on them as more contemptible
than the criminal whom they betray. Was Strafford innocent? Was he a
meritorious servant of the Crown? If so, what shall we think of the
Prince, who having solemnly promised him that not a hair of his head
should be hurt, and possessing an unquestioned constitutional right to
save him, gave him up to the vengeance of his enemies? There were some
points which we know that Charles would not concede, and for which he
was willing to risk the chances of the civil war. Ought not a King, who
will make a stand for anything, to make a stand for the innocent blood?
Was Strafford guilty? Even on this supposition, it is difficult not to
feel disdain for the partner of his guilt, the tempter turned punisher.
If, indeed, from that time forth, the conduct of Charles had been
blameless, it might have been said that his eyes were at last opened to
the errors of his former conduct, and that, in sacrificing to the wishes
of his Parliament a minister whose crime had been a devotion too zealous
to the interests of his prerogative, he gave a painful and deeply
humiliating proof of the sincerity of his repentance. We may describe
the King’s behaviour on this occasion in terms resembling those which
Hume has employed when speaking of the conduct of Churchill at the
Revolution. It required ever after the most rigid justice and sincerity
in the dealings of Charles with his people to vindicate his conduct
towards his friend. His subsequent dealings with his people, however,
clearly showed, that it was not from any respect for the Constitution,
or from any sense of the deep criminality of the plans in which
Strafford and himself had been engaged, that he gave up his minister to
the axe. It became evident that he had abandoned a servant who, deeply
guilty as to all others, was guiltless to him alone, solely in order to
gain time for maturing other schemes of tyranny, and purchasing the aid
of the other Wentworths. He, who would not avail himself of the power
which the laws gave him to save an adherent to whom his honour was
pledged, soon showed that he did not scruple to break every law and
forfeit every pledge, in order to work the ruin of his opponents.
“Put not your trust in princes!” was the expression of the fallen
minister, when he heard that Charles had consented to his death. The
whole history of the times is a sermon on that bitter text. The defence
of the Long Parliament is comprised in the dying words of its victim.
The early measures of that Parliament Mr. Hallam in general approves.
But he considers the proceedings which took place after the recess in
the summer of 1641 as mischievous and violent. He thinks that, from
that time, the demands of the Houses were not warranted by any imminent
danger to the Constitution and that in the war which ensued they were
clearly the aggressors. As this is one of the most interesting questions
in our history, we will venture to state, at some length, the reasons
which have led us to form an opinion on it contrary to that of a writer
whose judgment we so highly respect.
We will premise that we think worse of King Charles the First than even
Mr. Hallam appears to do. The fixed hatred of liberty which was the
principle of the King’s public conduct the unscrupulousness with which
he adopted any means which might enable him to attain his ends, the
readiness with which he gave promises, the impudence with which he broke
them, the cruel indifference with which he threw away his useless or
damaged tools, made him, at least till his character was fully exposed,
and his power shaken to its foundations, a more dangerous enemy to the
Constitution than a man of far greater talents and resolution might
have been. Such princes may still be seen, the scandals of the southern
thrones of Europe, princes false alike to the accomplices who have
served them and to the opponents who have spared them, princes who, in
the hour of danger, concede everything, swear everything, hold out their
cheeks to every smiter, give up to punishment every instrument of their
tyranny, and await with meek and smiling implacability the blessed day
of perjury and revenge.
We will pass by the instances of oppression and falsehood which
disgraced the early part of the reign of Charles. We will leave out of
the question the whole history of his third Parliament, the price which
he exacted for assenting to the Petition of Right, the perfidy with
which he violated his engagements, the death of Eliot, the barbarous
punishments inflicted by the Star-Chamber, the ship-money, and all the
measures now universally condemned, which disgraced his administration
from 1630 to 1640. We will admit that it might be the duty of the
Parliament after punishing the most guilty of his creatures, after
abolishing the inquisitorial tribunals which had been the instruments
of his tyranny, after reversing the unjust sentences of his victims to
pause in its course. The concessions which had been made were great, the
evil of civil war obvious, the advantages even of victory doubtful. The
former errors of the King might be imputed to youth, to the pressure of
circumstances, to the influence of evil counsel, to the undefined state
of the law. We firmly believe that if, even at this eleventh hour,
Charles had acted fairly towards his people, if he had even acted fairly
towards his own partisans, the House of Commons would have given him a
fair chance of retrieving the public confidence. Such was the opinion of
Clarendon. He distinctly states that the fury of opposition had abated,
that a reaction had begun to take place, that the majority of those
who had taken part against the King were desirous of an honourable
and complete reconciliation and that the more violent or, as it soon
appeared, the more judicious members of the popular party were fast
declining in credit. The Remonstrance had been carried with great
difficulty. The uncompromising antagonists of the court such as
Cromwell, had begun to talk of selling their estates and leaving
England. The event soon showed that they were the only men who
really understood how much inhumanity and fraud lay hid under the
constitutional language and gracious demeanour of the King.
The attempt to seize the five members was undoubtedly the real cause of
the war. From that moment, the loyal confidence with which most of the
popular party were beginning to regard the King was turned into hatred
and incurable suspicion. From that moment, the Parliament was compelled
to surround itself with defensive arms. From that moment, the city
assumed the appearance of a garrison. From that moment, in the phrase
of Clarendon, the carriage of Hampden became fiercer, that he drew the
sword and threw away the scabbard. For, from that moment, it must
have been evident to every impartial observer, that, in the midst
of professions, oaths, and smiles, the tyrant was constantly looking
forward to an absolute sway, and to a bloody revenge.
