Introductory observations--First period, from Henry VII. to the year
1588--Second period, from 1588 to 1640--Meeting of Parliament--Redress of
grievances--Strafford's attainder--The commencement of the Civil
War--Treaty from the Isle of Wight--The king's execution--Cromwell's
power; his character--Indifference of the nation respecting forms of
government--The Restoration--Ministry of Clarendon sod
Southampton--Cabal--Dutch War--De Witt--The Prince of Orange--The Popish
plot--The Habeas Corpus Act--The Exclusion Bill--Dissolution of Charles
the Second's last Parliament--His power; his tyranny in Scotland; in
England--Exorbitant fines--Executions--Forfeitures of charters--Despotism
established--Despondency of good men--Charles's death; his
character--Reflections upon the probable consequences of his reign and
death.
In reading the history of every country there are certain periods at
which the mind naturally pauses to meditate upon, and consider them, with
reference, not only to their immediate effects, but to their more remote
consequences. After the wars of Marius and Sylla, and the incorporation,
as it were, of all Italy with the city of Rome, we cannot but stop to
consider the consequences likely to result from these important events;
and in this instance we find them to be just such as might have been
expected.
The reign of our Henry VII. affords a field of more doubtful speculation.
Every one who takes a retrospective view of the wars of York and
Lancaster, and attends to the regulations effected by the policy of that
prince, must see they would necessarily lead to great and important
changes in the government; but what the tendency of such changes would
be, and much more, in what manner they would be produced, might be a
question of great difficulty. It is now the generally received opinion,
and I think a probable opinion, that to the provisions of that reign we
are to refer the origin, both of the unlimited power of the Tudors and of
the liberties wrested by our ancestors from the Stuarts; that tyranny was
their immediate, and liberty their remote, consequence; but he must have
great confidence in his own sagacity who can satisfy himself that,
unaided by the knowledge of subsequent events, he could, from a
consideration of the causes, have foreseen the succession of effects so
different.
Another period that affords ample scope for speculation of this kind is
that which is comprised between the years 1588 and 1640, a period of
almost uninterrupted tranquillity and peace. The general improvement in
all arts of civil life, and, above all, the astonishing progress of
literature, are the most striking among the general features of that
period, and are in themselves causes sufficient to produce effects of the
utmost importance. A country whose language was enriched by the works of
Hooker, Raleigh, and Bacon, could not but experience a sensible change in
its manners and in its style of thinking; and even to speak the same
language in which Spenser and Shakespeare had written seemed a sufficient
plea to rescue the commons of England from the appellation of brutes,
with which Henry VIII. had addressed them. Among the more particular
effects of this general improvement the most material and worthy to be
considered appear to me to have been the frequency of debate in the House
of Commons, and the additional value that came to be set on a seat in
that assembly.
From these circumstances a sagacious observer may be led to expect the
most important revolutions; and from the latter he may be enabled to
foresee that the House of Commons will be the principal instrument in
bringing them to pass. But in what manner will that house conduct
itself? Will it content itself with its regular share of legislative
power, and with the influence which it cannot fail to possess whenever it
exerts itself upon the other branches of the legislative, and on the
executive power; or will it boldly (perhaps rashly) pretend to a power
commensurate with the natural rights of the representative of the people?
If it should, will it not be obliged to support its claims by military
force? And how long will such a force be under its control? How long
before it follows the usual course of all armies, and ranges itself under
a single master? If such a master should arise, will he establish an
hereditary or an elective government? If the first, what will be gained
but a change of dynasty? If the second, will not the military force, as
it chose the first king or protector (the name is of no importance),
choose in effect all his successors? Or will he fail, and shall we have
a restoration, usually the most dangerous and worst of all revolutions?
To some of these questions the answers may, from the experience of past
ages, be easy, but to many of them far otherwise. And he will read
history with most profit who the most canvasses questions of this nature,
especially if he can divest his mind for the time of the recollection of
the event as it in fact succeeded.
The next period, as it is that which immediately precedes the
commencement of this history, requires a more detailed examination; nor
is there any more fertile of matter, whether for reflection or
speculation. Between the year 1640 and the death of Charles II. we have
the opportunity of contemplating the state in almost every variety of
circumstance. Religious dispute, political contest in all its forms and
degrees, from the honest exertions of party and the corrupt intrigues of
faction to violence and civil war; despotism, first, in the person of a
usurper, and afterwards in that of an hereditary king; the most memorable
and salutary improvements in the laws, the most abandoned administration
of them; in fine, whatever can happen to a nation, whether of glorious of
calamitous, makes a part of this astonishing and instructive picture.
