The balance of moral and intellectual influence thus established

between the nations of Europe is far more important than the balance

of political power. Indeed, we are inclined to think that the latter

is valuable principally because it tends to maintain the former. The

civilised world has thus been preserved from an uniformity of character

fatal to all improvement. Every part of it has been illuminated with

light reflected from every other. Competition has produced activity

where monopoly would have produced sluggishness. The number of

experiments in moral science which the speculator has an opportunity of

witnessing has been increased beyond all calculation. Society and human

nature, instead of being seen in a single point of view, are presented

to him under ten thousand different aspects. By observing the manners of

surrounding nations, by studying their literature, by comparing it with

that of his own country and of the ancient republics, he is enabled to

correct those errors into which the most acute men must fall when they

reason from a single species to a genus. He learns to distinguish

what is local from what is universal; what is transitory from what is

eternal; to discriminate between exceptions and rules; to trace the

operation of disturbing causes; to separate those general principles

which are always true and everywhere applicable from the accidental

circumstances with which, in every community, they are blended, and with

which, in an isolated community, {419}they are confounded by the most

philosophical mind.

Hence it is that, in generalisation, the writers of modern times have

far surpassed those of antiquity. The historians of our own country are

unequalled in depth and precision of reason; and, even in the works of

our mere compilers, we often meet with speculations beyond the reach of

Thucydides or Tacitus.

But it must, at the same time, be admitted that they have characteristic

faults, so closely connected with their characteristic merits, and of

such magnitude, that it may well be doubted whether, on the whole,

this department of literature has gained or lost during the last

two-and-twenty centuries.

The best historians of later times have been seduced from truth, not

by their imagination, but by their reason. They far excel their

predecessors in the art of deducing general principles from facts. But

unhappily they have fallen into the error of distorting facts to suit

general principles. They arrive at a theory from looking at some of the

phenomena; and the remaining phenomena they strain or curtail to suit

the theory. For this purpose it is not necessary that they should assert

what is absolutely false; for all questions in morals and politics

are questions of comparison and degree. Any proposition which does not

involve a contradiction in terms may by possibility be true; and, if all

the circumstances which raise a probability in its favour be stated and

enforced, and those which lead to an opposite conclusion be omitted or

lightly passed over, it may appear to be demonstrated. In every

human character and transaction there is a mixture of good

and evil: a little exaggeration, a little suppression, a judicious use

of epithets, a watchful and searching {420}scepticism with respect to

the evidence on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every

report or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or a

tyrant of Henry the Fourth.

This species of misrepresentation abounds in the most valuable works of

modern historians. Herodotus tells his story like a slovenly witness,

who, heated by partialities and prejudices, unacquainted with the

established rules of evidence, and uninstructed as to the obligations

of his oath, confounds what he imagines with what he has seen and heard,

and brings out facts, reports, conjectures, and fancies, in one mass.

Hume is an accomplished advocate. Without positively asserting much more

than he can prove, he gives prominence to all the circumstances which

support his case; he glides lightly over those which are unfavourable to

it; his own witnesses are applauded and encouraged; the statements which

seem to throw discredit on them are controverted; the contradictions

into which they fall are explained away; a clear and connected abstract

of their evidence is given. Everything that is offered on the other side

is scrutinised with the utmost severity; every suspicious circumstance

is a ground for comment and invective; what cannot be denied is

extenuated, or passed by without notice; concessions even are sometimes

made: but this insidious candour only increases the effect of the vast

mass of sophistry.

We have mentioned Hume as the ablest and most popular writer of his

class; but the charge which we have brought against him is one to which

all our most distinguished historians are in some degree obnoxious.

Gibbon, in particular, deserves very severe censure. Of all the numerous

culprits, however, none is more deeply guilty than Mr. Mitford. We

willingly acknowledge {421}the obligations which are due to his talents

and industry. The modern historians of Greece had been in the habit of

writing as if the world had learned nothing new during the last sixteen

hundred years. Instead of illustrating the events which they narrated

by the philosophy of a more enlightened age, they judged of antiquity by

itself alone. They seemed to think that notions, long driven from every

other corner of literature, had a prescriptive right to occupy this

last fastness. They considered all the ancient historians as equally

authentic. They scarcely made any distinction between him who related

events at which he had himself been present and him who five hundred

years after composed a philosophic romance for a society which had in

the interval undergone a complete change. It was all Greek, and all

true! The centuries which separated Plutarch from Thucydides seemed

as nothing to men who lived in an age so remote. The distance of

time produced an error similar to that which is sometimes produced by

distance of place. There are many good ladies who think that all the

people in India live together, and who charge a friend setting out for

Calcutta with kind messages to Bombay. To Rollin and Barthelemi, in the

same manner, all the classics were contemporaries.

Mr. Mitford certainly introduced great improvements; he showed us that

men who wrote in Greek and Latin sometimes told lies; he showed us that

ancient history might be related in such a manner as to furnish not only

allusions to school boys, but important lessons to statesmen. From that

love of theatrical effect and high-flown sentiment which had poisoned

almost every other work on the same subject his book is perfectly free.

But his passion for a theory as false, and far {422}more ungenerous,

led him substantially to violate truth in every page. Statements

unfavourable to democracy are made with unhesitating confidence, and

with the utmost bitterness of language. Every charge brought against a

monarch or an aristocracy is sifted with the utmost care. If it cannot

be denied, some palliating supposition is suggested; or we are at least

reminded that some circumstances now unknown may have justified what

at present appears unjustifiable. Two events are reported by the same

author in the same sentence; their truth rests on the same testimony;

but the one supports the darling hypothesis, and the other seems

inconsistent with it. The one is taken and the other is left.

The practice of distorting narrative into a conformity with theory is

a vice not so unfavourable as at first sight it may appear to the

interests of political science. We have compared the writers who indulge

in it to advocates; and we may add, that their conflicting fallacies,

like those of advocates, correct each other. It has always been held,

in the most enlightened nations, that a tribunal will decide a judicial

question most fairly when it has heard two able men argue, as unfairly

as possible, on the two opposite sides of it; and we are inclined

to think that this opinion is just. Sometimes, it is true, superior

eloquence and dexterity will make the worse appear the better reason;

but it is at least certain that the judge will be compelled to

contemplate the case under two different aspects. It is certain that no

important consideration will altogether escape notice.

This is at present the state of history. The poet laureate appears for

the Church of England, Lingard for the Church of Rome. Brodie has moved

to set {423}aside the verdicts obtained by Hume; and the cause in which

Mitford succeeded is, we understand, about to be reheard. In the midst

of these disputes, however, history proper, if we may use the term, is

disappearing. The high, grave, impartial summing up of Thucydides is

nowhere to be found.

While our historians are practising all the arts of controversy, they

miserably neglect the art of narration, the art of interesting the

affections and presenting pictures to the imagination. That a writer may

produce these effects without violating truth is sufficiently proved

by many excellent biographical works. The immense popularity which

well-written books of this kind have acquired deserves the serious

consideration of historians. Voltaire’s Charles the Twelfth, Marmontel’s

Memoirs, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Southey’s account of Nelson, are

perused with delight by the most frivolous and indolent. Whenever

any tolerable book of the same description makes its appearance, the

circulating libraries are mobbed; the book societies are in commotion;

the new novel lies uncut; the magazines and newspapers fill their

columns with extracts. In the meantime histories of great empires,

written by men of eminent ability, lie unread on the shelves of

ostentatious libraries.

