Text and commentary! The French Revolution abounds with wonderful
"explanatory notes" on the English. It has cleared up many obscure
passages--and in the political history of Man, both pages must be read
together.
The opprobrious and ludicrous nickname of "the Rump," stigmatised a
faction which played the same part in the English Revolution as the
"Montagne" of the Jacobins did in the French. It has been imagined that
our English Jacobins were impelled by a principle different from that of
their modern rivals; but the madness of avowed atheism, and the frenzy
of hypocritical sanctity, in the circle of crimes meet at the same
point. Their history forms one of those useful parallels where, with
truth as unerring as mathematical demonstration, we discover the
identity of human nature. Similarity of situation, and certain
principles, producing similar personages and similar events, finally
settle in the same results. The Rump, as long as human nature exists,
can be nothing but the Rump, however it may be thrown uppermost.
The origin of this political by-name has often been inquired into; and
it is somewhat curious, that, though all parties consent to reprobate
it, each assigns for it a different allusion. In the history of
political factions there is always a mixture of the ludicrous with the
tragic; but, except their modern brothers, no faction like the present
ever excited such a combination of extreme contempt and extreme horror.
Among the rival parties in 1659, the loyalists and the presbyterians
acted as we may suppose the Tories and the Whigs would in the same
predicament; a secret reconciliation had taken place, to bury in
oblivion their former jealousies, that they might unite to rid
themselves from that tyranny of tyrannies, a hydra-headed government;
or, as Hume observes, that "all efforts should be used for the overthrow
of the Rump; so they called the parliament, in allusion to that part of
the animal body." The sarcasm of the allusion seemed obvious to our
polished historian; yet, looking more narrowly for its origin, we shall
find how indistinct were the notions of this nickname among those who
lived nearer to the times. Evelyn says that "the Rump parliament was so
called as containing some few rotten members of the other." Roger Coke
describes it thus: "You must now be content with a piece of the Commons
called 'the Rump.'" And Carte calls the Rump, "the carcass of a house,"
and seems not precisely aware of the contemptuous allusion. But how do
"rotten members" and "a carcass" agree with the notion of "a Rump?"
Recently the editor of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson has conveyed a
novel origin. "The number of the members of the Long Parliament having
been by seclusion, death, &c., very much reduced,"--a remarkable &c.
this! by which our editor seems adroitly to throw a veil over the
forcible transportation by the Rumpers of two hundred members at one
swoop,--"the remainder was compared to the _rump of a fowl which was
left_, all the rest being eaten." Our editor even considers this to be
"a coarse emblem;" yet "the rump of a fowl" could hardly offend even a
lady's delicacy! Our editor, probably, was somewhat anxious not to
degrade _too lowly_ the anti-monarchical party, designated by this
opprobrious term. Perhaps it is pardonable in Mrs. Macaulay, an
historical lady, and a "Rumper," for she calls the "Levellers" a "brave
and virtuous party," to have passed over in _her_ history any mention of
the offensive term at all, as well as the ridiculous catastrophe which
they underwent in the political revolution, which, however, we must beg
leave not to pass by.
This party-coinage has been ascribed to Clement Walker, their bitter
antagonist; who, having sacrificed no inconsiderable fortune to the
cause of what he considered constitutional liberty, was one of the
violent ejected members of the Long Parliament, and perished in prison,
a victim to honest, unbending principles. His "History of Independency"
is a rich legacy bequeathed to posterity, of all their great misdoings,
and their petty villanies, and, above all, of their secret history. One
likes to know of what blocks the idols of the people are sometimes
carved out.
Clement Walker notices "the votes and acts of this _fag end_; this RUMP
of a parliament, with corrupt maggots in it."[325] This hideous, but
descriptive image of "The Rump" had, however, got forward before, for
the collector of "the Rump Songs"[326] tells us, "If you ask who named
it _Rump_, know 'twas so styled in an honest sheet of prayer, called
'The Bloody Rump,' written _before the trial_ of our late sovereign; but
the word obtained not _universal notice_, till it flew from the mouth
of Major-General Brown, at a public assembly in the days of Richard
Cromwell." Thus it happens that a stinging nickname has been frequently
applied to render a faction eternally odious; and the chance expression
of a wit, when adopted on some public occasion, circulates among a whole
people. The present nickname originated in derision on the expulsion of
the majority of the Long Parliament by the usurping minority. It
probably slept; for who would have stirred it through the Protectorate?
and finally awakened at Richard's restored, but fleeting "Rump," to
witness its own ridiculous extinction.