The commencement of this period is marked by exertions of the people,
through their representatives in the House of Commons, not only
justifiable in their principle, but directed to the properest objects,
and in a manner the most judicious. Many of their leaders were greatly
versed in ancient as well as modern learning, and were even
enthusiastically attached to the great names of antiquity; but they never
conceived the wild project of assimilating the government of England to
that of Athens, of Sparta, or of Rome. They were content with applying
to the English constitution, and to the English laws, the spirit of
liberty which had animated and rendered illustrious the ancient
republics. Their first object was to obtain redress of past grievances,
with a proper regard to the individuals who had suffered; the next, to
prevent the recurrence of such grievances by the abolition of tyrannical
tribunals acting upon arbitrary maxims in criminal proceedings, and most
improperly denominated courts of justice. They then proceeded to
establish that fundamental principle of all free government, the
preserving of the purse to the people and their representatives. And
though there may be more difference of opinion upon their proposed
regulations in regard to the militia, yet surely, when a contest was to
be foreseen, they could not, consistently with prudence, leave the power
of the sword altogether in the hands of an adverse party.
The prosecution of Lord Strafford, or rather, the manner in which it was
carried on, is less justifiable. He was, doubtless, a great delinquent,
and well deserved the severest punishment; but nothing short of a clearly
proved case of self-defence can justify, or even excuse, a departure from
the sacred rules of criminal justice. For it can rarely indeed happen
that the mischief to be apprehended from suffering any criminal, however
guilty, to escape, can be equal to that resulting from the violation of
those rules to which the innocent owe the security of all that is dear to
them. If such cases have existed they must have been in instances where
trial has been wholly out of the question, as in that of Caesar and other
tyrants; but when a man is once in a situation to be tried, and his
person in the power of his accusers and his judges, he can no longer be
formidable in that degree which alone can justify (if anything can) the
violation of the substantial rules of criminal proceedings.
At the breaking out of the Civil War, so intemperately denominated a
rebellion by Lord Clarendon and other Tory writers, the material question
appears to me to be, whether or not sufficient attempts were made by the
Parliament and their leaders to avoid bringing affairs to such a
decision? That, according to the general principles of morality, they
had justice on their side cannot fairly be doubted; but did they
sufficiently attend to that great dictum of Tully in questions of civil
dissension, wherein he declares his preference of even an unfair peace to
the most just war? Did they sufficiently weigh the dangers that might
ensue even from victory; dangers, in such cases, little less formidable
to the cause of liberty than those which might follow a defeat? Did they
consider that it is not peculiar to the followers of Pompey, and the
civil wars of Rome, that the event to be looked for is, as the same Tully
describes it, in case of defeat--proscription; in that of
victory--servitude? Is the failure of the negotiation when the king was
in the Isle of Wight to be imputed to the suspicions justly entertained
of his sincerity, or to the ambition of the parliamentary leaders? If
the insincerity of the king was the real cause, ought not the mischief to
be apprehended from his insincerity rather to have been guarded against
by treaty than alleged as a pretence for breaking off the negotiation?
Sad, indeed, will be the condition of the world if we are never to make
peace with an adverse party whose sincerity we have reason to suspect.
Even just grounds for such suspicions will but too often occur, and when
such fail, the proneness of man to impute evil qualities, as well as evil
designs, to his enemies, will suggest false ones. In the present case
the suspicion of insincerity was, it is true, so just, as to amount to a
moral certainty. The example of the petition of right was a satisfactory
proof that the king made no point of adhering to concessions which he
considered as extorted from him; and a philosophical historian, writing
above a century after the time, can deem the pretended hard usage Charles
met with as a sufficient excuse for his breaking his faith in the first
instance, much more must that prince himself, with all his prejudices and
notions of his divine right, have thought it justifiable to retract
concessions, which to him, no doubt, appeared far more unreasonable than
the petition of right, and which, with much more colour, he might
consider as extorted. These considerations were probably the cause why
the Parliament so long delayed their determination of accepting the
king's offer as a basis for treaty; but, unfortunately, they had delayed
so long that when at last they adopted it they found themselves without
power to carry it into execution. The army having now ceased to be the
servants, had become the masters of the Parliament, and, being entirely
influenced by Cromwell, gave a commencement to what may, properly
speaking, be called a new reign. The subsequent measures, therefore, the
execution of the king, as well as others, are not to be considered as
acts of the Parliament, but of Cromwell; and great and respectable as are
the names of some who sat in the high court, they must be regarded, in
this instance, rather as ministers of that usurper than as acting from
themselves.