The writers of history seem to entertain an aristocratical contempt

for the writers of memoirs. They think it beneath the dignity of men

who describe the revolutions of nations to dwell on the details which

constitute the charm of biography. They have imposed on themselves a

code of conventional decencies as absurd as that which has been the

banc of the French drama. The most characteristic and interesting

circumstances are omitted or softened down, because, {424}as we are

told, they are too trivial for the majesty of history. The majesty of

history seems to resemble the majesty of the poor King of Spain, who

died a martyr to ceremony because the proper dignitaries were not at

hand to render him assistance.

That history would be more amusing if this etiquette were relaxed will,

we suppose, be acknowledged. But would it be less dignified or less

useful? What do we mean when we say that one past event is important and

another insignificant? No past event has any intrinsic importance.

The knowledge of it is valuable only as it leads us to form just

calculations with respect to the future. A history which does not

serve this purpose, though it may be filled with battles, treaties, and

commotions, is as useless as the series of turnpike tickets collected by

Sir Matthew Mite.

Let us suppose that Lord Clarendon, instead of filling hundreds of folio

pages with copies of state papers, in which the same assertions

and contradictions are repeated till the reader is overpowered with

weariness, had condescended to be the Boswell of the Long Parliament.

Let us suppose that he had exhibited to us the wise and lofty

self-government of Hampden, leading while he seemed to follow, and

propounding unanswerable arguments in the strongest forms with the

modest air of an inquirer anxious for information; the delusions which

misled the noble spirit of Vane; the coarse fanaticism which concealed

the yet loftier genius of Cromwell, destined to control a mutinous

army and a factious people, to abase the flag of Holland, to arrest

the victorious arms of Sweden, and to hold the balance firm between the

rival monarchies of France and Spain. Let us suppose that he had made

his Cavaliers and Roundheads talk in their own {425}style; that he had

reported some of the ribaldry of Rupert’s pages, and some of the cant of

Harrison and Fleetwood. Would not his work in that ease have been more

interesting? Would it not have been more accurate?

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the

whole be false. The circumstances which have most influence on the

happiness of mankind, the changes of manners and morals, the transition

of communities from poverty to wealth, from knowledge to ignorance,

from ferocity to humanity--these are, for the most part, noiseless

revolutions. Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are

pleased to call important events. They are not achieved by armies, or

enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by no treaties and recorded

in no archives. They are carried on in every school, in every church,

behind ten thousand counters, at ten thousand firesides. The upper

current of society presents no certain criterion by which we can judge

of the direction in which the under current flows. We read of defeats

and victories. But we know that nations may be miserable amidst

victories and prosperous amidst defeats. We read of the fall of wise

ministers and of the rise of profligate favourites. But we must remember

how small a proportion the good or evil effected by a single statesman

can bear to the good or evil of a great social system.

Bishop Watson compares a geologist to a gnat mounted on an elephant,

and laying down theories as to the whole internal structure of the vast

animal, from the phenomena of the hide. The comparison is unjust to the

geologists; but it is very applicable to those historians who write as

if the body politic were homogeneous, {426}who look only on the surface

of affairs, and never think of the mighty and various organisation which

lies deep below.

In the works of such writers as these, England, at the close of the

Seven Years’ War, is in the highest state of prosperity: at the close of

the American war she is in a miserable and degraded condition; as if

the people were not on the whole as rich, as well governed, and as

well educated at the latter period as at the former. We have read books

called Histories of England, under the reign of George the Second, in

which the rise of Methodism is not even mentioned. A hundred years hence

this breed of authors will, we hope, be extinct. If it should still

exist, the late ministerial interregnum will be described in terms which

will seem to imply that all government was at an end; that the social

contract was annulled; and that the hand of every man was against his

neighbour, until the wisdom and virtue of the new cabinet educed order

out of the chaos of anarchy. We are quite certain that misconceptions

as gross prevail at this moment respecting many important parts of our

annals.

The effect of historical reading is analogous, In many respects, to

that produced by foreign travel. The student, like the tourist, is

transported into a new state of society. He sees new fashions. He hears

new modes of expression. His mind is enlarged by contemplating the wide

diversities of laws, of morals, and of manners. But men may travel far,

and return with minds as contracted as if they had never stirred from

their own market-town. In the same manner, men may know the dates of

many battles and the genealogies of many royal houses, and yet be

no wiser. Most people look at past times as princes look at foreign

{427}countries. More than one illustrious stranger has landed on our

island amidst the shouts of a mob, has dined with the king, has hinted

with the master of the stag-hounds, has seen the guards reviewed, and

a knight of the garter installed, has cantered along Regent Street,

has visited St. Paul’s, and noted down its dimensions; and has then

departed, thinking that he has seen England. He has, in faet, seen a few

public buildings, public men, and public ceremonies. But of the vast

and complex system of society, of the fine shades of national charaeter,

of the practical operation of government and laws, he knows nothing.

He who would understand these things rightly must not confine his

observations to palaces and solemn days. He must see ordinary men as

they appear in their ordinary business and in their ordinary pleasures.

He must mingle in the crowds of the exchange and the coffeehouse. He

must obtain admittance to the convivial table and the domestic hearth.

He must bear with vulgar expressions. He must not shrink from exploring

even the retreats of misery. He who wishes to understand the condition

of mankind in former ages must proceed on the same principle. If he

attends only to public transactions, to wars, congresses, and debates,

his studies will be as unprofitable as the travels of those imperial,

royal, and serene sovereigns who form their judgment of our island from

having gone in state to a few fine sights, and from having held formal

conferences with a few great officers.

The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of

an age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no faet, he attributes no

expression to his characters, which is not authenticated by sufficient

testimony. But, by judicious selection, rejection, and arrangement,

{428}he gives to truth those attractions which have been usurped

by fiction. In his narrative a due subordination is observed: some

transactions are prominent; others retire. But the scale on which he

represents them is increased or diminished, not according to the dignity

of the persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which

they elucidate the condition of society and the nature of man. He shows

us the court, the camp, and the senate. But he shows ns also the nation.

He considers no anecdote, no peculiarity of manner, no familiar saying,

as too insignificant for his notice which is not too insignificant to

illustrate the operation of laws, of religion, and of education, and to

mark the progress of the human mind. Men will not merely be described,

but will be made intimately known to us. The changes of manners will be

indicated, not merely by a few general phrases or a few extracts from

statistical documents, but by appropriate images presented in every

line.

If a man, such as we are supposing, should write the history of England,

he would assuredly not omit the battles, the sieges, the negotiations,

the seditions, the ministerial changes. But with these he would

intersperse the details which are the charm of historical romances. At

Lincoln Cathedral there is a beautiful painted window, which was made by

an apprentice out of the pieces of glass which had been rejected by

his master. It is so far superior to every other in the church, that,

according to the tradition, the vanquished artist killed himself from

mortification. Sir Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used those

fragments of truth which historians have scornfully thrown behind them

in a manner which may well excite their envy. He has constructed out

of their gleanings works which, {429}even considered as histories, are

scarcely less valuable than their’s. But a truly great historian would

reclaim those materials which the novelist has appropriated. The

history of the government, and the history of the people, would be

exhibited in that mode in which alone they can be exhibited justly, in

inseparable conjunction and intermixture. We should not then have to

look for the wars of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for their

phraseology in Old Mortality; for one half of King James in Hume, and

for the other half in the Fortunes of Nigel.