Our Rump passed through three stages in its political progress.
Preparatory to the trial of the sovereign, the anti-monarchical party
constituted the minority in "the _Long_ Parliament:" the very name by
which this parliament is recognised seemed a grievance to an impatient
people, vacillating with chimerical projects of government, and now
accustomed, from a wild indefinite notion of political equality, to pull
down all existing institutions. Such was the temper of the times, that
an act of the most violent injustice, openly performed, served only as
the jest of the day, a jest which has passed into history. The forcible
expulsion of two hundred of their brother members, by those who
afterwards were saluted as "The Rump," was called "Pride's Purge," from
the activity of a colonel of that name, a military adventurer, who was
only the blind and brutal instrument of his party; for when he stood at
the door of the Commons, holding a paper with the names of the members,
he did not personally know one! And his "Purge" might have operated a
quite opposite effect, administered by his own unskilful hand, had not
Lord Grey of Groby, and the door-keeper,--worthy dispersers of the
British senate!--pointed out the obnoxious members, on whom our colonel
laid his hand, and sent off by his men to be detained, if a bold member,
or to be deterred from sitting in the house, if a frightened one. This
colonel had been a drayman; and the contemptible knot of the Commons,
reduced to fifty or sixty confederates, which assembled after his
"Purge," were called "Colonel Pride's Dray-Horses."
It was this Rump which voted the death of the sovereign, and abolished
the regal office, and the House of Peers--as "unnecessary, burdensome,
and dangerous!" Every office in parliament seemed "dangerous," but that
of the "Custodes libertatis Angliae," the keepers of the liberties of
England! or rather "the gaolers!" "The legislative half-quarter of the
House of Commons!" indignantly exclaims Clement Walker--the "Montagne"
of the French revolutionists!
The "Red-coats" as the military were nicknamed, soon taught their
masters, "the Rumpers," silence and obedience: the latter having raised
one colossal man for their own purpose, were annihilated by him at a
single blow. Cromwell, five years after, turned them out of their house,
and put the keys into his pocket. Their last public appearance was in
the fleeting days of Richard Cromwell, when the comi-tragedy of "the
Rump" concluded by a catastrophe as ludicrous as that of Tom Thumb's
tragedy!
How such a faction used their instruments to gather in the common spoil,
and how their instruments at length converted the hands which held them
into instruments themselves, appears in their history. When "the Long
Parliament" opposed the designs of Cromwell and Ireton, these chiefs
cried up "the liberty of the people," and denied "the authority of
parliament:" but when they had effectuated their famous "purge," and
formed a House of Commons of themselves, they abolished the House of
Lords, crying up the supreme authority of the House of Commons, and
crying down the liberty of the people. Such is the history of political
factions, as well as of statesmen! Charles the Fifth alternately made
use of the Pope's authority to subdue the rising spirit of the
Protestants of Germany, or raised an army of Protestants to imprison the
Pope! who branded his German allies by the novel and odious name of
Lutherans. A chain of similar facts may be framed out of modern history.
The "Rump," as they were called by every one but their own party, became
a whetstone for the wits to sharpen themselves on; and we have two large
collections of "Rump Songs," curious chronicles of popular feeling![327]
Without this evidence we should not have been so well informed
respecting the phases of this portentous phenomenon. "The Rump" was
celebrated in verse, till at length it became "the Rump of a Rump of a
Rump!" as Foulis traces them to their dwindled and grotesque
appearance. It is pourtrayed by a wit of the times--
The Rump's an old story, if well understood,
'Tis a thing dress'd up in a parliament's hood,
And like it--but the tail stands where the head shou'd!
'Twould make a man scratch where it does not itch!
They say 'tis good luck when a body rises
With the rump upwards; but he that advises
To live in that posture, is none of the wisest.
Cromwell's hunting them out of the House by military force is alluded
to--
Our politic doctors do us teach,
That a blood-sucking red-coat's as good as a leech
To relieve the head, if applied to the breech.