The execution of the king, though a far less violent measure than that of
Lord Strafford, is an event of so singular a nature that we cannot wonder
that it should have excited more sensation than any other in the annals
of England. This exemplary act of substantial justice, as it has been
called by some, of enormous wickedness by others, must be considered in
two points of view. First, was it not in itself just and necessary?
Secondly, was the example of it likely to be salutary or pernicious? In
regard to the first of these questions, Mr. Hume, not perhaps
intentionally, makes the best justification of it by saying that while
Charles lived the projected republic could never be secure. But to
justify taking away the life of an individual upon the principle of self-
defence, the danger must be not problematical and remote, but evident and
immediate. The danger in this instance was not of such a nature, and the
imprisonment or even banishment of Charles might have given to the
republic such a degree of security as any government ought to be content
with. It must be confessed, however, on the other aide, that if the
republican government had suffered the king to escape, it would have been
an act of justice and generosity wholly unexampled; and to have granted
him even his life would have been one among the more rare efforts of
virtue. The short interval between the deposal and death of princes is
become proverbial, and though there may be some few examples on the other
side as far as life is concerned, I doubt whether a single instance can
be found where liberty has been granted to a deposed monarch. Among the
modes of destroying persons in such a situation, there can be little
doubt but that that adopted by Cromwell and his adherents is the least
dishonourable. Edward II., Richard II., Henry VI., Edward V., had none
of them long survived their deposal, but this was the first instance, in
our history at least, where, of such an act, it could be truly said that
it was not done in a corner.
As to the second question, whether the advantage to be derived from the
example was such as to justify an act of such violence, it appears to me
to be a complete solution of it to observe that, with respect to England
(and I know not upon what ground we are to set examples for other
nations; or, in other words, to take the criminal justice of the world
into our hands) it was wholly needless, and therefore unjustifiable, to
set one for kings at a time when it was intended the office of king
should be abolished, and consequently that no person should be in the
situation to make it the rule of his conduct. Besides, the miseries
attendant upon a deposed monarch seem to be sufficient to deter any
prince, who thinks of consequences, from running the risk of being placed
in such a situation; or, if death be the only evil that can deter him,
the fate of former tyrants deposed by their subjects would by no means
encourage him to hope he could avoid even that catastrophe. As far as we
can judge from the event, the example was certainly not very effectual,
since both the sons of Charles, though having their father's fate before
their eyes, yet feared not to violate the liberties of the people even
more than he had attempted to do.
If we consider this question of example in a more extended view, and look
to the general effect produced upon the minds of men, it cannot be
doubted but the opportunity thus given to Charles to display his firmness
and piety has created more respect for his memory than it could otherwise
have obtained. Respect and pity for the sufferer on the one hand, and
hatred to his enemies on the other, soon produce favour and aversion to
their respective causes; and thus, even though it should be admitted
(which is doubtful) that some advantage may have been gained to the cause
of liberty by the terror of the example operating upon the minds of
princes, such advantage is far outweighed by the zeal which admiration
for virtue, and pity for sufferings, the best passions of the human
heart, have excited in favour of the royal cause. It has been thought
dangerous to the morals of mankind, even in fiction and romance, to make
us sympathise with characters whose general conduct is blameable; but how
much greater must the effect be when in real history our feelings are
interested in favour of a monarch with whom, to say the least, his
subjects were obliged to contend in arms for their liberty? After all,
however, notwithstanding what the more reasonable part of mankind may
think upon this question, it is much to be doubted whether this singular
proceeding has not as much as any other circumstance, served to raise the
character of the English nation in the opinion of Europe in general. He
who has read, and still more, he who has heard in conversation
discussions upon this subject by foreigners, must have perceived that,
even in the minds of those who condemn the act, the impression made by it
has been far more that of respect and admiration than that of disgust and
horror. The truth is that the guilt of the action--that is to say, the
taking away of the life of the king, is what most men in the place of
Cromwell and his associates would have incurred; what there is of
splendour and of magnanimity in it, I mean the publicity and solemnity of
the act, is what few would be capable of displaying. It is a degrading
fact to human nature, that even the sending away of the Duke of
Gloucester was an instance of generosity almost unexampled in the history
of transactions of this nature.