The advocates of Charles have very dexterously contrived to conceal from
their readers the real nature of this transaction. By making concessions
apparently candid and ample, they elude the great accusation. They allow
that the measure was weak and even frantic, an absurd caprice of Lord
Digby, absurdly adopted by the King. And thus they save their client
from the full penalty of his transgression, by entering a plea of guilty
to the minor offence. To us his conduct appears at this day as at the
time it appeared to the Parliament and the city. We think it by no
means so foolish as it pleases his friends to represent it, and far more
wicked.
In the first place, the transaction was illegal from beginning to end.
The impeachment was illegal. The process was illegal. The service was
illegal. If Charles wished to prosecute the five members for treason, a
bill against them should have been sent to a grand jury. That a commoner
cannot be tried for high treason by the Lords at the suit of the Crown,
is part of the very alphabet of our law. That no man can be arrested by
the King in person is equally clear. This was an established maxim of
our jurisprudence even in the time of Edward the Fourth. “A subject,”
said Chief Justice Markham to that Prince, “may arrest for treason:
the King cannot; for, if the arrest be illegal, the party has no remedy
against the King.”
The time at which Charles took his step also deserves consideration. We
have already said that the ardour which the Parliament had displayed at
the time of its first meeting had considerably abated, that the leading
opponents of the court were desponding, and that their followers were in
general inclined to milder and more temperate measures than those which
had hitherto been pursued. In every country, and in none more than
in England, there is a disposition to take the part of those who are
unmercifully run down, and who seem destitute of all means of defence.
Every man who has observed the ebb and flow of public feeling in our own
time will easily recall examples to illustrate this remark. An English
statesman ought to pay assiduous worship to Nemesis, to be most
apprehensive of ruin when he is at the height of power and popularity,
and to dread his enemy most when most completely prostrated. The fate of
the Coalition Ministry in 1784 is perhaps the strongest instance in
our history of the operation of this principle. A few weeks turned
the ablest and most extended Ministry that ever existed into a feeble
Opposition, and raised a King who was talking of retiring to Hanover to
a height of power which none of his predecessors had enjoyed since the
Revolution. A crisis of this description was evidently approaching in
1642. At such a crisis, a Prince of a really honest and generous nature,
who had erred, who had seen his error, who had regretted the lost
affections of his people, who rejoiced in the dawning hope of regaining
them, would be peculiarly careful to take no step which could give
occasion of offence, even to the unreasonable. On the other hand, a
tyrant, whose whole life was a lie, who hated the Constitution the more
because he had been compelled to feign respect for it, and to whom his
own honour and the love of his people were as nothing, would select such
a crisis for some appalling violation of the law, for some stroke which
might remove the chiefs of an Opposition, and intimidate the herd. This
Charles attempted. He missed his blow; but so narrowly, that it would
have been mere madness in those at whom it was aimed to trust him again.
It deserves to be remarked that the King had, a short time before,
promised the most respectable Royalists in the House of Commons,
Falkland, Colepepper, and Hyde, that he would take no measure in which
that House was concerned, without consulting them. On this occasion he
did not consult them. His conduct astonished them more than any other
members of the Assembly. Clarendon says that they were deeply hurt by
this want of confidence, and the more hurt, because, if they had been
consulted, they would have done their utmost to dissuade Charles from so
improper a proceeding. Did it never occur to Clarendon, will it not at
least occur to men less partial, that there was good reason for this?
When the danger to the throne seemed imminent, the King was ready to put
himself for a time into the hands of those who, though they disapproved
of his past conduct, thought that the remedies had now become worse than
the distempers. But we believe that in his heart he regarded both the
parties in the Parliament with feelings of aversion which differed only
in the degree of their intensity, and that the awful warning which
he proposed to give, by immolating the principal supporters of the
Remonstrance, was partly intended for the instruction of those who
had concurred in censuring the ship-money and in abolishing the
Star-Chamber.
The Commons informed the King that their members should be forthcoming
to answer any charge legally brought against them. The Lords refused
to assume the unconstitutional office with which he attempted to invest
them. And what was then his conduct? He went, attended by hundreds of
armed men, to seize the objects of his hatred in the House itself. The
party opposed to him more than insinuated that his purpose was of the
most atrocious kind. We will not condemn him merely on their suspicions.
We will not hold him answerable for the sanguinary expressions of the
loose brawlers who composed his train. We will judge of his act by
itself alone. And we say, without hesitation, that it is impossible
to acquit him of having meditated violence, and violence which might
probably end in blood. He knew that the legality of his proceedings was
denied. He must have known that some of the accused members were men not
likely to submit peaceably to an illegal arrest. There was every reason
to expect that he would find them in their places, that they would
refuse to obey his summons, and that the House would support them in
their refusal. What course would then have been left to him? Unless we
suppose that he went on this expedition for the sole purpose of making
himself ridiculous, we must believe that he would have had recourse to
force. There would have been a scuffle; and it might not, under such
circumstances, have been in his power, even if it had been in his
inclination, to prevent a scuffle from ending in a massacre. Fortunately
for his fame, unfortunately perhaps for what he prized far more, the
interests of his hatred and his ambition, the affair ended differently.
The birds, as he said, were flown, and his plan was disconcerted.
Posterity is not extreme to mark abortive crimes; and thus the King’s
advocates have found it easy to represent a step, which, but for a
trivial accident, might have filled England with mourning and dismay, as
a mere error of judgment, wild and foolish, but perfectly innocent.
Such was not, however, at the time, the opinion of any party. The most
zealous Royalists were so much disgusted and ashamed that they suspended
their opposition to the popular party, and, silently at least, concurred
in measures of precaution so strong as almost to amount to resistance.