In the opening scene of the Restoration, Mrs. Hutchinson, an honest
republican, paints with dismay a scene otherwise very ludicrous. "When
the town of Nottingham, as almost all the rest of the island, began to
grow mad, and declared themselves in their desires of the king;" or, as
another of the opposite party writes, "When the soldiery, who had
hitherto made _clubs trumps_, resolved now to turn up the _king of
hearts_ in their affections," the rabble in town and country vied with
each other in burning the "Rump;" and the literal emblem was hung by
chains on gallowses, with a bonfire underneath, while the cries of "Let
us burn the Rump! Let us roast the Rump!" were echoed everywhere. The
suddenness of this universal change, which was said to have maddened the
wise, and to have sobered the mad, must be ascribed to the joy at
escaping from the yoke of a military despotism; perhaps, too, it marked
the rapid transition of hope to a restoration which might be supposed to
have implanted gratitude even in a royal breast! The feelings of the
people expected to find an echo from the throne!
"The Rump," besides their general resemblance to the French anarchists,
had also some minuter features of ugliness, which Englishmen have often
exulted have not marked an English revolution--sanguinary
proscriptions![328] We had thought that we had no revolutionary
tribunals! no Septembrisers! no noyades! no moveable guillotines
awaiting for carts loaded with human victims! no infuriated republican
urging, in a committee of public safety, the necessity of a salutary
massacre!
But if it be true that the same motives and the same principles were at
work in both nations, and that the like characters were performing in
England the parts which they did afterwards in France, by an argument _a
priori_ we might be sure that the same revolting crimes and chimerical
projects were alike suggested at London as at Paris. Human nature, even
in transactions which appear unparalleled, will be found to preserve a
regularity of resemblance not always suspected.
The first great tragic act was closely copied by the French: and if the
popular page of our history appears unstained by their revolutionary
axe, this depended only on a slight accident; for it became a question
of "yea" and "nay!" and was only carried in the negative by _two voices_
in the council! It was debated among "the bloody Rump," as it was
hideously designated, "whether to massacre and to put to the sword _all
the king's party_!"[329] Cromwell himself listened to the suggestion;
and it was only put down by the coolness of political calculation--the
dread that the massacre would be _too general_! Some of the Rump not
obtaining the blessedness of a massacre, still clung to the happiness of
an immolation; and many petitions were presented, that "_two or three
principal gentlemen_ of the royal party in EACH COUNTY might be
sacrificed to justice, whereby the land might be saved from
_blood-guiltiness_!" Sir Arthur Haslerigg, whose "passionate fondness of
liberty" has been commended,[330] was one of the committee of safety in
1647--I too would commend "a passionate lover of liberty," whenever I do
not discover that this lover is much more intent on the dower than on
the bride. Haslerigg, "an absurd, bold man," as Clarendon, at a single
stroke, reveals his character, was resolved not to be troubled with king
or bishop, or with any power in the state superior to "the Rump's." We
may safely suspect the patriot who can cool his vehemence in spoliation.
Haslerigg would have no bishops, but this was not from any want of
reverence for church lands, for he heaped for himself such wealth as to
have been nicknamed "the Bishop of Durham!" He is here noticed for a
political crime different from that of plunder. When, in 1647, this
venerable radical found the parliament resisting his views, he declared
that "Some heads must fly off!" adding, "the parliament cannot save
England; we must look another way;"--threatening, what afterwards was
done, to bring in the army! It was this "passionate lover of liberty"
who, when Dorislaus, the parliamentary agent, was assassinated by some
Scotchmen in Holland, moved in the house, that "six royalists of the
best quality" should be immediately executed! When some northern
counties petitioned the Commons for relief against a famine in the land,
our Maratist observed, that "this _want of food_ would best defend those
counties from Scottish invasion!"[331] The slaughter of Drogheda by
Cromwell, and his frightening all London by what Walker calls "a
butchery of apprentices," when he cried out to his soldiers, "to kill
man, woman, and child, and fire the city!"[332] may be placed among
those crimes which are committed to open a reign of terror--but Hugh
Peters's solemn thanksgiving to Heaven that "none were spared!" was the
true expression of the true feeling of these political demoniacs.