From the execution of the king to the death of Cromwell, the government
was, with some variation of forms, in substance monarchical and absolute,
as a government established by a military force will almost invariably
be, especially when the exertions of such a force are continued for any
length of time. If to this general rule our own age, and a people whom
their origin and near relation to us would almost warrant us to call our
own nation, have afforded a splendid and perhaps a solitary exception, we
must reflect not only that a character of virtues so happily tempered by
one another, and so wholly unalloyed with any vices, as that of
Washington, is hardly to be found in the pages of history, but that even
Washington himself might not have been able to act his most glorious of
all parts without the existence of circumstances uncommonly favourable,
and almost peculiar to the country which was to be the theatre of it.
Virtue like his depends not indeed upon time or place; but although in no
country or time would he have degraded himself into a Pisistratus, or a
Caesar, or a Cromwell, he might have shared the fate of a Cato, or a De
Witt; or, like Ludlow and Sidney, have mourned in exile the lost
liberties of his country.
With the life of the protector almost immediately ended the government
which he had established. The great talents of this extraordinary person
had supported during his life a system condemned equally by reason and by
prejudice: by reason, as wanting freedom; by prejudice, as a usurpation;
and it must be confessed to be no mean testimony to his genius, that
notwithstanding the radical defects of such a system, the splendour of
his character and exploits render the era of the protectorship one of the
most brilliant in English history. It is true his conduct in foreign
concerns is set off to advantage by a comparison of it with that of those
who preceded and who followed him. If he made a mistake in espousing the
French interest instead of the Spanish, we should recollect that in
examining this question we must divest our minds entirely of all the
considerations which the subsequent relative state of those two empires
suggest to us before we can become impartial judges in it; and at any
rate we must allow his reign, in regard to European concerns, to have
been most glorious when contrasted with the pusillanimity of James I.,
with the levity of Charles I., and the mercenary meanness of the two last
princes of the house of Stuart. Upon the whole, the character of
Cromwell must ever stand high in the list of those who raised themselves
to supreme power by the force of their genius; and among such, even in
respect of moral virtue, it would be found to be one of the least
exceptionable if it had not been tainted with that most odious and
degrading of all human vices, hypocrisy.
The short interval between Cromwell's death and the restoration exhibits
the picture of a nation either so wearied with changes as not to feel, or
so subdued by military power as not to dare to show, any care or even
preference with regard to the form of their government. All was in the
army; and that army, by such a concurrence of fortuitous circumstances as
history teaches us not to be surprised at, had fallen into the hands of a
man than whom a baser could not be found in its lowest ranks. Personal
courage appears to have been Monk's only virtue; reserve and
dissimulation made up the whole stock of his wisdom. But to this man did
the nation look up, ready to receive from his orders the form of
government he should choose to prescribe. There is reason to believe
that, from the general bias of the Presbyterians, as well as of the
Cavaliers, monarchy was the prevalent wish; but it is observable that
although the Parliament was, contrary to the principle upon which it was
pretended to be called, composed of many avowed royalists, yet none dared
to hint at the restoration of the king till they had Monk's permission,
or rather command to receive and consider his letters. It is impossible,
in reviewing the whole of this transaction, not to remark that a general
who had gained his rank, reputation, and station in the service of a
republic, and of what he, as well as others, called, however falsely, the
cause of liberty, made no scruple to lay the nation prostrate at the feet
of a monarch, without a single provision in favour of that cause; and if
the promise of indemnity may seem to argue that there was some attention,
at least, paid to the safety of his associates in arms, his subsequent
conduct gives reason to suppose that even this provision was owing to any
other cause rather than to a generous feeling of his breast. For he
afterwards not only acquiesced in the insults so meanly put upon the
illustrious corpse of Blake, under whose auspices and command he had
performed the most creditable services of his life, but in the trial of
Argyle produced letters of friendship and confidence to take away the
life of a nobleman, the zeal and cordiality of whose co-operation with
him, proved by such documents, was the chief ground of his execution;
thus gratuitously surpassing in infamy those miserable wretches who, to
save their own lives, are sometimes persuaded to impeach and swear away
the lives of their accomplices.