From that day, whatever of confidence and loyal attachment had survived
the misrule of seventeen years was, in the great body of the people,
extinguished, and extinguished for ever. As soon as the outrage
had failed, the hypocrisy recommenced. Down to the very eve of this
flagitious attempt Charles had been talking of his respect for the
privileges of Parliament and the liberties of his people. He began again
in the same style on the morrow; but it was too late. To trust him now
would have been, not moderation, but insanity. What common security
would suffice against a Prince who was evidently watching his season
with that cold and patient hatred which, in the long-run, tires out
every other passion?
It is certainly from no admiration of Charles that Mr. Hallam
disapproves of the conduct of the Houses in resorting to arms. But
he thinks that any attempt on the part of that Prince to establish a
despotism would have been as strongly opposed by his adherents as by his
enemies, and that therefore the Constitution might be considered as out
of danger, or, at least that it had more to apprehend from the war than
from the King. On this subject Mr. Hallam dilates at length, and with
conspicuous ability. We will offer a few considerations which lead us to
incline to a different opinion.
The Constitution of England was only one of a large family. In all the
monarchies of Western Europe, during the middle ages, there existed
restraints on the royal authority, fundamental laws, and representative
assemblies. In the fifteenth century, the government of Castile seems to
have been as free as that of our own country. That of Arragon was beyond
all question more so. In France, the sovereign was more absolute. Yet
even in France, the States-General alone could constitutionally impose
taxes; and, at the very time when the authority of those assemblies
was beginning to languish, the Parliament of Paris received such an
accession of strength as enabled it, in some measure, to perform
the functions of a legislative assembly. Sweden and Denmark had
constitutions of a similar description.
Let us overleap two or three hundred years, and contemplate Europe at
the commencement of the eighteenth century. Every free constitution,
save one, had gone down. That of England had weathered the danger,
and was riding in full security. In Denmark and Sweden, the kings had
availed themselves of the disputes which raged between the nobles and
the commons, to unite all the powers of government in their own hands.
In France the institution of the States was only mentioned by lawyers as
a part of the ancient theory of their government. It slept a deep sleep,
destined to be broken by a tremendous waking. No person remembered the
sittings of the three orders, or expected ever to see them renewed.
Louis the Fourteenth had imposed on his parliament a patient silence
of sixty years. His grandson, after the War of the Spanish Succession,
assimilated the constitution of Arragon to that of Castile, and
extinguished the last feeble remains of liberty in the Peninsula. In
England, on the other hand, the Parliament was infinitely more powerful
than it had ever been. Not only was its legislative authority fully
established; but its right to interfere, by advice almost equivalent
to command, in every department of the executive government, was
recognised. The appointment of ministers, the relations with foreign
powers, the conduct of a war or a negotiation, depended less on the
pleasure of the Prince than on that of the two Houses.
What then made us to differ? Why was it that, in that epidemic malady of
constitutions, ours escaped the destroying influence; or rather that, at
the very crisis of the disease, a favourable turn took place in England,
and in England alone? It was not surely without a cause that so many
kindred systems of government, having flourished together so long,
languished and expired at almost the same time.
It is the fashion to say that the progress of civilisation is favourable
to liberty. The maxim, though in some sense true, must be limited by
many qualifications and exceptions. Wherever a poor and rude nation,
in which the form of government is a limited monarchy, receives a great
accession of wealth and knowledge, it is in imminent danger of falling
under arbitrary power.
In such a state of society as that which existed all over Europe during
the middle ages, very slight checks sufficed to keep the sovereign in
order. His means of corruption and intimidation were very scanty. He had
little money, little patronage, no military establishment. His armies
resembled juries. They were drawn out of the mass of the people:
they soon returned to it again: and the character which was habitual
prevailed over that which was occasional. A campaign of forty days was
too short, the discipline of a national militia too lax, to efface from
their minds the feelings of civil life. As they carried to the camp the
sentiments and interests of the farm and the shop, so they carried back
to the farm and the shop the military accomplishments which they had
acquired in the camp. At home the soldier learned how to value his
rights, abroad how to defend them.
Such a military force as this was a far stronger restraint on the regal
power than any legislative assembly. The army, now the most formidable
instrument of the executive power, was then the most formidable check on
that power. Resistance to an established government, in modern times
so difficult and perilous an enterprise, was in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries the simplest and easiest matter in the world.
Indeed, it was far too simple and easy. An insurrection was got up then
almost as easily as a petition is got up now. In a popular cause, or
even in an unpopular cause favoured by a few great nobles, a force of
ten thousand armed men was raised in a week. If the King were, like our
Edward the Second and Richard the Second, generally odious, he could not
procure a single bow or halbert. He fell at once and without an effort.
In such times a sovereign like Louis the Fifteenth or the Emperor Paul
would have been pulled down before his misgovernment had lasted for a
month. We find that all the fame and influence of our Edward the Third
could not save his Madame de Pompadour from the effects of the public
hatred.
Hume and many other writers have hastily concluded, that, in the
fifteenth century, the English Parliament was altogether servile,
because it recognised, without opposition, every successful usurper.
That it was not servile its conduct on many occasions of inferior
importance is sufficient to prove. But surely it was not strange that
the majority of the nobles, and of the deputies chosen by the commons,
should approve of revolutions which the nobles and commons had effected.
The Parliament did not blindly follow the event of war, but participated
in those changes of public sentiment on which the event of war depended.
The legal check was secondary and auxiliary to that which the nation
held in its own hands.
There have always been monarchies in Asia, in which the royal authority
has been tempered by fundamental laws, though no legislative body exists
to watch over them. The guarantee is the opinion of a community of
which every individual is a soldier. Thus, the king of Cabul, as Mr.
Elphinstone informs us, cannot augment the land revenue, or interfere
with the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals.
In the European kingdoms of this description there were representative
assemblies. But it was not necessary that those assemblies should meet
very frequently, that they should interfere with all the operations
of the executive government, that they should watch with jealousy, and
resent with prompt indignation, every violation of the laws which the
sovereign might commit. They were so strong that they might safely be
careless. He was so feeble that he might safely be suffered to encroach.
