ENGLAND, 1645.
The American regards England with more than kindly eyes. Her history
has been the history of our race. The sterling valor of the Englishman
early made itself felt in the demands made by him upon the reluctant
kings who ruled him. At no time in the history of Great Britain,
from the Norman Conquest, had the peasantry and “Common People” been
submerged as completely by the power of the privileged classes as has
been the case in France, and, in fact, as in all of continental Europe.
When John, known as “Lackland,” the younger brother of Richard Cœur
de Lion, came to the throne of England (1109-1216), he ruled weakly
and lost nearly all the English possessions in France. The peasants
rose against the imbecile monarch and, joined by the barons and feudal
lords, compelled him to sign the Magna-Charta or Great Charter, at
Runnymede (1215).
By this immortal instrument the king gave up the right to demand money
when he pleased, to imprison or punish when he pleased. He was to take
money only when the barons granted the privilege, for public purposes,
and no freeman was to be punished except when his countrymen judged him
guilty of crime. The courts were to be open to all, and justice was
not to be sold, refused, or withheld. The serf villein was to have his
plow free from seizure. The church was secured against the interference
of the king. No class was neglected, but each obtained some cherished
right.
Thus, early in the history of England, we find the “Common People” of
that nation from whom we derive our blood and many of our laws--the
foundation, in fact of all of them--and much of our domestic and
social conditions and manners, asserting rights for which Americans
afterwards contended with the parent country, England. The Magna-Charta
was wrested from King John not by the lords and barons alone--but by a
union between the nobles and the “Common People.”
Thus early the “Common People” of England learned to appreciate their
might and strength. And the Americans, as inheritors along with their
blood of so many of the traditions and characteristics of the English,
have not failed to possess themselves of that quality which is inherent
in the Anglo-Saxon heart--the fearless demanding of the right to
equality.
Pronouncedly did the American people, November 8, 1892, reiterate in an
unmistakable manner the sentiment of the race who, in 1214, had forced
from King John of England the Magna-Charta which has been, ever since,
the foundation of English liberty.
English kings have continually tried to break the Magna-Charta, but
have ever failed in the attempt. They have been compelled, during
reigns succeeding that of King John, to confirm its provisions
thirty-six times. The early assertion of the right to representation
by the people is interesting as a step onward in the march of the
Anglo-Saxon toward equality and liberty.
Henry II.’s foolish favoritism to foreigners caused a revolt, under the
leadership of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who defeated the
king at Lewes. Earl Simon thereupon called together the Parliament,
summoning, besides the barons, two knights from each county and two
citizens from each city or borough to represent free-holders (1265).
From this beginning, the English Parliament soon took on the form it
has since retained of two assemblies--the House of Lords and the House
of Commons. Thus, the thirteenth century became ever memorable in the
history of the English-speaking people of the world, for the granting
of the Magna-Charta and the forming of the House of Commons--that House
of Commons, which, as its name indicates, was and is made up of the
representatives of the “Common People,” and which has ever been the
bulwark of the liberty of the “Common People” of England, resisting
every attack of autocratic monarchs upon the rights of the people.
In the reign of Edward III. (1327-1377) the Normans and Saxons were
fused completely, and created the English nationality; chivalry
reached its highest exaltation; but the court and the upper classes
were morally rotten. The laboring classes rose during this reign, and
compelled their employers to pay them just wages, and rent to fragments
the despotic edicts that effected them; just as the “Common People”
will ever do, whether the attempt is made to beguile them by the cry of
Protection, Free Trade, Force Bill, or other distracting exclamations.
Richard II. (1377-1399) was a tyrant, with neither the capacity nor
courage of his father and grandfather. He lost all the respect and
admiration with which the people of England had ever regarded his
father and grandfather. One of Richard II.’s tax-gatherers insulted
the daughter of one Watt Tyler, at Dartforth on Kent, in exactly the
same manner as “Chappie” feels at liberty to do, by his glances, the
daughters of the laboring men to-day. Watt Tyler, the wrathful father,
killed the man with one blow, and a formidable revolt sprang at once
into being.
The shouts of about 100,000 “Common People,” gathered on Black Heath,
June 12, 1381, reverberated through the valley of Richard II. The vast
horde poured into London, seized the Tower of London, put to death
the Archbishop of Canterbury and others, and spared the cowering and
cowardly King Richard II., only on his promise to abolish slavery and
grant their demands.