The reign of Charles II. forms one of the most singular as well as of the
most important periods of history. It is the era of good laws and bad
government. The abolition of the court of wards, the repeal of the writ
De Heretico Comburendo, the Triennial Parliament Bill, the establishment
of the rights of the House of Commons in regard to impeachment, the
expiration of the Licence Act, and, above all, the glorious statute of
Habeas Corpus, have therefore induced a modern writer of great eminence
to fix the year 1679 as the period at which our constitution had arrived
at its greatest theoretical perfection; but he owns, in a short note upon
the passage alluded to, that the times immediately following were times
of great practical oppression. What a field for meditation does this
short observation from such a man furnish! What reflections does it not
suggest to a thinking mind upon the inefficacy of human laws and the
imperfection of human constitutions! We are called from the
contemplation of the progress of our constitution, and our attention
fixed with the most minute accuracy to a particular point, when it is
said to have risen to its utmost perfection. Here we are, then, at the
best moment of the best constitution that ever human wisdom framed. What
follows? A tide of oppression and misery, not arising from external or
accidental causes, such as war, pestilence, or famine, nor even from any
such alteration of the laws as might be supposed to impair this boasted
perfection, but from a corrupt and wicked administration, which all the
so much admired checks of the constitution were not able to prevent. How
vain, then, how idle, how presumptuous is the opinion that laws can do
everything! and how weak and pernicious the maxim founded upon it, that
measures, not men, are to be attended to.
The first years of this reign, under the administration of Southampton
and Clarendon, form by far the least exceptionable part of it; and even
in this period the executions of Argyle and Vane and the whole conduct of
the Government with respect to church matters, both in England and in
Scotland, were gross instances of tyranny. With respect to the execution
of those who were accused of having been more immediately concerned in
the king's death, that of Scrope, who had come in upon the proclamation,
and of the military officers who had attended the trial, was a violation
of every principle of law and justice. But the fate of the others,
though highly dishonourable to Monk, whose whole power had arisen from
his zeal in their service, and the favour and confidence with which they
had rewarded him, and not, perhaps, very creditable to the nation, of
which many had applauded, more had supported, and almost all had
acquiesced in the act, is not certainly to be imputed as a crime to the
king, or to those of his advisers who were of the Cavalier party. The
passion of revenge, though properly condemned both by philosophy and
religion, yet when it is excited by injurious treatment of persons justly
dear to us, is among the most excusable of human frailties; and if
Charles, in his general conduct, had shown stronger feelings of gratitude
for services performed to his father, his character, in the eyes of many,
would be rather raised than lowered by this example of severity against
the regicides. Clarendon is said to have been privy to the king's
receiving money from Louis XIV.; but what proofs exist of this charge
(for a heavy charge it is) I know not. Southampton was one of the very
few of the Royalist party who preserved any just regard for the liberties
of the people; and the disgust which a person possessed of such
sentiments must unavoidably feel is said to have determined him to quit
the king's service, and to retire altogether from public affairs. Whether
he would have acted upon this determination, his death, which happened in
the year 1667, prevents us now from ascertaining.
After the fall of Clarendon, which soon followed, the king entered into
that career of misgovernment which, that he was able to pursue it to its
end, is a disgrace to the history of our country. If anything can add to
our disgust at the meanness with which he solicited a dependence upon
Louis XIV., it is, the hypocritical pretence upon which he was
continually pressing that monarch. After having passed a law, making it
penal to affirm (what was true) that he was a papist, he pretended (which
was certainly not true) to be a zealous and bigoted papist; and the
uneasiness of his conscience at so long delaying a public avowal of his
conversion, was more than once urged by him as an argument to increase
the pension, and to accelerate the assistance, he was to receive from
France. In a later period of his reign, when his interest, as he
thought, lay the other way, that he might at once continue to earn his
wages, and yet put off a public conversion, he stated some scruples,
contracted, no doubt, by his affection to the Protestant churches, in
relation to the popish mode of giving the sacrament, and pretended a wish
that the pope might be induced by Louis to consider of some alterations
in that respect, to enable him to reconcile himself to the Roman church
with a clear and pure conscience.
The ministry known by the name of the Cabal seems to have consisted of
characters so unprincipled, as justly to deserve the severity with which
they have been treated by all writers who have mentioned them; but if it
is probable that they were ready to betray their king, as well as their
country, it is certain that the king betrayed them, keeping from them the
real state of his connexion with France, and from some of them, at least,
the secret of what he was pleased to call his religion. Whether this
concealment on his part arose from his habitual treachery, and from the
incapacity which men of that character feel of being open and honest,
even when they know it is their interest to be so, or from an
apprehension that they might demand for themselves some share of the
French money, which he was unwilling to give them, cannot now be
determined. But to the want of genuine and reciprocal confidence between
him and those ministers is to be attributed, in a great measure, the
escape which the nation at that time experienced--an escape, however,
which proved to be only a reprieve from that servitude to which they were
afterwards reduced in the latter years of the reign.