The early part of our imaginary history would be rich witli colouring

from romance, ballad, and chronicle. We should find ourselves in the

company of knights such as those of Froissart, and of pilgrims such as

those who rode witli Chaucer from the Tabard. Society would be shown

from the highest to the lowest,--from the royal cloth of state to the

den of the outlaw; from the throne of the legate, to the chimney-corner

where the begging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels,

crusaders,--the stately monastery, with the good cheer in its refectory

and the high-mass in its chapel,--the manor-house, witli its hunting and

hawking,--the tournament, with the heralds and ladies, the trumpets

and the cloth of gold,--would give truth and life to the representation.

We should perceive, in a thousand slight touches, the importance of

the privileged burgher, and the fierce and haughty spirit which swelled

under the collar of the degraded villain. The revival of letters would

not merely be described in a few magnificent periods. We should discern,

in innumerable particulars, the fermentation of mind, the eager appetite

for knowledge, which distinguished the sixteenth from the fifteenth

century. In the Reformation {430}we should see, not merely a schism

which changed the ecclesiastical constitution of England and the mutual

relations of the European powers, but a moral war which raged in every

family, which set the father against the son, and the son against the

father, the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the

mother. Henry would be painted with the skill of Tacitus. We should have

the change of his character from his profuse and joyous youth to his

savage and imperious old age. We should perceive the gradual progress

of selfish and tyrannical passions in a mind not naturally insensible or

ungenerous; and to the last we should detect some remains of that open

and noble temper which endeared him to a people whom he oppressed,

struggling with the hardness of despotism and the irritability of

disease. We should see Elizabeth in all her weakness and in all her

strength, surrounded by the handsome favourites whom she never trusted,

and the wise old statesmen whom she never dismissed, uniting in herself

the most contradictory qualities of both her parents,--the coquetry, the

caprice, the petty malice of Anne,--the haughty and resolute spirit of

Henry. We have no hesitation in saying that a great artist might produce

a portrait of this remarkable woman at least as striking as that in the

novel of Kenilworth, without employing a single trait not authenticated

by ample testimony. In the meantime, we should see arts cultivated,

wealth accumulated, the conveniences of life improved. We should see the

keeps, where nobles, insecure themselves, spread insecurity around them,

gradually giving place to the halls of peaceful opulence, to the oriels

of Longleat, and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We should see towns

extended, deserts cultivated, the hamlets of fishermen {431}turned

into wealthy havens, the meal of the peasant improved, and his but more

commodiously furnished. We should see those opinions and feelings which

produced the great struggle against the house of Stuart slowly growing

up in the bosom of private families, before they manifested themselves

in parliamentary debates. Then would come the civil war. Those

skirmishes on which Clarendon dwells so minutely would be told, as

Thucydides would have told them, with perspicuous conciseness. They are

merely connecting links. But the great characteristics of the age, the

loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, the fierce licentiousness

of the swearing, dicing, drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgrace the

royal cause,--the austerity of the Presbyterian Sabbaths in the city,

the extravagance of the independent preachers in the camp, the precise

garb, the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the affected accent,

the absurd names and phrases which marked the Puritans,--the valour,

the policy, the public spirit, which lurked beneath these ungraceful

disguises,--the dreams of the raving Fifth-monarchy-man, the dreams,

scarcely less wild, of the philosophic republican,--all these would

enter into the representation, and render it at once more exact and more

striking.

The instruction derived from history thus written would be of a vivid

and practical character. It would be received by the imagination as well

as by the reason. It would be not merely traced on the mind, but branded

into it. Many truths, too, would be learned, which can be learned in

no other manner. As the history of states is generally written, the

greatest and most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them like

supernatural inflictions, without warning {432}or cause. But the fact

is, that such revolutions are almost always the consequences of moral

changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the community, and

which ordinarily proceed far before their progress is indicated by any

public measure. An intimate knowledge of the domestic history of nations

is therefore absolutely necessary to the prognosis of political events.

A narrative, defective in this respect, is as useless as a medical

treatise which should pass by all the symptoms attendant on the early

stage of a disease and mention only what occurs when the patient is

beyond the reach of remedies.

A historian, such as we have been attempting to describe, would indeed

be an intellectual prodigy. In his mind, powers scarcely compatible with

each other must be tempered into an exquisite harmony. We shall sooner

see another Shakspeare or another Homer. The highest excellence to which

any single faculty can be brought would be less surprising than such a

happy and delicate combination of qualities. Yet the contemplation of

imaginary models is not an unpleasant or useless employment of the mind.

It cannot indeed produce perfection; but it produces improvement,

and nourishes that generous and liberal fastidiousness which is not

inconsistent with the strongest sensibility to merit, and which, while

it exalts our conceptions of the art, does not render us unjust to the

artist.

HALLAM. (1)

{433}(_Edinburgh Review_, September 1828.)

History, at least in its state of ideal perfection, is a compound of

poetry and philosophy. It impresses general truths on the mind by a

vivid representation of particular characters and incidents. But, in

fact, the two hostile elements of which it consists have never been

known to form a perfect amalgamation; and at length, in our own time,

they have been completely and professedly separated. Good histories, in

the proper sense of the word, we have not. But we have good historical

romances, and good historical essays. The imagination and the reason,

if we may use a legal metaphor, have made partition of a province of

literature of which they were formerly seised _per my et per tout_; and

now they hold their respective portions in severalty, instead of holding

the whole in common.

To make the past present, to bring the distant near, to place us in the

society of a great man or on the eminence which overlooks the field of

a mighty battle, to invest with the reality of human flesh and blood

beings whom we are too much inclined to consider as personified

qualities in an allegory, to call up our ancestors before us with all

their peculiarities of language,

(1) The Constitutional History of England, from the

Accession of Henry VII to the Death of George II. By Henry

Hallam. In 2 vols. 1827.

{434}manners, and garb, to show us over their houses, to scat us at

their tables, to rummage their old-fashioned wardrobes, to explain

the uses of their ponderous furniture, these parts of the duty which

properly belongs to the historian have been appropriated by the

historical novelist. On the other hand, to extract the philosophy

of history, to direct our judgment of events and men, to trace the

connection of causes and effects, and to draw from the occurrences of

former times general lessons of moral and political wisdom, has become

the business of a distinct class of writers.

Of the two kinds of composition into which history has been thus

divided, the one may be compared to a map, the other to a painted

landscape. The picture, though it places the country before us, does not

enable us to ascertain with accuracy the dimensions, the distances, and

the angles. The map is not a work of imitative art. It presents no scene

to the imagination; but it gives us exact information as to the bearings

of the various points, and is a more useful companion to the traveller

or the general than the painted landscape could be, though it were the

grandest that ever Rosa peopled with outlaws, or the sweetest over which

Claude ever poured the mellow effulgence of a setting sun.

It is remarkable that the practice of separating the two ingredients of

which history is composed has become prevalent on the Continent as well

as in this country. Italy has already produced a historical novel, of

high merit and of still higher promise. In France, the practice has been

carried to a length somewhat whimsical. M. Sismondi publishes a grave

and stately history of the Merovingian Kings, very valuable, and a

little tedious. He then sends forth as a companion to {435}it a novel,

in which he attempts to give a lively representation of characters and

manners. This course, as it seems to us, has all the disadvantages of

a division of labour, and none of its advantages. We understand the

expediency of keeping the functions of cook and coachman distinct. The

dinner will be better dressed, and the horses better managed. But where

the two situations are united, as in the Maître Jacques of Molière, we

do not see that the matter is much mended by the solemn form with which

the pluralist passes from one of his employments to the other.