If he ventured too far, chastisement and ruin were at hand. In fact,
the people generally suffered more from his weakness than from his
authority. The tyranny of wealthy and powerful subjects was the
characteristic evil of the times. The royal prerogatives were not even
sufficient for the defence of property and the maintenance of police.
The progress of civilisation introduced a great change. War became a
science, and, as a necessary consequence, a trade. The great body of the
people grew every day more reluctant to undergo the inconveniences of
military service, and better able to pay others for undergoing them.
A new class of men, therefore, dependent on the Crown alone, natural
enemies of those popular rights which are to them as the dew to the
fleece of Gideon, slaves among freemen, freemen among slaves, grew into
importance. That physical force which in the dark ages had belonged to
the nobles and the commons, and had, far more than any charter, or any
assembly, been the safeguard of their privileges, was transferred
entire to the King. Monarchy gained in two ways. The sovereign was
strengthened, the subjects weakened. The great mass of the population,
destitute of all military discipline and organisation, ceased to
exercise any influence by force on political transactions. There have,
indeed, during the last hundred and fifty years, been many popular
insurrections in Europe: but all have failed except those in which the
regular army has been induced to join the disaffected.
Those legal checks which, while the sovereign remained dependent on his
subjects, had been adequate to the purpose for which they were designed,
were now found wanting. The dikes which had been sufficient while the
waters were low were not high enough to keep out the springtide. The
deluge passed over them and, according to the exquisite illustration of
Butler, the formal boundaries, which had excluded it, now held it in.
The old constitutions fared like the old shields and coats of mail. They
were the defences of a rude age; and they did well enough against the
weapons of a rude age. But new and more formidable means of destruction
were invented. The ancient panoply became useless; and it was thrown
aside, to rust in lumber-rooms, or exhibited only as part of an idle
pageant.
Thus absolute monarchy was established on the Continent. England
escaped; but she escaped very narrowly. Happily our insular situation,
and the pacific policy of James, rendered standing armies unnecessary
here, till they had been for some time kept up in the neighbouring
kingdoms. Our public men, had therefore an opportunity of watching the
effects produced by this momentous change on governments which bore a
close analogy to that established in England. Everywhere they saw the
power of the monarch increasing, the resistance of assemblies which were
no longer supported by a national force gradually becoming more and more
feeble, and at length altogether ceasing. The friends and the enemies of
liberty perceived with equal clearness the causes of this general decay.
It is the favourite theme of Strafford. He advises the King to procure
from the judges a recognition of his right to raise an army at his
pleasure. “This place well fortified,” says he, “for ever vindicates the
monarchy at home from under the conditions and restraints of subjects.”
We firmly believe that he was in the right. Nay; we believe that, even
if no deliberate scheme, of arbitrary government had been formed, by
the sovereign and his ministers, there was great reason to apprehend
a natural extinction of the Constitution. If, for example, Charles had
played the part of Gustavus Adolphus, if he had carried on a popular war
for the defence of the Protestant cause in Germany, if he had gratified
the national pride by a series of victories, if he had formed an army of
forty or fifty thousand devoted soldiers, we do not see what chance the
nation would have had of escaping from despotism. The judges would
have given as strong a decision in favour of camp-money as they gave in
favour of ship-money. If they had been scrupulous, it would have made
little difference. An individual who resisted would have been treated
as Charles treated Eliot, and as Strafford wished to treat Hampden.
The Parliament might have been summoned once in twenty years, to
congratulate a King on his accession, or to give solemnity to some great
measure of state. Such had been the fate of legislative assemblies as
powerful, as much respected, as high-spirited, as the English Lords and
Commons.
The two Houses, surrounded by the ruins of so many free constitutions
overthrown or sapped by the new military system, were required to
intrust the command of an army and the conduct of the Irish war to a
King who had proposed to himself the destruction of liberty as the great
end of his policy. We are decidedly of opinion that it would have been
fatal to comply. Many of those who took the side of the King on this
question would have cursed their own loyalty, if they had seen him
return from war; at the head of twenty thousand troops, accustomed to
carriage and free quarters in Ireland.
We think with Mr. Hallam that many of the Royalist nobility and gentry
were true friends to the Constitution, and that, but for the solemn
protestations by which the King bound himself to govern according to
the law for the future, they never would have joined his standard. But
surely they underrated the public danger. Falkland is commonly selected
as the most respectable specimen of this class. He was indeed a man of
great talents and of great virtues but, we apprehend, infinitely too
fastidious for public life. He did not perceive that, in such times as
those on which his lot had fallen, the duty of a statesman is to choose
the better cause and to stand by it, in spite of those excesses by which
every cause, however good in itself, will be disgraced. The present
evil always seemed to him the worst. He was always going backward and
forward; but it should be remembered to his honour that it was always
from the stronger to the weaker side that he deserted. While Charles was
oppressing the people, Falkland was a resolute champion of liberty.
He attacked Strafford. He even concurred in strong measures against
Episcopacy. But the violence of his party annoyed him, and drove him to
the other party, to be equally annoyed there. Dreading the success of
the cause which he had espoused, disgusted by the courtiers of Oxford,
as he had been disgusted by the patriots of Westminster, yet bound by
honour not to abandon the cause, for which he was in arms, he pined
away, neglected his person, went about moaning for peace, and at last
rushed desperately on death, as the best refuge in such miserable times.