The first Dutch war had been undertaken against all maxims of policy as
well as of justice; but the superior infamy of the second, aggravated by
the disappointment of all the hopes entertained by good men from the
triple alliance, and by the treacherous attempt at piracy with which it
was commenced, seems to have effaced the impression of it, not only from
the minds of men living at the time, but from most of the writers who
have treated of this reign. The principle, however, of both was the
same, and arbitrary power at home was the object of both. The second
Dutch war rendered the king's system and views so apparent to all who
were not determined to shut their eyes against conviction, that it is
difficult to conceive how persons who had any real care or regard either
for the liberty or honour of the country, could trust him afterwards. And
yet even Sir William Temple, who appears to have been one of the most
honest, as well as of the most enlightened, statesmen of his time, could
not believe his treachery to be quite so deep as it was in fact, and
seems occasionally to have hoped that he was in earnest in his professed
intentions of following the wise and just system that was recommended to
him. Great instances of credulity and blindness in wise men are often
liable to the suspicion of being pretended, for the purpose of justifying
the continuing in situations of power and employment longer than strict
honour would allow. But to Temple's sincerity his subsequent conduct
gives abundant testimony. When he had reason to think that his services
could no longer be useful to his country he withdrew wholly from public
business, and resolutely adhered to the preference of philosophical
retirement, which, in his circumstances, was just, in spite of every
temptation which occurred to bring him back to the more active scene. The
remainder of his life he seems to have employed in the most noble
contemplations and the most elegant amusements; every enjoyment
heightened, no doubt, by reflecting on the honourable part he had acted
in public affairs, and without any regret on his own account (whatever he
might feel for his country) at having been driven from them.
Besides the important consequences produced by this second Dutch war in
England, it gave birth to two great events in Holland; the one as
favourable as the other was disastrous to the cause of general liberty.
The catastrophe of De Witt, the wisest, best, and most truly patriotic
minister that ever appeared upon the public stage, as it was an act of
the most crying injustice and ingratitude, so, likewise, is it the most
completely discouraging example that history affords to the lovers of
liberty. If Aristides was banished, he was also recalled; if Dion was
repaid for his services to the Syracusans by ingratitude, that
ingratitude was more than once repented of; if Sidney and Russell died
upon the scaffold, they had not the cruel mortification of falling by the
hands of the people; ample justice was done to their memory, and the very
sound of their names is still animating to every Englishman attached to
their glorious cause. But with De Witt fell also his cause and his
party; and although a name so respected by all who revere virtue and
wisdom, when employed in their noblest sphere, the political service of
the public, must undoubtedly be doubly dear to his countrymen, yet I do
not know that, even to this day, any public honours have been paid by
them to his memory.
On the other hand, the circumstances attending the first appearance of
the Prince of Orange in public affairs, were, in every respect, most
fortunate for himself, for England, for Europe. Of an age to receive the
strongest impressions, and of a character to render such impressions
durable, he entered the world in a moment when the calamitous situation
of the United Provinces could not but excite in every Dutchman the
strongest detestation of the insolent ambition of Louis XIV., and the
greatest contempt of an English government, which could so far mistake or
betray the interests of the country as to lend itself to his projects.
Accordingly, the circumstances attending his outset seem to have given a
lasting bias to his character; and through the whole course of his life
the prevailing sentiments of his mind seem to have been those which he
imbibed at this early period. These sentiments were most peculiarly
adapted to the positions in which this great man was destined to be
placed. The light in which he viewed Louis rendered him the fittest
champion of the independence of Europe; and in England, French influence
and arbitrary power were in those times so intimately connected, that he
who had not only seen with disapprobation, but had so sensibly felt the
baneful effects of Charles's connection with France, seemed educated, as
it were, to be the defender of English liberty. This prince's struggles
in defence of his country, his success in rescuing it from a situation to
all appearance so desperate, and the consequent failure and mortification
of Louis XIV., form a scene in history upon which the mind dwells with
unceasing delight. One never can read Louis's famous declaration against
the Hollanders, knowing the event which is to follow, without feeling the
heart dilate with exultation, and a kind of triumphant contempt, which,
though not quite consonant to the principles of pure philosophy, never
fails to give the mind inexpressible satisfaction. Did the relation of
such events form the sole, or even any considerable part of the
historian's task, pleasant indeed would be his labours; but, though far
less agreeable, it is not a less useful or necessary part of his
business, to relate the triumphs of successful wickedness, and the
oppression of truth, justice, and liberty.