That, my good and would-be lords and barons, is but another evidence
of the Anglo-Saxon blood and its resentment of insult when offered to
the female members of the race. Women ever have occasioned, in the
Anglo-Saxon bosom, just and righteous indignation when insulted. The
slights, sneers, and snubbing of the women of America by the snobs
and sham aristocrats produced the reappearance of the same traits
of character as led Watt Tyler and his horde of peasants to London.
The women of America had become Democratic, and the result of their
influence upon the voters of our country was revealed, November 8th, in
an unmistakable manner.
James I. (1603-1625), the first Stuart to reign in England, was
stubborn, conceited, weak, slovenly, dissipated, and cowardly. In
his reign was first heard the prattle about “the divine right of
kings, and the passive obedience of the subject.” He ostentatiously
opposed his will to that of the people, and during his reign was in
constant conflict with Parliament. He was obliged to beg the House of
Commons for money, and that body adopted the principle, now one of the
cornerstones of the British Constitution, that “a redress of grievances
must precede a granting of supplies.”
Charles I. (1625-1649), the son of James I., was more refined and
held more exalted ideas of his prerogatives; he repeatedly broke his
promises made to the people; his reign was one long struggle with
Parliament.
He was not as frivolous and false as his son Charles II., but James
I., his father, had brought the idiotic doctrine of the divine right
of kings into England along with the rest of his peculiar Stuart
eccentricities,--for eccentric it was to the Anglo-Saxon people,
who had forced from John the Magna-Charta at Runnymede before the
amalgamation of the Norman and Saxon into one homogeneous race had been
completed; who, while there still existed internal dissensions and race
distinction, had been united upon the one great subject for which the
Anglo-Saxon people, best and bravest representatives of the Aryan race,
have ever fought--the equality of man in the representation in the
legislation of the people.
Strange to the ear of the masses was the doctrine of the Stuart, that
the king was one of the Lord’s anointed and could do no wrong. They
had seen kings do wrong when cursed with a wrong-doer as king, and
supported any aspirant to the crown of England, no matter how slender
may have been the thread of his claim thereto. Richard II. had played
the autocratic ruler. Englishmen had resisted by espousing the cause of
the first claimant who appeared upon the field. The assumption by the
Stuarts of a divine right was the first stab that they gave to their
own existence as the ruling House of an Anglo-Saxon people. Charles I.
reaped where James I. had sown. The English people had forgiven before
the bad faith of their sovereign, as they have since. They have endured
the waste of their money because the Anglo-Saxon, whence we Americans
derive the source of blood and laws, has not his tender spot upon the
pocketbook, but in his heart, his home, his pride, believing himself,
each man, equal to any other man.
In 1628, Parliament wrested from Charles I. the famous Petition of
Rights, the second great charter of English liberty. It forbade the
kings to levy taxes without the consent of Parliament, to imprison a
subject without trial, or to billet soldiers in private houses. As
usual, Charles disregarded his promises, and then for eleven years
ruled like an autocrat.
During that period no Parliament was convoked, a thing unparalleled
in English history. Buckingham having been assassinated by a Puritan
fanatic, the Earl of Stafford and Archbishop Laud became its royal
advisers. The Earl contrived a plan for making the king absolute. All
who differed from Laud were tried in the High Commissioner’s Court,
while the Star Chamber Court fined, whipped, and imprisoned those
who spoke ill of the king’s policy or refused to pay the money he
illegally demanded. The bitter persecution of the Puritans drove them
to America. In Scotland, Charles carried matters with a high hand.
Laud attempted to abolish Presbyterianism and introduce a liturgy. The
Scotch rose _en masse_, and signed (some of them with their own blood)
a covenant binding themselves to resist every innovation directed
against their religious rights. Finally, an army of Scots crossed the
border into England, and Charles was forced to assemble the famous
“Long Parliament” (1640), which lasted twenty years. The old battle
was renewed. Stafford, and afterward Laud, were brought to the block;
the Star Chamber and High Commissioners’ Courts were abolished, and
Parliament voted that it could not be adjourned without its own
consent. Charles attempted to arrest five of the leaders of Parliament
in the House of Commons itself. They hid in the City of London, whence
a week later they were brought back to the House of Commons in
triumph. Charles hastened Northward, and unfurled the royal banner. For
a time his supporters swept everything before them.