If he had lived through the scenes that followed, we have little doubt
that he would have condemned himself to share the exile and beggary of
the royal family; that he would then have returned to oppose all their
measures; that he would have been sent to the Tower by the Commons as
a stifler of the Popish Plot, and by the King as an accomplice in the
Rye-House Plot; and that, if he had escaped being hanged, first by
Scroggs, and then by Jeffreys, he would, after manfully opposing James
the Second through years of tyranny, have been seized with a fit of
compassion, at the very moment of the Revolution, have voted for a
regency, and died a non-juror.
We do not dispute that the royal party contained many excellent men and
excellent citizens. But this we say, that they did not discern those
times. The peculiar glory of the Houses of Parliament is that, in the
great plague and mortality of constitutions, they took their stand
between the living and the dead. At the very crisis of our destiny, at
the very moment when the fate which had passed on every other nation was
about to pass on England, they arrested the danger.
Those who conceive that the parliamentary leaders were desirous merely
to maintain the old constitution, and those who represent them as
conspiring to subvert it, are equally in error. The old constitution,
as we have attempted to show, could not be maintained. The progress
of time, the increase of wealth, the diffusion of knowledge, the great
change in the European system of war, rendered it impossible that any
of the monarchies of the middle ages should continue to exist on the old
footing. The prerogative of the crown was constantly advancing. If the
privileges of the people were to remain absolutely stationary, they
would relatively retrograde. The monarchical and democratical parts of
the government were placed in a situation not unlike that of the two
brothers in the Fairy Queen, one of whom saw the soil of his inheritance
daily, washed away by the tide and joined to that of his rival. The
portions had at first been fairly meted out. By a natural and constant
transfer, the one had been extended; the other had dwindled to nothing.
A new partition, or a compensation, was necessary to restore the
original equality.
It was now, therefore, absolutely necessary to violate the formal part
of the constitution, in order to preserve its spirit. This might have
been done, as it was done at the Revolution, by expelling the reigning
family, and calling to the throne princes who, relying solely on an
elective title, would find it necessary to respect the privileges and
follow the advice of the assemblies to which they owed everything, to
pass every bill which the Legislature strongly pressed upon them, and
to fill the offices of state with men in whom the Legislature confided.
But, as the two Houses did not choose to change the dynasty, it was
necessary that they should do directly what at the Revolution was done
indirectly. Nothing is more usual than to hear it said that, if the
Houses had contented themselves with making such a reform in the
government under Charles as was afterwards made under William, they
would have had the highest claim to national gratitude; and that in
their violence they overshot the mark. But how was it possible to make
such a settlement under Charles? Charles was not, like William and the
princes of the Hanoverian line, bound by community of interests and
dangers to the Parliament. It was therefore necessary that he should be
bound by treaty and statute.
Mr. Hallam reprobates, in language which has a little surprised us, the
nineteen propositions into which the Parliament digested its scheme.
Is it possible to doubt that, if James the Second had remained in the
island, and had been suffered, as he probably would in that case have
been suffered, to keep his crown, conditions to the full as hard would
have been imposed on him? On the other hand, we fully admit that, if the
Long Parliament had pronounced the departure of Charles from London an
abdication, and had called Essex or Northumberland to the throne,
the new prince might have safely been suffered to reign without such
restrictions. His situation would have been a sufficient guarantee.
In the nineteen propositions we see very little to blame except the
articles against the Catholics. These, however, were in the spirit of
that age; and to some sturdy churchmen in our own, they may seem
to palliate even the good which the Long Parliament effected. The
regulation with respect to new creations of Peers is the only other
article about which we entertain any doubt. One of the propositions is
that the judges shall hold their offices during good behaviour. To this
surely no exception will be taken. The right of directing the education
and marriage of the princes was most properly claimed by the Parliament,
on the same ground on which, after the Revolution, it was enacted, that
no king, on pain of forfeiting, his throne, should espouse a Papist.
Unless we condemn the statesmen of the Revolution, who conceived
that England could not safely be governed by a sovereign married to a
Catholic queen, we can scarcely condemn the Long Parliament because,
having a sovereign so situated, they thought it necessary to place him
under strict restraints. The influence of Henrietta Maria had already
been deeply felt in political affairs. In the regulation of her family,
in the education and marriage of her children, it was still more likely
to be felt; There might be another Catholic queen; possibly a Catholic
king. Little, as we are disposed to join in the vulgar clamour on this
subject, we think that such an event ought to be, if possible, averted;
and this could only be done, if Charles was to be left on the throne, by
placing his domestic arrangements under the control of Parliament.
A veto on the appointment of ministers was demanded. But this veto
Parliament has virtually possessed ever since the Revolution. It is
no doubt very far better that this power of the Legislature should be
exercised as it is now exercised, when any great occasion calls for
interference, than that at every change the Commons should have to
signify their approbation or disapprobation in form. But, unless a new
family had been placed on the throne, we do not see how this power could
have been exercised as it is now exercised. We again repeat that no
restraints which could be imposed on the princes who reigned after the
Revolution could have added to the security, which their title afforded.
They were compelled to court their parliaments. But from Charles nothing
was to be expected which was not set down in the bond.
It was not stipulated that the King should give up his negative on acts
of Parliament. But the Commons, had certainly shown a strong disposition
to exact this security also. “Such a doctrine,” says Mr. Hallam, “was
in this country as repugnant to the whole history of our laws, as it was
incompatible with the subsistence of the monarchy in anything more than
a nominal preeminence.” Now this article has been as completely carried
into elect by the Revolution as if it had been formally inserted in the
Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement. We are surprised, we confess,
that Mr. Hallam should attach so much importance to a prerogative which
has not been exercised for a hundred and thirty years, which probably
will never be exercised again, and which can scarcely, in any
conceivable case, be exercised for a salutary purpose.