We manage these things better in England. Sir Walter Scott gives us

a novel; Mr. Hallam a critical and argumentative history. Both are

occupied with the same matter. But the former looks at it with the eye

of a sculptor. His intention is to give an express and lively image of

its external form. The latter is an anatomist. His task is to dissect

the subject to its inmost recesses, and to lay bare before us all the

springs of motion and all the causes of decay.

Mr. Hallam is, on the whole, far better qualified than any other

writer of our time for the office which he has undertaken. He has great

industry and great acuteness. His knowledge is extensive, various, and

profound. His mind is equally distinguished by the amplitude of its

grasp, and by the delicacy of its tact. His speculations have none of

that vagueness which is the common fault of political philosophy. On

the contrary, they are strikingly practical, and teach us not only the

general rule, but the mode of applying it to solve particular cases. In

this respect they often remind us of the Discourses of Machiavelli.

The style is sometimes open to the charge of harshness. We have also

here and there remarked a little {436}of that unpleasant trick, which

Gibbon brought into fashion, the trick, we mean, of telling a story

by implication and allusion. Mr. Hallam, however, has an excuse which

Gibbon had not. His work is designed for readers who are already

acquainted with the ordinary books on English history, and who can

therefore unriddle these little enigmas without difficulty. The manner

of the book is, on the whole, not unworthy of the matter. The language,

even where most faulty, is weighty and massive, and indicates strong

sense in every line. It often rises to an eloquence, not florid or

impassioned, but high, grave, and sober; such as would become a state

paper, or a judgment delivered by a great magistrate, a Somers or a

D’Agnessean.

In this respect the character of Mr. Hallam’s mind corresponds

strikingly with that of his style. His work is eminently judicial. Its

whole spirit is that of the bench, not that of the bar. He sums up with

a calm, steady impartiality, turning neither to the right nor to the

left, glossing over nothing, exaggerating nothing, while the advocates

on both sides are alternately biting their lips to hear their

conflicting misstatements and sophisms exposed. On a general survey,

we do not scruple to pronounce the Constitutional History the most

impartial book that we ever read. We think it the more incumbent on us

to bear this testimony strongly at first setting out, because, in the

course of our remarks, we shall think it right to dwell principally on

those parts of it from which we dissent.

There is one peculiarity about Mr. Hallam which, while it adds to the

value of his writings, will, we fear, take away something from their

popularity. He is less of a worshipper than any historian whom we

can {437}call to mind. Every political sect has its esoteric and its

exoteric school, its abstract doctrines for the initiated, its visible

symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables for the vulgar. It

assists the devotion of those who are unable to raise themselves to

the contemplation of pure truth by all the devices of Pagan or Papal

superstition. It has its altars and its deified heroes, its relics and

pilgrimages, its canonized martyrs and confessors, its festivals and its

legendary miracles. Our pious ancestors, we are told, deserted the High

* Altar of Canterbury, to lay all their obligations on the shrine of St.

Thomas. In the same manner the great and comfortable doctrines of the

Tory creed, those particularly which relate to restrictions on worship

and on trade, are adored by squires and rectors in Pitt Clubs, under the

name of a minister who was as bad a representative of the system which

has been christened after him as Bechet of the spirit of the Gospel. On

the other hand, the cause for which Hampden bled on the field and Sydney

on the scaffold is enthusiastically toasted by many an honest radical

who would be puzzled to explain the difference between Ship-money and

the Habeas Corpus Act. It may be added that, as in religion, so in

politics, few even of those who are enlightened enough to comprehend the

meaning latent under the emblems of their faith can resist the contagion

of the popular superstition. Often, when they flatter themselves that

they are merely feigning a compliance with the prejudices of the vulgar,

they are themselves under the influence of those very prejudices. It

probably was not altogether on grounds of expediency that Socrates

taught his followers to honour the gods whom the state honoured, and

bequeathed a cock to Esculapius with his dying breath. So there is often

{438}a portion of willing credulity and enthusiasm in the veneration

which the most discerning men pay to their political idols. From the

very nature of man it must be so. The faculty by which we inseparably

associate ideas which have often been presented to us in conjunction

is not under the absolute control of the will. It may be quickened into

morbid activity. It may be reasoned into shamelessness. But in a certain

decree it will always exist. The almost absolute mastery which Mr.

Hallam has obtained over feelings of this class is perfectly astonishing

to us, and will, we believe, be not only astonishing but offensive to

many of his readers. It must particularly disgust those people who, in

their speculations on politics, are not reasoners but fanciers; whose

opinions, even when sincere, are not produced, according to the

ordinary law of intellectual births, by induction or inference, but

are equivocally generated by the heat of fervid tempers out of the

overflowing of tumid imaginations. A man of this class is always

in extremes. He cannot be a friend to liberty without calling for

a community of goods, or a friend to order without taking under his

protection the foulest excesses of tyranny. His admiration oscillates

between the most worthless of rebels and the most worthless of

oppressors, between Marten, the disgrace of the High Court of Justice,

and Laud, the disgrace of the Star Chamber. He can forgive any thing but

temperance and impartiality. He has a certain sympathy with the violence

of his opponents, as well as with that of his associates. In every

furious partisan he sees either his present self or his former self,

the pensioner that is, or the Jacobin that has been. But he is unable to

comprehend a writer who, steadily attached to principles, is indifferent

about names and badges, and who judges {439}of characters with equable

severity, not altogether untinctured with cynicism, but free from the

slightest touch of passion, party spirit, or caprice.

We should probably like Mr. Hallam’s book more if, instead of pointing

out with strict fidelity the bright points and the dark spots of both

parties, he had exerted himself to whitewash the one and to blacken the

other. But we should certainly prize it far less. Eulogy and invective

may be had for the asking. But for cold rigid justice, the one weight

and the one measure, we know not where else we can look.

No portion of our annals has been more perplexed and misrepresented by

writers of different parties than the history of the Reformation. In

this labyrinth of falsehood and sophistry, the guidance of Mr. Hallam

is peculiarly valuable. It is impossible not to admire the even-handed

justice with which he deals out castigation to right and left on the

rival persecutors.

It is vehemently maintained by some writers of the present day that

Elizabeth persecuted neither Papists nor Puritans as such, and that the

severe measures which she occasionally adopted were dictated, not by

religious intolerance, but by political necessity. Even the excellent

account of those times which Mr. Hallam has given has not altogether

imposed silence on the authors of this fallacy. The title of the Queen,

they say, was annulled by the Pope; her throne was given to another; her

subjects were incited to rebellion; her life was menaced; every Catholic

was bound in conscience to be a traitor; it was therefore against

traitors, not against Catholics, that the penal laws were enacted.

In order that our readers may be fully competent to appreciate the

merits of this defence, we will state. {440}as concisely as possible,

the substance of some of these laws.

As soon as Elizabeth ascended the throne, and before the least hostility

to her government had been shown by the Catholic population, an act

passed prohibiting the celebration of the rites of the Romish Church, on

pain of forfeiture for the first offence, of a year’s imprisonment for

the second, and of perpetual imprisonment for the third.