Then arose Oliver Cromwell, a man of the “Common People,” who, with
his Ironsides regiment at Marston Moor (1644), drove the cavaliers
pell-mell from the field. Nasby (1645) was the decisive contest of the
war. Cromwell swept the field, and the royal cause was irrevocably
lost. Charles fled to the Scots, who gave him up to the Parliament; but
the army of the “Common People,” led by Cromwell, soon got him into its
possession, and he was condemned to death on the charge of treason, and
was beheaded.
Thus, as has ever been the case when the “Common People” have been
goaded by insult into a furious state of temper, some leader has aptly
sprung, like Cromwell, from their ranks, and carried them triumphantly
to victory. In the same way George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew
Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Grover Cleveland have each in turn led
the hosts of the “Common People” to victory in their battles against
“divine rights,” injustice, “caste,” and “sham aristocracy.”
England, by the execution of Charles I., was without a king. The
authority was vested in the House of Commons (diminished by Pride’s
Purge the expulsion of the Presbyterian minister) contemptuously styled
“the Rump.” Cromwell, the man of the “Common People,” and his terrible
army, composed of the “Common People,” were the actual rulers. In
Ireland and Scotland the Prince of Wales was proclaimed as Charles II.,
whereupon the grim Ironsides--those representatives of the people, and
their terrific earnestness when aroused--conquered Ireland as it never
was conquered before. Crossing then to Scotland, the covenanters were
routed at Dunbar, and again at Worcester.
Cromwell, while he had the power of a king, like Cæsar, dared not
take the title. He recognized, what it would be well for the sham
aristocrats to attentively regard, that the people MAKE and UNMAKE;
hence, he did not dare offend the “Common People” by assuming the title
of king, though exercising all the powers of a king. Under Cromwell,
England’s glory became greater than under Elizabeth. The Barbarian
pirates were punished; Jamaica was captured; Dunkirk was received from
France in return for help against Spain; protecting the Protestants
everywhere, Cromwell compelled the Duke of Savoy to cease persecuting
the Baudois. The very name of England became terrible to the oppressor
of the poor in every land. The people, in their might, were ruling
England; because, even though Cromwell was styled “Lord Protector of
the Commonwealth,” he still understood that his greatest power rested
upon the will of the “Common People” as a foundation.
Upon the death of Oliver Cromwell there was no hand strong enough to
seize the helm of the ship of State. His son Richard, who did not
inherit the genius of his father, and did not hold the confidence of
the “Common People” of England, was quickly put aside. And the English
people--the “Common People”--casting about for an executive to place
at the head of the nation, selected Charles II., whom they called to
England to rule them, but not “by divine right;” simply as their king.
The popularity of Charles II., the most profligate, the most licentious
and immoral ruler that Great Britain has ever had, arose because he was
the people’s king. They had called him from over the sea; he ruled by
no divine right, but through the affections of the people. He was to
them _their_ king, and though he sinned, erred, and wasted the money of
the nation, he was _of_ the people, and they forgave him. When James
II. attempted to revive (as the people feared he would, and hated him
in consequence, even before his succeeding Charles II.) “the divine
right of kings,” and the privilege of doing anything, the idea that
nothing that he did could be wrong, the people resented it. It was not
Catholicism. Dear as religion may be in the heart of man, there is one
thought that is dearer: it is his right to be a man, and equal to any
other. Had James II. been a people’s man, as was Charles, his brother,
it is quite possible that the House of Stuart might now reign in Great
Britain. William of Orange was beloved by the people, because he was so
thoroughly a people’s man, that even the proud Anglo-Saxons preferred
to submit themselves to his rule, joined with a daughter of the House
of Stuart, rather than to the legitimate successor of Charles II. The
mighty voice of the people was heard resounding in the selection of
the Prince of Orange with the same notes that marked the music of the
march of a triumphant Democracy, on November 8, 1892; like the grains
of wheat taken from the tombs of the Pharaohs, though gathered in a
harvest of fifty centuries ago, when planted will produce the same crop
as to-day.
History repeats itself continually, and nowhere more obvious is the
repetition than in the record of the Anglo-Saxon race. The same causes
which occasioned the unpopularity of Charles I., the popularity of
Cromwell, the popularity of Charles II., were working to create
Cleveland’s tremendous popularity and the overthrow of the Republican
party November 8, 1892.