But the great security, the security without which every other would
have been insufficient, was the power of the sword. This both parties
thoroughly understood. The Parliament insisted on having the command
of the militia and the direction of the Irish war. “By God, not for an
hour!” exclaimed the King. “Keep the militia,” said the Queen, after
the defeat of the royal party. “Keep the militia; that will bring back
everything.” That, by the old constitution, no military authority was
lodged in the Parliament, Mr. Hallam has clearly shown. That it is a
species of authority which ought, not to be permanently lodged in
large and divided assemblies, must, we think in fairness be conceded.
Opposition, publicity, long discussion, frequent compromise; these
are the characteristics of the proceedings of such assemblies. Unity,
secrecy, decision, are the qualities which military arrangements
require. There were, therefore, serious objections to the proposition
of the Houses on this subject. But, on the other hand, to trust such
a King, at such a crisis, with the very weapon which, in hands less
dangerous, had destroyed so many free constitutions, would have been the
extreme of rashness. The jealousy with which the oligarchy of Venice and
the States of Holland regarded their generals and armies induced them
perpetually to interfere in matters of which they were incompetent to
judge. This policy secured them against military usurpation, but placed
them, under great disadvantages in war. The uncontrolled power which
the King of France exercised over his troops enabled him to conquer
his enemies, but enabled him also to oppress his people. Was there any
intermediate course? None, we confess altogether free from objection.
But on the whole, we conceive that the best measure would have been that
which the Parliament over and over proposed, namely, that for a limited
time the power of the sword should be left to the two Houses, and that
it should revert to the Crown when the constitution should be firmly
established, and when the new securities of freedom should be so far
strengthened by prescription that it would be difficult to employ even a
standing army for the purpose of subverting them.
Mr. Hallam thinks that the dispute might easily have been compromised,
by enacting that, the King should have no power to keep a standing army
on foot without the consent of Parliament. He reasons as if the question
had been merely theoretical, and as if at that time no army had been
wanted. “The kingdom,” he says, “might have well dispensed, in that age,
with any military organisation.” Now, we think that Mr. Hallam overlooks
the most important circumstance in the whole case. Ireland was actually
in rebellion; and a great expedition would obviously be necessary to
reduce that kingdom to obedience. The Houses had therefore to consider,
not at abstract question of law, but an urgent practical question,
directly involving the safety of the state. They had to consider the
expediency of immediately giving a great army to a King who was, at
least, as desirous to put down the Parliament of England as to conquer
the insurgents of Ireland.
Of course we do not mean to defend all the measures of the Houses. Far
from it. There never was a perfect man. It would, therefore, be the
height of absurdity to expect a perfect party or a perfect assembly. For
large bodies are far more likely to err than individuals. The passions
are inflamed by sympathy; the fear of punishment and the sense of shame
are diminished by partition. Every day we see men do for their faction
what they would die rather than do for themselves.
Scarcely any private quarrel ever happens, in which the right and wrong
are so exquisitely divided that all the right lies on one side, and all
the wrong on the other. But here was a schism which separated a great
nation into two parties. Of these parties, each was composed of many
smaller parties. Each contained many members, who differed far less from
their moderate opponents than from their violent allies. Each reckoned
among its supporters many who were determined in their choice by some
accident of birth, of connection, or of local situation. Each of them
attracted to itself in multitudes those fierce and turbid spirits,
to whom the clouds and whirlwinds of the political hurricane are
the atmosphere of life. A party, like a camp, has its sutlers and
camp-followers, as well as its soldiers. In its progress it collects
round it a vast retinue, composed of people who thrive by its custom
or are amused by its display, who may be sometimes reckoned, in an
ostentatious enumeration, as forming a part of it, but who give no aid
to its operations, and take but a languid interest in its success, who
relax its discipline and dishonour its flag by their irregularities, and
who, after a disaster, are perfectly ready to cut the throats and rifle
the baggage of their companions.
Thus it is in every great division; and thus it was in our civil war. On
both sides there was, undoubtedly, enough of crime and enough of error
to disgust any man who did not reflect that the whole history of the
species is made up of little except crimes and errors. Misanthropy is
not the temper which qualifies a man to act in great affairs, or to
judge of them.
“Of the Parliament,” says Mr. Hallam, “it may be said I think, with not
greater severity than truth, that scarce two or three public acts of
justice, humanity, or generosity, and very few of political wisdom or
courage, are recorded of them, from their quarrel with the King, to
their expulsion by Cromwell.” Those who may agree with us in the opinion
which we have expressed as to the original demands of the Parliament
will scarcely concur in this strong censure. The propositions which the
Houses made at Oxford, at Uxbridge, and at Newcastle, were in strict
accordance with these demands. In the darkest period of the war, they
showed no disposition to concede any vital principle. In the fulness
of their success, they showed no disposition to encroach beyond these
limits. In this respect we cannot but think that they showed justice and
generosity, as well as political wisdom and courage.
The Parliament was certainly far from faultless. We fully agree with
Mr. Hallam in reprobating their treatment of Laud. For the individual,
indeed, we entertain a more unmitigated contempt than, for any other
character in our history. The fondness with which a portion of the
church regards his memory, can be compared only to that perversity of
affection which sometimes leads a mother to select the monster or the
idiot of the family as the object of her especial favour, Mr. Hallam
has incidentally observed, that, in the correspondence of Laud with
Strafford, there are no indications of a sense of duty towards God or
man. The admirers of the Archbishop have, in consequence, inflicted upon
the public a crowd of extracts designed to prove the contrary. Now, in
all those passages, we see nothing, which a prelate as wicked as Pope
Alexander or Cardinal Dubois might not have written. Those passages
indicate no sense of duty to God or man, but simply a strong interest in
the prosperity and dignity of the order to which the writer belonged;
an interest which, when kept within certain limits, does not deserve
censure, but which can never be considered as a virtue. Laud is anxious
to accommodate satisfactorily the disputes in the University of Dublin.