The interval from the separate peace between England and the United
Provinces, to the peace of Nymwegen, was chiefly employed by Charles in
attempts to obtain money from France and other foreign powers, in which
he was sometimes more, sometimes less successful; and in various false
professions, promises, and other devices to deceive his parliament and
his people, in which he uniformly failed. Though neither the nature and
extent of his connection with France, nor his design of introducing
popery into England, were known at that time as they now are, yet there
were not wanting many indications of the king's disposition, and of the
general tendency of his designs. Reasonable persons apprehended that the
supplies asked were intended to be used, not for the specious purpose of
maintaining the balance of Europe, but for that of subduing the
parliament and people who should give them; and the great antipathy of
the bulk of the nation to popery caused many to be both more
clear-sighted in discovering, and more resolute in resisting the designs
of the court, than they would probably have shown themselves, if civil
liberty alone had been concerned.
When the minds of men were in the disposition which such a state of
things was naturally calculated to produce, it is not to be wondered at
that a ready, and, perhaps, a too facile belief should have been accorded
to the rumour of a popish plot. But with the largest possible allowance
for the just apprehensions which were entertained, and the consequent
irritation of the country, it is wholly inconceivable how such a plot as
that brought forward by Tongue and Oates could obtain any general belief.
Nor can any stretch of candour make us admit it to be probable, that all
who pretended a belief of it did seriously entertain it. On the other
hand, it seems an absurdity, equal almost in degree to the belief of the
plot itself, to suppose that it was a story fabricated by the Earl of
Shaftesbury and the other leaders of the Whig party; and it would be
highly unjust, as well as uncharitable, not to admit that the generality
of those who were engaged in the prosecution of it were probably sincere
in their belief of it, since it is unquestionable that at the time very
many persons, whose political prejudices were of a quite different
complexion, were under the same delusion. The unanimous votes of the two
houses of parliament, and the names, as well as the number of those who
pronounced Lord Strafford to be guilty, seem to put this beyond a doubt.
Dryden, writing soon after the time, says, in his "Absalom and
Achitophel," that the plot was
"Bad in itself, but represented wore:"
that
"Some truth there was, but dash'd and brew'd with lies:"
and that
"Succeeding times did equal folly call,
Believing nothing, or believing all."
and Dryden will not, by those who are conversant in the history and works
of that immortal writer, be suspected either of party prejudice in favour
of Shaftesbury and the Whigs, or of any view to prejudice the country
against the Duke of York's succession to the crown. The king repeatedly
declared his belief of it. These declarations, if sincere, would have
some weight; but if insincere, as may be reasonably suspected, they
afford a still stronger testimony to prove that such belief was not
exclusively a party opinion, since it cannot be supposed that even the
crooked politics of Charles could have led him to countenance fictions of
his enemies, which were not adopted by his own party. Wherefore, if this
question were to be decided upon the ground of authority, the reality of
the plot would be admitted; and it must be confessed, that, with regard
to facts remote, in respect either of time or place, wise men generally
diffide in their own judgment, and defer to that of those who have had a
nearer view of them. But there are cases where reason speaks so plainly
as to make all argument drawn from authority of no avail, and this is
surely one of them. Not to mention correspondence by post on the subject
of regicide, detailed commissions from the pope, silver bullets, &c. &c.,
and other circumstances equally ridiculous, we need only advert to the
part attributed to the Spanish government in this conspiracy, and to the
alleged intention of murdering the king, to satisfy ourselves that it was
a forgery.
Rapin, who argues the whole of this affair with a degree of weakness as
well as disingenuity very unusual to him, seems at last to offer us a
kind of compromise, and to be satisfied if we will admit that there was a
design or project to introduce popery and an arbitrary power, at the head
of which were the king and his brother. Of this I am as much convinced
as he can be; but how does this justify the prosecution and execution of
those who suffered, since few if any of them, were in a situation to be
trusted by the royal conspirators with their designs? When he says,
therefore, that that is precisely what was understood by the conspiracy,
he by no means justifies those who were the principal prosecutors of the
plot. The design to murder the king he calls the appendage of the plot:
a strange expression this, to describe the projected murder of a king;
though not more strange than the notion itself when applied to a plot,
the object of which was to render that very king absolute, and to
introduce the religion which he most favoured. But it is to be observed,
that though in considering the bill of exclusion, the militia bill, and
other legislative proceedings, the plot, as he defines it--that is to
say, the design of introducing popery and arbitrary power--was the
important point to be looked to; yet in courts of justice, and for juries
and judges, that which he calls the appendage was, generally speaking,
the sole consideration.