A law was next made in 1562, enacting, that all who had ever graduated

at the Universities or received holy orders, all lawyers, and all

magistrates, should take the oath of supremacy when tendered to them, on

pain of forfeiture and imprisonment during the royal pleasure. After the

lapse of three months, the oath might again be tendered to them; and,

if it were again refused, the recusant was guilty of high treason. A

prospective law, however severe, framed to exclude Catholics from the

liberal professions, would have been mercy itself compared with this

odious act. It is a retrospective statute; it is a retrospective penal

statute; it is a retrospective penal statute against a large class. We

will not positively affirm that a law of this description must always,

and under all circumstances, be unjustifiable. But the presumption

against it is most violent; nor do we remember any crisis, either in our

own history, or in the history of any other country, which would

have rendered such a provision necessary. In the present case,

what circumstances called for extraordinary rigour? There might be

disaffection among the Catholics. The prohibition of their worship would

naturally produce it. But it is from their situation, not from their

conduct, from the wrongs which they had suffered, not from those which

they {441}had committed, that the existence of discontent among them

must be inferred. There were libels, no doubt, and prophecies, and

rumours, and suspicions, strange grounds for a law inflicting capital

penalties, _ex post facto_, on a large body of men.

Eight years later, the bull of Pius deposing Elizabeth produced a third

law. This law, to which alone, as we conceive, the defence now under our

consideration can apply, provides that, if any Catholic shall convert

a Protestant to the Romish Church, they shall both suffer death as for

high treason.

We believe that we might safely content ourselves with stating the

fact, and leaving it to the judgment of every plain Englishman. Recent

controversies have, however, given so much importance to this subject,

that we will offer a few remarks on it.

In the first place, the arguments which are urged in favour of Elizabeth

apply with much greater force to the case of her sister Mary. The

Catholics did not, at the time of Elizabeth’s accession, rise in arms

to seat a Pretender on her throne. But before Mary had given, or could

give, provocation, the most distinguished Protestants attempted to

set aside her rights in favour of the Lady Jane. That attempt, and the

subsequent insurrection of Wyatt, furnished at least as good a plea

for the burning of Protestants, as the conspiracies against Elizabeth

furnish for the hanging and embowelling of Papists.

The fact is that both pleas are worthless alike. If such arguments are

to pass current, it will be easy to prove that there was never such a

thing as religious persecution since the creation. For there never was

a religious persecution in which some odious crime was not, justly or

unjustly, said to be obviously deducible {442}from the doctrines of the

persecuted party. We might say that the Cæsars did not persecute the

Christians; that they only punished men who were charged, rightly or

wrongly, with burning Rome, and with committing the foulest abominations

in secret assemblies; and that the refusal to throw frankincense on the

altar of Jupiter was not the crime but only evidence of the crime.

We might say, that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was intended to

extirpate, not a religious sect, but a political party. For, beyond all

doubt, the proceedings of the Huguenots, from the conspiracy of Amboise

to the battle of Moncontour, had given much more trouble to the French

monarchy than the Catholics have ever given to the English monarchy

since the Reformation; and that too with much less excuse.

The true distinction is perfectly obvious. To punish a man because he

has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to

have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because

we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the

conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he

will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and

wicked.

When Elizabeth put Ballard and Babington to death, she was not

persecuting. Nor should we have accused her government of persecution

for passing any law, however severe, against overt acts of sedition. But

to argue that, because a man is a Catholic, he must think it right to

murder a heretical sovereign, and that because he thinks it right he

will attempt to do it, and then, to found on this conclusion a law for

punishing him as if he had done it, is plain persecution.

If, indeed, all men reasoned in the same manner on {443}the same data,

and always did what they thought it their duty to do, this mode of

dispensing punishment might be extremely judicious. But as people who

agree about premises often disagree about conclusions, and as no man in

the world acts up to his own standard of right, there are two enormous

gaps in the logic by which alone penalties for opinions can be defended.

The doctrine of reprobation, in the judgment of many very able men,

follows by syllogistic necessity from the doctrine of election. Others

conceive that the Antinomian heresy directly follows from the doctrine

of reprobation; and it is very generally thought that licentiousness and

cruelty of the worst description are likely to be the fruits, as they

often have been the fruits, of Antinomian opinions. This chain of

reasoning, we think, is as perfect in all its parts as that which makes

out a Papist to be necessarily a traitor. Yet it would be rather a

strong measure to hang all the Calvinists, on the ground that, if they

were spared, they would infallibly commit all the atrocities of Matthias

and Knipperdoling. For, reason the matter as we may, experience shows

us that a man may believe in election without believing in reprobation,

that he may believe in reprobation without being an Antinomian, and that

he may be an Antinomian without being a bad citizen. Man, in short,

is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his

belief to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.

We do not believe that every Englishman who was reconciled to the

Catholic Church would, as a necessary consequence, have thought himself

justified in deposing or assassinating Elizabeth. It is not sufficient

to say that the convert must have acknowledged the authority of the

Pope, and that the Pope had issued a {444}bull against the Queen. We

know through what strange loopholes the human mind contrives to escape,

when it wishes to avoid a disagreeable inference from an admitted

proposition. We know how long the Jansenists contrived to believe the

Pope infallible in matters of doctrine, and at the same time to believe

doctrines which he pronounced to be heretical. Let it pass, however,

that every Catholic in the kingdom thought that Elizabeth might be

lawfully murdered. Still the old maxim, that what is the business of

everybody is the business of nobody, is particularly likely to hold good

in a case in which a cruel death is the almost inevitable consequence of

making any attempt.

Of the ten thousand clergymen of the Church of England, there is

scarcely one who would not say that a man who should leave his country

and friends to preach the Gospel among savages, and who should, after

labouring indefatigably without any hope of reward, terminate his life

by martyrdom, would deserve the warmest admiration. Yet we doubt whether

ten of the ten thousand ever thought of going on such an expedition.

Why should we suppose that conscientious motives, feeble as they are

constantly found to be in a good cause, should be omnipotent for evil?

Doubtless there was many a jolly Popish priest in the old manor-houses

of the northern counties, who would have admitted, in theory, the

deposing power of the Pope, but who would not have been ambitious to be

stretched on the rack, even though it were to be used, according to the

benevolent proviso of Lord Burleigh, “as charitably as such a thing can

be,” or to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, even though, by that rare

indulgence which the Queen, of her special grace, certain knowledge, and

mere motion, sometimes extended to very mitigated cases, he {445}were

allowed a fair time to choke before the hangman began to grabble in his

entrails.

But the laws passed against the Puritans had not even the wretched

excuse which we have been considering. In this case, the cruelty was

equal, the danger infinitely less. In fact, the danger was created

solely by the cruelty. But it is superfluous to press the argument.

By no artifice of ingenuity can the stigma of persecution, the

worst blemish of the English Church, be effaced or patched over. Her

doctrines, we well know, do not tend to intolerance. She admits the

possibility of salvation out of her own pale. But this circumstance, in

itself honourable to her, aggravates the sin and the shame of those

who persecuted in her name. Dominic and De Montfort did not, at least,

murder and torture for differences of opinion which they considered as

trifling. It was to stop an infection which, as they believed, hurried

to certain perdition every soul which it seized, that they employed

their fire and steel. The measures of the English government with

respect to the Papists and Puritans sprang from a widely different

principle. If those who deny that the founders of the Church were guilty

of religious persecution mean only that the founders of the Church were

not influenced by any religious motive, we perfectly agree with them.