He regrets to hear that a church is used as a stable, and that the
benefices of Ireland are very poor. He is desirous that, however small a
congregation may be, service should be regularly performed. He expresses
a wish that the judges of the court before which questions of tithe are
generally brought should be selected with a view to the interest of the
clergy. All this may be very proper; and it may be very proper that an
alderman should stand up for the tolls of his borough, and an East India
director for the charter of his Company. But it is ridiculous to say
that these things indicate piety and benevolence. No primate, though he
were the most abandoned of mankind, could wish to see the body, with
the influence of which his own influence was identical, degraded in the
public estimation by internal dissensions, by the ruinous state of its
edifices, and by the slovenly performance of its rites. We willingly
acknowledge that the particular letters in question have very little
harm in them; a compliment which cannot often be paid either to the
writings or to the actions of Laud.
Bad as the Archbishop was, however, he was not a traitor within the
statute. Nor was he by any means so formidable as to be a proper subject
for a retrospective ordinance of the legislature. His mind had not
expansion enough to comprehend a great scheme, good or bad. His
oppressive acts were not, like those of the Earl of Strafford, parts
of an extensive system. They were the luxuries in which a mean and
irritable disposition indulges itself from day to day, the excesses
natural to a little mind in a great place. The severest punishment which
the two Houses could have inflicted on him would have been to set him at
liberty and send him to Oxford. There he might have stayed, tortured by
his own diabolical temper, hungering for Puritans to pillory and mangle,
plaguing the Cavaliers, for want of somebody else to plague with
his peevishness and absurdity, performing grimaces and antics in the
cathedral, continuing that incomparable diary, which we never see
without forgetting the vices of his heart. In the imbecility of his
intellect minuting down his dreams, counting the drops of blood which
fell from his nose, watching the direction of the salt, and listening
for the note of the screech-owls. Contemptuous mercy was the only
vengeance which it became the Parliament to take on such a ridiculous
old bigot.
The Houses, it must be acknowledged, committed great errors in the
conduct of the war, or rather one great error, which brought their
affairs into a condition requiring the most perilous expedients. The
parliamentary leaders of what may be called the first generation, Essex,
Manchester, Northumberland, Hollis, even Pym, all the most eminent men
in short, Hampden excepted, were inclined to half measures. They dreaded
a decisive victory almost as much as a decisive overthrow. They wished
to bring the King into a situation which might render it necessary
for him to grant their just and wise demands, but not to subvert the
constitution or to change the dynasty. They were afraid of serving the
purposes of those fierce and determined enemies of monarchy, who now
began to show themselves in the lower ranks of the party. The war was,
therefore, conducted in a languid and inefficient manner. A resolute
leader might have brought it to a close in a month. At the end of three
campaigns, however, the event was still dubious; and that it had not
been decidedly unfavourable to the cause of liberty was principally
owing to the skill and energy which the more violent roundheads had
displayed in subordinate situations. The conduct of Fairfax and Cromwell
at Marston had, exhibited a remarkable contrast to that of Essex at
Edgehill, and to that of Waller at Lansdowne.
If there be any truth established by the universal experience of
nations, it is this; that to carry the spirit of peace into war is weak
and cruel policy. The time for negotiation is the time for deliberation
and delay. But when an extreme case calls for that remedy which is in
its own nature most violent, and which, in such cases, is a remedy only
because it is violent, it is idle to think of mitigating and diluting.
Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or submission will not
do better: and to act on any other principle is, not to save blood and
money, but to squander them.
This the parliamentary leaders found. The third year of hostilities was
drawing to a close; and they had not conquered the King. They had not
obtained even those advantages which they had expected from a policy
obviously erroneous in a military point of view. They had wished to
husband their resources. They now found that in enterprises like
theirs, parsimony is the worst profusion. They had hoped to effect a
reconciliation. The event taught them that the best way to conciliate
is to bring the work of destruction to a speedy termination. By their
moderation many lives and much property had been wasted. The angry
passions which, if the contest had been short, would have died away
almost as soon as they appeared, had fixed themselves in the form of
deep and lasting hatred. A military caste had grown up. Those who had
been induced to take up arms by the patriotic feelings of citizens had
begun to entertain the professional feelings of soldiers. Above all, the
leaders of the party had forfeited its confidence, If they had, by their
valour and abilities, gained a complete victory, their influence might
have been sufficient to prevent their associates from abusing it. It
was now necessary to choose more resolute and uncompromising commanders.
Unhappily the illustrious man who alone united in himself all the
talents and virtues which the crisis required, who alone could have
saved his country from the present dangers without plunging her into
others, who alone could have united all the friends of liberty in
obedience to his commanding genius and his venerable name, was no more.
Something might still be done. The Houses might still avert that worst
of all evils, the triumphant return of an imperious and unprincipled
master. They might still preserve London from all the horrors of rapine,
massacre, and lust. But their hopes of a victory as spotless as their
cause, of a reconciliation which might knit together the hearts of
all honest Englishmen for the defence of the public good, of durable
tranquillity, of temperate freedom, were buried in the grave of Hampden.
The self-denying ordinance was passed, and the army was remodelled.
These measures were undoubtedly full of danger. But all that was left to
the Parliament was to take the less of two dangers. And we think that,
even if they could have accurately foreseen all that followed, their
decision ought to have been the same. Under any circumstances, we should
have preferred Cromwell to Charles. But there could be no comparison
between Cromwell and Charles victorious, Charles restored, Charles
enabled to feed fat all the hungry grudges of his smiling rancour
and his cringing pride. The next visit of his Majesty to his faithful
Commons would have been more serious than that with which he last
honoured them; more serious than that which their own General paid them
some years after. The King would scarce have been content with praying
that the Lord would deliver him from Vane, or with pulling Marten by
the cloak. If, by fatal mismanagement, nothing was left to England but
a choice of tyrants, the last tyrant whom she should have chosen was
Charles.
