_Lord Falkland_.--Are not you surprised to see me in Elysium, Mr.
Hampden?
_Mr. Hampden_.--I was going to put the same question to your lordship,
for doubtless you thought me a rebel.
_Lord Falkland_.--And certainly you thought me an apostate from the
Commonwealth, and a supporter of tyranny.
_Mr. Hampden_.--I own I did, and I don't wonder at the severity of your
thoughts about me. The heat of the times deprived us both of our natural
candour. Yet I will confess to you here, that, before I died, I began to
see in our party enough to justify your apprehensions that the civil war,
which we had entered into from generous motives, from a laudable desire
to preserve our free constitution, would end very unhappily, and perhaps,
in the issue, destroy that constitution, even by the arms of those who
pretended to be most zealous for it.
_Lord Falkland_.--And I will as frankly own to you that I saw, in the
court and camp of the king, so much to alarm me for the liberty of my
country, if our arms were successful, that I dreaded a victory little
less than I did a defeat, and had nothing in my mouth but the word peace,
which I constantly repeated with passionate fondness, in every council at
which I was called to assist.
_Mr. Hampden_.--I wished for peace too, as ardently as your lordship, but
I saw no hopes of it. The insincerity of the king and the influence of
the queen made it impossible to trust to his promises and declarations.
Nay, what reliance could we reasonably have upon laws designed to limit
and restrain the power of the Crown, after he had violated the Bill of
Rights, obtained with such difficulty, and containing so clear an
assertion of the privileges which had been in dispute? If his conscience
would allow him to break an Act of Parliament, made to determine the
bounds of the royal prerogative, because he thought that the royal
prerogative could have no bounds, what legal ties could bind a conscience
so prejudiced? or what effectual security could his people obtain against
the obstinate malignity of such an opinion, but entirely taking from him
the power of the sword, and enabling themselves to defend the laws he had
passed?
_Lord Falkland_.--There is evidently too much truth in what you have
said. But by taking from the king the power of the sword, you in reality
took all power. It was converting the government into a democracy; and
if he had submitted to it, he would only have preserved the name of a
king. The sceptre would have been held by those who had the sword; or we
must have lived in a state of perpetual anarchy, without any force or
balance in the government; a state which could not have lasted long, but
would have ended in a republic or in absolute dominion.
_Mr. Hampden_.--Your reasoning seems unanswerable. But what could we do?
Let Dr. Laud and those other court divines, who directed the king's
conscience, and fixed in it such principles as made him unfit to govern a
limited monarchy--though with many good qualities, and some great
ones--let them, I say, answer for all the mischiefs they brought upon him
and the nation.
_Lord Falkland_.--They were indeed much to blame; but those principles
had gained ground before their times, and seemed the principles of our
Church, in opposition to the Jesuits, who had certainly gone too far in
the other extreme.
_Mr. Hampden_.--It is a disgrace to our Church to have taken up such
opinions; and I will venture to prophesy that our clergy in future times
must renounce them, or they will be turned against them by those who mean
their destruction. Suppose a Popish king on the throne, will the clergy
adhere to passive obedience and non-resistance? If they do, they deliver
up their religion to Rome; if they do not, their practice will confute
their own doctrines.
_Lord Falkland_.--Nature, sir, will in the end be sure to set right
whatever opinion contradicts her great laws, let who will be the teacher.
But, indeed, the more I reflect on those miserable times in which we both
lived, the more I esteem it a favour of Providence to us that we were cut
off so soon. The most grievous misfortune that can befall a virtuous man
is to be in such a state that he can hardly so act as to approve his own
conduct. In such a state we both were. We could not easily make a step,
either forward or backward, without great hazard of guilt, or at least of
dishonour. We were unhappily entangled in connections with men who did
not mean so well as ourselves, or did not judge so rightly. If we
endeavoured to stop them, they thought us false to the cause; if we went
on with them, we ran directly upon rocks, which we saw, but could not
avoid. Nor could we take shelter in a philosophical retreat from
business. Inaction would in us have been cowardice and desertion. To
complete the public calamities, a religious fury, on both sides, mingled
itself with the rage of our civil dissensions, more frantic than that,
more implacable, more averse to all healing measures. The most
intemperate counsels were thought the most pious, and a regard to the
laws, if they opposed the suggestions of these fiery zealots, was
accounted irreligion. This added new difficulties to what was before but
too difficult in itself, the settling of a nation which no longer could
put any confidence in its sovereign, nor lay more restraints on the royal
authority without destroying the balance of the whole constitution. In
those circumstances, the balls that pierced our hearts were directed
thither by the hands of our guardian angels, to deliver us from horrors
we could not support, and perhaps from a guilt our souls abhorred.
_Mr. Hampden_.--Indeed, things were brought to so deplorable a state,
that if either of us had seen his party triumphant, he must have lamented
that triumph as the ruin of his country. Were I to return into life, the
experience I have had would make me very cautious how I kindled the
sparks of civil war in England; for I have seen that, when once that
devouring fire is lighted, it is not in the power of the head of a party
to say to the conflagration, "Thus far shalt thou go, and here shall thy
violence stop."
_Lord Falkland_.--The conversation we have had, as well as the
reflections of my own mind on past events, would, if I were condemned to
my body again, teach me great moderation in my judgments of persons who
might happen to differ from me in difficult scenes of public action; they
would entirely cure me of the spirit of party, and make me think that as
in the Church, so also in the State, no evil is more to be feared than a
rancorous and enthusiastical zeal.