Cromwell was cruel from politics, others from constitution. Some were
willing to be cruel without "blood-guiltiness." One Alexander Rigby, a
radical lawyer, twice moved in the Long Parliament, that those _lords
and gentlemen_ who were "malignants," should be _sold as slaves to the
Dey of Algiers_, or sent off to the new plantations in the West Indies.
He had all things prepared; for it is added that he had contracted with
two merchants to ship them off.[333] There was a most bloody-minded
"maker of washing-balls," as one John Durant is described, appointed a
lecturer by the House of Commons, who always left out of the Lord's
Prayer, "As we forgive them that trespass against us," and substituted,
"Lord, since thou hast now drawn out thy sword, let it not be sheathed
again till it be glutted in the blood of the malignants." I find too
many enormities of this kind. "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the
Lord negligently, and keepeth back his sword from blood!" was the cry of
the wretch, who, when a celebrated actor and royalist sued for quarter,
gave no other reply than that of "fitting the action to the word."[334]
Their treatment of the Irish may possibly be admired by a true
Machiavelist: "they permitted forty thousand of the Irish to enlist in
the service of the kings of Spain and France"--in other words, they
expelled them at once, which, considering that our Rumpers affected such
an abhorrence of tyranny, may be considered as an act of mercy!
satisfying themselves only with dividing the forfeited lands of the
aforesaid forty thousand among their own party, by lot and other means.
An universal confiscation, after all, is a bloodless massacre. They used
the Scotch soldiers, after the battles of Dunbar and Worcester, a little
differently--but equally efficaciously--for they sold their Scotch
prisoners for slaves to the American planters.[335]
The Robespierres and the Marats were as extraordinary beings, and in
some respects the Frenchmen were working on a more enlarged scheme.
These discovered that "the generation which had witnessed the preceding
one would always regret it; and for the security of the Revolution, it
was necessary that every person who was thirty years old in 1788 should
perish on the scaffold!" The anarchists were intent on reducing the
French people to eight millions, and on destroying the great cities of
France.[336]
Such monstrous persons and events are not credible--but this is no proof
that they have not occurred. Many incredible things will happen!
Another disorganising feature in the English _Rumpers_ was also observed
in the French _Sans-culottes_--their hatred of literature and the arts.
Hebert was one day directing his satellites towards the _Bibliotheque
Nationale_, to put an end to all that human knowledge had collected for
centuries on centuries--in one day! alleging, of course, some good
reason. This hero was only diverted from the enterprise by being
persuaded to postpone it for a day or two, when luckily the guillotine
intervened; the same circumstance occurred here. The burning of the
records in the Tower was certainly proposed; a speech of Selden's, which
I cannot immediately turn to, put a stop to these incendiaries. It was
debated in the Rump parliament, when Cromwell was general, whether they
should _dissolve the universities_? They concluded that no university
was necessary; that there were no ancient examples of such education,
and that scholars in other countries did study at _their own cost and
charges_, and therefore they looked on them as unnecessary, and thought
them fitting _to be taken away for the public use_!--How these venerable
asylums escaped from being sold with the king's pictures, as stone and
timber, and why their rich endowments were not shared among such
inveterate ignorance and remorseless spoliation, might claim some
inquiry.
The Abbe Morellet, a great political economist, imagined that the source
of all the crimes of the French Revolution was their violation of the
sacred rights of property. The perpetual invectives of the
_Sans-culottes_ of France _against proprietors and against property_
proceeded from demoralised beings who formed panegyrics on all crimes;
crimes, to explain whose revolutionary terms, a new dictionary was
required. But even these anarchists, in their mad expressions against
property, and in their wildest notions of their "egalite," have not gone
beyond the daring of our own "Rumpers!"