Neither the penal code of Elizabeth, nor the more hateful system by

which Charles the Second attempted to force Episcopacy on the Scotch,

had an origin so noble. The cause is to be sought in some circumstances

which attended the Reformation in England, circumstances of which the

effects long continued to be felt, and may in some degree be traced even

at the present day.

In Germany, in France, in Switzerland, and in Scotland, {446}the contest

against the Papal power was essentially a religions contest. In all

those countries, indeed, the cause of the Reformation, like every

other great cause, attracted to itself many supporters influenced by no

conscientious principle, many who quitted the Established Church

only because they thought her in danger, many who were weary of her

restraints, and many who were greedy for her spoils. But it was not

by these adherents that the separation was there conducted. They were

welcome auxiliaries; their support was too often purchased by unworthy

compliances; but, however exalted in rank or power, they were not the

leaders in the enterprise. Men of a widely different description,

men who redeemed great infirmities and errors by sincerity,

disinterestedness, energy, and courage, men who, with many of the vices

of revolutionary chiefs and of polemic divines, united some of the

highest qualities of apostles, were the real directors. They might

be violent in innovation and scurrilous in controversy. They might

sometimes act with inexcusable severity towards opponents, and sometimes

connive disreputably at the vices of powerful allies. But fear was not

in them, nor hypocrisy, nor avarice, nor any petty selfishness. Their

one great object was the demolition of the idols and the purification of

the sanctuary. If they were too indulgent to the failings of eminent men

from whose patronage they expected advantage to the church, they

never flinched before persecuting tyrants and hostile armies. For that

theological system to which they sacrificed the lives of others without

scruple, they were ready to throw away their own lives without fear.

Such were the authors of the great schism on the Continent and in the

northern part of this island. The Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave

of Hesse, the {447}Prince of Condé and the King of Navarre, the Earl of

Moray and the Earl of Morton, might espouse the Protestant opinions, or

might pretend to espouse them; but it was from Luther, from Calvin, from

Knox, that the Reformation took its character.

England has no such names to show: not that she wanted men of sincere

piety, of deep learning, of steady and adventurous courage. But these

were thrown into the back ground. Elsewhere men of this character were

the principals. Here they acted a secondary part. Elsewhere worldliness

was the tool of zeal. Here zeal was the tool of worldliness. A King,

whose character may be best described by saying that he was despotism

itself personified, unprincipled ministers, a rapacious aristocracy,

a servile Parliament, such were the instruments by which England was

delivered from the yoke of Rome. The work which had been begun by Henry,

the murderer of his wives, was continued by Somerset, the murderer of

his brother, and completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest.

Sprung from brutal passion, nurtured by selfish policy, the Reformation

in England displayed little of what had, in other countries,

distinguished it, unflinching and unsparing devotion, boldness of

speech, and singleness of eye. These were indeed to be found; but it was

in the lower ranks of the party which opposed the authority of Rome, in

such men as Hooper, Latimer, Rogers, and Taylor. Of those who had any

important share in bringing the Reformation about, Ridley was perhaps

the only person who did not consider it as a mere political job. Even

Ridley did not play a very prominent part. Among the statesmen and

prelates who principally gave the tone to the religious changes, there

is one, and one only, whose conduct partiality {448}itself can attribute

to any other than interested motives. It is not strange, therefore, that

his character should have been the subject of fierce controversy. We

need not say that we speak of Cranmer.

Mr. Hallam has been severely censured for saying, with his usual placid

severity, that, “if we weigh the character of this prelate in an equal

balance, he will appear far indeed removed from the turpitude imputed to

him by his enemies; yet not entitled to any extraordinary veneration.”

We will venture to expand the sense of Mr. Hallam, and to comment on it

thus:--If we consider Cranmer merely as a statesman, he will not appear

a much worse man than Wolsey, Gardiner, Cromwell, or Somerset. But, when

an attempt is made to set him up as a saint, it is scarcely possible

for any man of sense who knows the history of the times to preserve his

gravity. If the memory of the archbishop had been left to find its own

place, he would have soon been lost among the crowd which is mingled

“A quel cattivo coro

Degli angeli, che non furon ribelli,

Nè fur fedcli a Dio, nia per se foro."

And the only notice which it would have been necessary to take of his

name would have been

“Non ragioniam di lui; ma guarda, e passa."

But, since his admirers challenge for him a place in the noble army of

martyrs, his claims require fuller discussion.

The origin of his greatness, common enough in the scandalous chronicles

of courts, seems strangely out of place in a hagiology. Cranmer rose

into favour by serving Henry in the disgraceful affair of his first

divorce. He promoted the marriage of Anne {449}Boleyn with the King.

On a frivolous pretence he pronounced that marriage null and void. On a

pretence, if possible, still more frivolous, he dissolved the ties which

bound the shameless tyrant to Anne of Cleves. He attached himself to

Cromwell while the fortunes of Cromwell flourished. He voted for cutting

off Cromwell’s head without a trial, when the tide of royal favour

turned. He conformed backwards and forwards as the King changed his

mind. He assisted, while Henry lived, in condemning to the flames those

who denied the doctrine of transubstantiation. He found out, as soon as

Henry was dead, that the doctrine was false. He was, however, not at a

loss for people to burn. The authority of his station and of his grey

hairs was employed to overcome the disgust with which an intelligent and

virtuous child regarded persecution. Intolerance is always bad. But the

sanguinary intolerance of a man who thus wavered in his creed excites

a loathing, to which it is difficult to give vent without calling foul

names. Equally false to political and to religious obligations,

the primate was first the tool of Somerset, and then the tool of

Northumberland. When the Protector wished to put his own brother

to death, without even the semblance of a trial, he found a ready

instrument in Cranmer. In spite of the canon law, which forbade a

churchman to take any part in matters of blood, the archbishop signed

the warrant for the atrocious sentence. When Somerset had been in his

turn destroyed, his destroyer received the support of Cranmer in a

wicked attempt to change the course of the succession.

The apology made for him by his admirers only renders his conduct more

contemptible. He complied, it is said, against his better judgment,

because he could {450}not resist the entreaties of Edward. A holy

prelate of sixty, one would think, might be better employed by the

bedside of a dying child, than in committing crimes at the request of

the young disciple. If Cranmer had shown half as much firmness when

Edward requested him to commit treason as he had before shown when

Edward requested him not to commit murder, he might have saved the

country from one of the greatest misfortunes that it ever underwent. He

became, from whatever motive, the accomplice of the worthless Dudley.

The virtuous scruples of another young and amiable mind were to be

overcome. As Edward had been forced into persecution, Jane was to be

seduced into treason. No transaction in our annals is more unjustifiable

than this. If a hereditary title were to be respected, Mary possessed

it. If a parliamentary title were preferable, Mary possessed that also.

If the interest of the Protestant religion required a departure from the

ordinary rule of succession, that interest would have been best served

by raising Elizabeth to the throne. If the foreign relations of the

kingdom were considered, still stronger reasons might be found for

preferring Elizabeth to Jane. There was great doubt whether Jane or the

Queen of Scotland had the better claim; and that doubt would, in all

probability, have produced a war both with Scotland and with France, if

the project of Northumberland had not been blasted in its infancy.