From the apprehension of this worst evil the Houses were soon delivered
by their new leaders. The armies of Charles were everywhere routed, his
fastnesses stormed, his party humbled and subjugated. The King himself
fell into the hands of the Parliament; and both the King and the
Parliament soon fell into the hands of the army. The fate of both the
captives was the same. Both were treated alternately with respect and
with insult. At length the natural life of one, and the political life
of the other, were terminated by violence; and the power for which both
had struggled was united in a single hand. Men naturally sympathise with
the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen
party with contempt rather than with pity. Thus misfortune turned the
greatest of Parliaments into the despised Rump, and the worst of Kings
into the Blessed Martyr.
Mr. Hallam decidedly condemns the execution of Charles; and in all that
he says on that subject we heartily agree. We fully concur with him in
thinking that a great social schism, such as the civil war, is not to be
confounded with an ordinary treason, and that the vanquished ought to be
treated according to the rules, not of municipal, but of international
law. In this case the distinction is of the less importance, because
both international and municipal law were in favour of Charles. He was a
prisoner of war by the former, a King by the latter. By neither was he a
traitor. If he had been successful, and had put his leading opponents to
death, he would have deserved severe censure; and this without reference
to the justice or injustice of his cause. Yet the opponents of Charles,
it must be admitted, were technically guilty of treason. He might have
sent them to the scaffold without violating any established principle
of jurisprudence. He would not have been compelled to overturn the whole
constitution in order to reach them. Here his own case differed widely
from theirs. Not only was his condemnation in itself a measure which
only the strongest necessity could vindicate; but it could not be
procured without taking several previous steps, every one of which would
have required the strongest necessity to vindicate it. It could not be
procured without dissolving the Government by military force, without
establishing precedents of the most dangerous description, without
creating difficulties which the next ten years were spent in removing,
without pulling down institutions which it soon became necessary to
reconstruct, and setting up others which almost every man was soon
impatient to destroy. It was necessary to strike the House of Lords
out of the constitution, to exclude members of the House of Commons by
force, to make a new crime, a new tribunal, a new mode of procedure.
The whole legislative and judicial systems were trampled down for
the purpose of taking a single head. Not only those parts of the
constitution which the republicans were desirous to destroy, but those
which they wished to retain and exalt, were deeply injured by these
transactions. High Courts of justice began to usurp the functions of
juries. The remaining delegates of the people were soon driven from
their seats by the same military violence which had enabled them to
exclude their colleagues.
If Charles had been the last of his line, there would have been an
intelligible reason for putting him to death. But the blow which
terminated his life at once transferred the allegiance of every Royalist
to an heir, and an heir who was at liberty. To kill the individual was,
under such circumstances, not to destroy, but to release the King.
We detest the character of Charles; but a man ought not to be removed by
a law ex post facto, even constitutionally procured, merely because he
is detestable. He must also be very dangerous. We can scarcely conceive
that any danger which a state can apprehend from any individual could
justify the violent, measures which were necessary to procure a sentence
against Charles. But in fact the danger amounted to nothing. There was
indeed, danger from the attachment of a large party to his office. But
this danger his execution only increased. His personal influence was
little indeed. He had lost the confidence of every party. Churchmen,
Catholics, Presbyterians, Independents, his enemies, his friends, his
tools, English, Scotch, Irish, all divisions and subdivisions of his
people had been deceived by him. His most attached councillors turned
away with shame and anguish from his false and hollow policy, plot
intertwined with plot, mine sprung beneath mine, agents disowned,
promises evaded, one pledge given in private, another in public.
“Oh, Mr. Secretary,” says Clarendon, in a letter to Nicholas, “those
stratagems have given me more sad hours than all the misfortunes in war
which have befallen the King, and look like the effects of God’s anger
towards us.”
The abilities of Charles were not formidable. His taste in the fine arts
was indeed exquisite; and few modern sovereigns have written or spoken
better. But he was not fit for active life. In negotiation he was always
trying to dupe others, and duping only himself. As a soldier, he was
feeble, dilatory, and miserably wanting, not in personal courage, but in
the presence of mind which his station required. His delay at Gloucester
saved the parliamentary party from destruction. At Naseby, in the very
crisis of his fortune, his want of self-possession spread a fatal panic
through his army. The story which Clarendon tells of that affair reminds
us of the excuses by which Bessus and Bobadil explain their cudgellings.
A Scotch nobleman, it seems, begged the King not to run upon his death,
took hold of his bridle, and turned his horse round. No man who had much
value for his life would have tried to perform the same friendly office
on that day for Oliver Cromwell.
One thing, and one alone, could make Charles dangerous--a violent death.
His tyranny could not break the high spirit of the English people.
His arms could not conquer, his arts could not deceive them; but his
humiliation and his execution melted them into a generous compassion.
Men who die on a scaffold for political offences almost always die well.
The eyes of thousands are fixed upon them. Enemies and admirers are
watching their demeanour. Every tone of voice, every change of colour,
is to go down to posterity. Escape is impossible. Supplication is vain.
In such a situation pride and despair have often been known to nerve
the weakest minds with fortitude adequate to the occasion. Charles died
patiently and bravely; not more patiently or bravely, indeed, than many
other victims of political rage; not more patiently or bravely than his
own judges, who were not only killed, but tortured; or than Vane, who
had always been considered as a timid man. However, the king’s conduct
during his trial and at his execution made a prodigious impression.
His subjects began to love his memory as heartily as they had hated his
person; and posterity has estimated his character from his death rather
than from his life.