Of those revolutionary journals of the parliament of 1649, which in
spirit so strongly resemble the diurnal or hebdomadal effusions of the
redoubtable French Hebert, Marat, and others of that stamp, one of the
most remarkable is, "The Moderate, impartially communicating Martial
Affairs to the _Kingdom_ of England;" the monarchical title our
commonwealth men had not yet had time enough to obliterate from their
colloquial style. This writer called himself, in his barbarous English,
_The Moderate_! It would be hard to conceive the meanness and illiteracy
to which the English language was reduced under the pens of the
rabble-writers of these days, had we not witnessed in the present time a
parallel to their compositions. "The Moderate!" was a title assumed on
the principle on which Marat denominated himself "l'Ami du Peuple." It
is curious that the most ferocious politicians usually assert their
moderation. Robespierre, in his justification, declares that Marat "m'a
souvent accuse de _Moderantisme_." The same actors, playing the same
parts, may be always paralleled in their language and their deeds. This
"Moderate" steadily pursued one great principle--the overthrow of all
property. Assuming that _property_ was the original cause of _sin_! an
exhortation to the people for this purpose is the subject of the present
paper:[337] the illustration of his principle is as striking as the
principle itself.
It is an apology for, or rather a defence of, robbery! Some
moss-troopers had been condemned to be hanged for practising their
venerable custom of gratuitously supplying themselves from the flocks
and herds of their weaker neighbours: our "Moderate" ingeniously
discovers that the loss of these men's lives is to be attributed to
nothing but _property_. They are necessitated to offend the laws in
order to obtain a livelihood!
On this he descants; and the extract is a political curiosity in the
French style! "_Property_ is the original cause of any _sin_ between
party and party as to civil transactions. And since the _tyrant_ is
taken off, and the government altered _in nomine_, so ought it really to
redound to the good of the people _in specie_; which, though they cannot
expect it in few years, by reason of _the multiplicity of the gentlemen
in authority_, command, &c. who drive on all designs for support of the
old government, and consequently their own interest and the _people's
slavery_, yet they doubt not but _in time_ the people will herein
discern their own blindness and folly."
In September, he advanced with more depth of thought. "_Wars_ have ever
been clothed with the most gracious pretences--viz., reformation of
religion, the laws of the land, the liberty of the subject, &c.; though
the effects thereof have proved most destructive to every nation; making
the sword, and not _the people_, the original of all authorities for
many hundred years together, taking away _each man's birthright_, and
_settling upon a few_ A CURSED PROPRIETY; the ground of all civil
offences, and the greatest cause of most sins against the heavenly
Deity. _This tyranny and oppression_ running through the veins of many
of our predecessors, and being too long maintained by the sword upon a
royal foundation, at last became so customary, as _to the vulgar it
seemed most natural_--the only reason why the _people_ of this time are
so _ignorant of their birthright_, their only freedom," &c.
"The birthright" of citoyen _Egalite_ to "_a cursed propriety settled on
a few_," was not, even among the French Jacobins, urged with more
amazing force. Had things proceeded according to our "Moderate's" plan,
"the people's slavery" had been something worse. In a short time the
nation would have had more proprietors than property. We have a curious
list of the spoliations of those members of the House of Commons, who,
after their famous _self-denying ordinances_, appropriated among
themselves sums of money, offices, and lands, for services "done or to
be done."
The most innocent of this new government of "the Majesty of the People,"
were those whose talents had been limited by Nature to peddle and
purloin; puny mechanics, who had suddenly dropped their needles, their
hammers, and their lasts, and slunk out from behind their shop-counters;
those who had never aspired beyond the constable of the parish, were now
seated in the council of state; where, as Milton describes them, "they
fell to huckster the commonwealth:" there they met a more rabid race of
obscure lawyers, and discontented men of family, of blasted reputations;
adventurers, who were to command the militia and navy of
England,--governors of the three kingdoms! whose votes and ordinances
resounded with nothing else but new impositions, new taxes, excises,
yearly, monthly, weekly sequestrations, compositions, and universal
robbery!
Baxter vents one deep groan of indignation, and presciently announces
one future consequence of _Reform_! "In all this appeared the severity
of God, the mutability of worldly things, and the fruits of error,
pride, and selfishness, _to be charged hereafter upon reformation and
religion_." As a statesman, the sagacity of this honest prophet was
narrowed by the horizon of his religious views; for he ascribes the
whole as "prepared by Satan to the injury of the Protestant cause, and
the advantage of the Papists!" But dropping his particular application
to the devil and the Papists, honest Richard Baxter is perfectly right
in his general principle concerning "Rumpers,"--"Sans-culottes," and
"Radicals."