That Elizabeth had a better claim than the Queen of Scotland was

indisputable. To the part which Cranmer, and unfortunately some better

men than Cranmer, took in this most reprehensible scheme, much of the

severity with which the Protestants were afterwards treated must in

fairness be ascribed. {451}The plot failed; Popery triumphed; and

Cranmer recanted. Most people look on his recantation as a single

blemish on an honourable life, the frailty of an unguarded moment. But,

in fact, his recantation was in strict accordance with the system on

which he had constantly acted. It was part of a regular habit. It was

not the first recantation that he had made; and, in all probability, if

it had answered its purpose, it would not have been the last. We do

not blame him for not choosing to be burned alive. It is no very severe

reproach to any person that he does not possess heroic fortitude. But

surely a man who liked the fire so little should have had some sympathy

for others. A persecutor who inflicts nothing which he is not ready to

endure deserves some respect. But when a man who loves his doctrines

more than the lives of his neighbours loves his own little finger better

than his doctrines, a very simple argument _a fortiori_ will enable us

to estimate the amount of his benevolence.

But his martyrdom, it is said, redeemed every thing. It is extraordinary

that so much ignorance should exist on this subject. The fact is that,

if a martyr be a man who chooses to die rather than to renounce his

opinions, Cranmer was no more a martyr than Dr. Dodd. He died, solely

because he could not help it. He never retracted his recantation till

he found he had made it in vain. The Queen was fully resolved that,

Catholic or Protestant, he should burn. Then he spoke out, as people

generally speak out when they are at the point of death and have nothing

to hope or to fear on earth. If Mary had suffered him to live, we

suspect that he would have heard mass and received absolution, like a

good Catholic, till the accession of Elizabeth, and that he would then

have purchased, by {452}another apostasy, the power of burning men

better and braver than himself.

We do not mean, however, to represent him as a monster of wickedness.

He was not wantonly cruel or treacherous. He was merely a supple, timid,

interested courtier, in times of frequent and violent change. That which

has always been represented as his distinguishing virtue, the facility

with which he forgave his enemies, belongs to the character. Slaves of

his class are never vindictive, and never grateful. A present interest

effaces past services and past injuries from their minds together. Their

only object is self-preservation; and for this they conciliate those who

wrong them, just as they abandon those who serve them. Before we extol

a man for his forgiving temper, we should inquire whether he is above

revenge, or below it.

Somerset had as little principle as his coadjutor. Of Henry, an orthodox

Catholic, except that he chose to be his own Pope, and of Elizabeth, who

certainly had no objection to the theology of Rome, we need say nothing.

These four persons were the great authors of the English Reformation.

Three of them had a direct interest in the extension of the royal

prerogative. The fourth was the ready tool of any who could frighten

him. It is not difficult to see from what motives, and on what plan,

such persons would be inclined to remodel the Church. The scheme

was merely to transfer the full cup of sorceries from the Babylonian

enchantress to other hands, spilling as little as possible by the way.

The Catholic doctrines and rites were to be retained in the Church of

England. But the King was to exercise the control which had formerly

belonged to the Roman Pontiff. In this {453}Henry for a time succeeded.

The extraordinary force of his character, the fortunate situation in

which he stood with respect to foreign powers, and the vast resources

which the suppression of the monasteries placed at his disposal, enabled

him to oppress both the religious factions equally. He punished with

impartial severity those who renounced the doctrines of Rome, and those

who acknowledged her jurisdiction. The basis, however, on which he

attempted to establish his power was too narrow to be durable. It would

have been impossible even for him long to persecute both persuasions.

Even under his reign there had been insurrections on the part of the

Catholics, and signs of a spirit which was likely soon to produce

insurrection on the part of the Protestants. It was plainly necessary,

therefore, that the Crown should form an alliance with one or with the

other side. To recognise the Papal supremacy, would have been to abandon

the whole design. Reluctantly and sullenly the government at last joined

the Protestants. In forming this junction, its object was to procure

as much aid as possible for its selfish undertaking, and to make the

smallest possible concessions to the spirit of religious innovation.

From this compromise the Church of England sprang. In many respects,

indeed, it has been well for her that, in an age of exuberant zeal, her

principal founders were mere politicians. To this circumstance she owes

her moderate articles, her decent ceremonies, her noble and pathetic

liturgy. Her worship is not disfigured by mummery. Yet she has

preserved, in a far greater degree than any of her Protestant sisters,

that art of striking the senses and filling the imagination in which the

Catholic Church so eminently excels. But, on the {454}other hand, she

continued, to be, for more than a hundred and fifty years, the servile

handmaid of monarchy, the steady enemy of public liberty. The divine

right of kings, and the duty of passively obeying all their commands,

were her favourite tenets. She held those tenets firmly through times

of oppression, persecution, and licentiousness; while law was trampled

down; while judgment was perverted; while the people were eaten as

though they were bread. Once, and but once, for a moment, and but for

a moment, when her own dignity and property were touched, she forgot to

practise the submission which she had taught.

Elizabeth clearly discerned the advantages which were to be derived from

a close connection between the monarchy and the priesthood. At the

time of her accession, indeed, she evidently meditated a partial

reconciliation with Rome; and, throughout her whole life, she leaned

strongly to some of the most obnoxious parts of the Catholic system.

But her imperious temper, her keen sagacity, and her peculiar situation,

soon led her to attach herself completely to a church which was all

her own. On the same principle on which she joined it, she attempted to

drive all her people within its pale by persecution. She supported it by

severe penal laws, not because she thought conformity to its discipline

necessary to salvation; but because it was the fastness which arbitrary

power was making strong for itself; because she expected a more

profound obedience from those who saw in her both their civil and their

ecclesiastical chief, than from those who, like the Papists, ascribe

spiritual authority to the Pope, or from those who, like some of the

Puritans, ascribed it only to Heaven. To dissent from her establishment

was to dissent from an institution founded with {455}an express view to

the maintenance and extension of the royal prerogative.

This great Queen and her successors, by considering conformity and

loyalty as identical, at length made them so. With respect to the

Catholics, indeed, the rigour of persecution abated after her death.

James soon found that they were unable to injure him, and that the

animosity which the Puritan party felt towards them drove them of

necessity to take refuge under his throne. During the subsequent

conflict, their fault was anything but disloyalty. On the other hand,

James hated the Puritans with more than the hatred of Elizabeth. Her

aversion to them was political; his was personal. The sect had plagued

him in Scotland, where he was weak; and he was determined to be even

with them in England, where he was powerful. Persecution gradually

changed a sect into a faction. That there was anything in the religious

opinions of the Puritans which rendered them hostile to monarchy has

never been proved to our satisfaction. After our civil contests, it

became the fashion to say that Presbyterianism was connected with

Republicanism; just as it has been the fashion to say, since the time of

the French Revolution, that Infidelity is connected with Republicanism.

It is perfectly true that a church, constituted on the Calvinistic

model, will not strengthen the hands of the sovereign so much as a

hierarchy which consists of several ranks, differing in dignity and

emolument, and of which all the members are constantly looking to

the government for promotion. But experience has clearly shown that a

Calvinistic church, like every other church, is disaffected when it is

persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it

is favoured and cherished. Scotland has had a Presbyterian

{456}establishment during a century and a half. Yet her General

Assembly has not, during that period, given half so much trouble to the

government as the Convocation of the Church of England gave during

the thirty years which followed the Revolution. That James and Charles

should have been mistaken in this point is not surprising. But we are

astonished, we must confess, that men of our own time, men who have

before them the proof of what toleration can effect, men who may see

with their own eyes that the Presbyterians are no such monsters

when government is wise enough to let them alone, should defend the

persecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as indispensable

to the safety of the church and the throne.

How persecution protects churches and thrones was soon made manifest.

A systematic political opposition, vehement, daring, and inflexible,

sprang from a schism about trifles, altogether unconnected with the real

interests of religion or of the state. Before the close of the reign

of Elizabeth this opposition began to show itself It broke forth on the

question of the monopolies. Even the imperial Lioness was compelled

to abandon her prey, and slowly and fiercely to recede before the

assailants. The spirit of liberty grew with the growing wealth and

intelligence of the people. The feeble struggles and insults of James

irritated instead of suppressing it; and the events which immediately

followed the accession of his son portended a contest of no common

severity, between a king resolved to be absolute, and a people resolved

to be free.

The famous proceedings of the third Parliament of Charles, and the

tyrannical measures which followed its dissolution, are extremely well

described by Mr. Hal-lam. No writer, we think, has shown, in so clear

and {457}satisfactory a manner, that the Government then entertained

a fixed purpose of destroying the old parliamentary constitution

of England, or at least of reducing it to a mere shadow. We hasten,

however, to a part of his work which, though it abounds in valuable

information and in remarks well deserving to be attentively considered,

and though it is, like the rest, evidently written in a spirit of

perfect impartiality, appears to us, in many points, objectionable.

We pass to the year 1640. The fate of the short Parliament held in

that year clearly indicated the views of the King. That a parliament so

moderate in feeling should have met after so many years of oppression

is truly wonderful. Hyde extols its loyal and conciliatory spirit. Its

conduct, we are told, made the excellent Falkland in love with the very

name of Parliament. We think, indeed, with Oliver St. John, that its

moderation was carried too far, and that the times required sharper

and more decided councils. It was fortunate, however, that the King

had another opportunity of showing that hatred of the liberties of his

subjects which was the ruling principle of all his conduct. The sole

crime of the Commons was that, meeting after a long intermission of

parliaments, and after a long series of cruelties and illegal imposts,

they seemed inclined to examine grievances before they would vote

supplies. For this insolence they were dissolved almost as soon as they

met.

Defeat, universal agitation, financial embarrassments, disorganization

in every part of the government, compelled Charles again to convene the

Houses before the close of the same year. Their meeting was one of the

great eras in the history of the civilised world. Whatever of political

freedom exists either in Europe or in {458}America, has sprung, directly

or indirectly, from those institutions which they secured and reformed.

We never turn to the annals of those times without feeling increased

admiration of the patriotism, the energy, the decision, the consummate

wisdom, which marked the measures of that great Parliament, from the day

on which it met to the commencement of civil hostilities.

The impeachment of Strafford was the first, and perhaps the greatest

blow. The whole conduct of that celebrated man proved that he had formed

a deliberate scheme to subvert the fundamental laws of England. Those

parts of his correspondence which have been brought to light since his

death place the matter beyond a doubt. One of his admirers has, indeed,

offered to show “that the passages which Mr. Hallam has invidiously

extracted from the correspondence between Laud and Strafford, as proving

their design to introduce a thorough tyranny, refer not to any such

design, but to a thorough reform in the affairs of state, and the

thorough maintenance of just authority.” We will recommend two or three

of these passages to the especial notice of our readers.

All who know anything of those times, know that the conduct of Hampden

in the affair of the ship-money met with the warm approbation of every

respectable Royalist in England. It drew forth the ardent eulogies

of the champions of the prerogative and even of the Crown lawyers

themselves. Clarendon allows Hampden’s demeanour through the whole

proceeding to have been such, that even those who watched for an

occasion against the defender of the people, were compelled to

acknowledge themselves unable to find any fault in him. That he was

right in the point of law is now universally admitted. Even {459}had it

been otherwise, he had a fair case. Five of the Judges, servile as our

Courts then were, pronounced in his favour. The majority against him was

the smallest possible. In no country retaining the slightest vestige

of constitutional liberty can a modest and decent appeal to the laws be

treated as a crime. Stratford, however, recommends that, for taking

the sense of a legal tribunal on a legal question, Hampden should be

punished, and punished severely, “whipt,” says the insolent apostate,

“whipt into his senses. If the rod,” he adds, “be so used that it smarts

not, I am the more sorry.” This is the maintenance of just authority.

In civilised nations, the most arbitrary governments have generally

suffered justice to have a free course in private suits. Strafford

wished to make every cause in every court subject to the royal

prerogative. He complained that in Ireland he was not permitted to

meddle in cases between party and party. “I know very well,” says he,

“that the common lawyers will be passionately against it, who are wont

to put such a prejudice upon all other professions, as if none were to

be trusted, or capable to administer justice, but themselves; yet how

well this suits with monarchy, when they monopolise all to be governed

by their yearbooks, you in England have a costly example.” We are really

curious to know by what arguments it is to be proved, that the power of

interfering in the lawsuits of individuals is part of the just authority

of the executive government.

It is not strange that a man so careless of the common civil rights,

which even despots have generally respected, should treat with scorn the

limitations which the constitution imposes on the royal prerogative.

We might quote pages: but we will content ourselves with {460}a single

specimen:--“The debts of the Crown being taken off, you may govern as

you please: and most resolute I am that may be done without borrowing

any help forth of the King’s lodgings.”

Such was the theory of that thorough reform in the state which Strafford

meditated. His whole practice, from the day on which he sold himself to

the court, was in strict conformity to his theory. For his accomplices

various excuses may be urged, ignorance, imbecility, religious bigotry.

But Wentworth had no such plea. His intellect was capacious. His early

prepossessions were on the side of popular rights. He knew the whole

beauty and value of the system which he attempted to deface. He was the

first of the Rats, the first of those statesmen whose patriotism has

been only the coquetry of political prostitution, and whose profligacy

has taught governments to adopt the old maxim of the slave-market,

that it is cheaper to buy than to breed, to import defenders from an

Opposition than to rear them in a Ministry. He was the first Englishman

to whom a peerage was a sacrament of infamy, a baptism into the

communion of corruption. As he was the earliest of the hateful list,

so was he also by far the greatest; eloquent, sagacious, adventurous,

intrepid, ready of invention, immutable of purpose, in every talent

which exalts or destroys nations preeminent, the lost Archangel,

the Satan of the apostasy. The title for which, at the time of his

desertion, he exchanged a name honourably distinguished in the cause of

the people, reminds us of the appellation which, from the moment of the

first treason, fixed itself on the fallen Son of the Morning,

Satan;--so call him now.--His former name

Is heard no more in heaven." {461}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. Every thing 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, are still 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 {462}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 o o o 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 {463}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, {464}which lias in it enough of reason to

hear 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 may be a day of reckoning for those who ruin and enslave their

country in all the forms of 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. {465}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, _à 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 license 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. {466}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 {467}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 villany. 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 civil war. Ought o {468}not a King,

who will make a stand for any thing, 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 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 {469}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 every thing, swear every thing, hold

out their cheeks to every smiter, give {470}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

evils 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 {471}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 {472}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

hill 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 this 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 temper» 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 {473}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 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 {474}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 {475}peaceably to an illegal arrest. There was every

îeason 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 {476}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. {477}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, {478}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, {479}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 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, {480}as Mr. Elplunstone 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.