Although, therefore, upon a review of this truly shocking transaction, we
may be fairly justified in adopting the milder alternative, and in
imputing to the greater part of those concerned in it rather an
extraordinary degree of blind credulity than the deliberate wickedness of
planning and assisting in the perpetration of legal murders, yet the
proceedings on the popish plot must always be considered as an indelible
disgrace upon the English nation, in which king, parliament, judges,
juries, witnesses, prosecutors, have all their respective, though
certainly not equal, shares. Witnesses, of such a character as not to
deserve credit in the most trifling cause, upon the most immaterial
facts, gave evidence so incredible, or, to speak more properly, so
impossible to be true, that it ought not to have been believed if it had
come from the mouth of Cato; and upon such evidence, from such witnesses,
were innocent men condemned to death and executed. Prosecutors, whether
attorneys and solicitors-general, or managers of impeachment, acted with
the fury which in such circumstances might be expected; juries partook
naturally enough of the national ferment; and judges, whose duty it was
to guard them against such impressions, were scandalously active in
confirming them in their prejudices and inflaming their passions. The
king, who is supposed to have disbelieved the whole of the plot, never
once exercised his glorious prerogative of mercy. It is said he dared
not. His throne, perhaps his life, was at stake; and history does not
furnish us with the example of any monarch with whom the lives of
innocent or even meritorious subjects ever appeared to be of much weight,
when put in balance against such considerations.
The measures of the prevailing party in the House of Commons, in these
times, appear (with the exception of their dreadful proceedings in the
business of the pretended plot, and of their violence towards those who
petitioned and addressed against parliament) to have been, in general,
highly laudable and meritorious; and yet I am afraid it may be justly
suspected that it was precisely to that part of their conduct which
related to the plot, and which is most reprehensible, that they were
indebted for their power to make the noble, and, in some instances,
successful struggles for liberty, which do so much honour to their
memory. The danger to be apprehended from military force being always,
in the view of wise men, the most urgent, they first voted the disbanding
of the army, and the two houses passed a bill for that purpose, to which
the king found himself obliged to consent. But to the bill which
followed, for establishing the regular assembling of the militia, and for
providing for their being in arms six weeks in the year, he opposed his
royal negative; thus making his stand upon the same point on which his
father had done; a circumstance which, if events had taken a turn against
him, would not have failed of being much noticed by historians. Civil
securities for freedom came to be afterwards considered; and it is to be
remarked, that to these times of heat and passion, and to one of those
parliaments which so disgraced themselves and the nation by the
countenance given to Oates and Bedloe, and by the persecution of so many
innocent victims, we are indebted for the Habeas Corpus act, the most
important barrier against tyranny, and best framed protection for the
liberty of individuals, that has ever existed in any ancient or modern
commonwealth.
But the inefficacy of mere laws in favour of the subjects, in the case of
the administration of them falling into the hands of persons hostile to
the spirit in which they had been provided, had been so fatally evinced
by the general history of England, ever since the grant of the Great
Charter, and more especially by the transactions of the preceding reign,
that the parliament justly deemed their work incomplete unless the Duke
of York were excluded from the succession to the crown. A bill,
therefore, for the purpose of excluding that prince was prepared, and
passed the House of Commons; but being vigorously resisted by the court,
by the church, and by the Tories, was lost in the House of Lords. The
restrictions offered by the king to be put upon a popish successor are
supposed to have been among the most powerful of those means to which he
was indebted for his success.
The dispute was no longer, whether or not the dangers resulting from
James's succession were real, and such as ought to be guarded against by
parliamentary provisions, but whether the exclusion or restrictions
furnished the most safe and eligible mode of compassing the object which
both sides pretended to have in view. The argument upon this state of
the question is clearly, forcibly, and, I think, convincingly, stated by
Rapin, who exposes very ably the extreme folly of trusting to measures,
without consideration of the men who are to execute them. Even in Hume's
statement of the question, whatever may have been his intention, the
arguments in favour of the exclusion appear to me greatly to
preponderate. Indeed, it is not easy to conceive upon what principles
even the Tories could justify their support of the restrictions. Many
among them, no doubt, saw the provisions in the same light in which the
Whigs represented them, as an expedient, admirably, indeed, adapted to
the real object of upholding the present king's power, by the defeat of
the exclusion, but never likely to take effect for their pretended
purpose of controlling that of his successor, and supported them for that
very reason. But such a principle of conduct was too fraudulent to be
avowed; nor ought it, perhaps, in candour to be imputed to the majority
of the party. To those who acted with good faith, and meant that the
restrictions should really take place and be effectual, surely it ought
to have occurred (and to those who most prized the prerogatives of the
crown it ought most forcibly to have occurred), that in consenting to
curtail the powers of the crown, rather than to alter the succession,
they were adopting the greater in order to avoid the lesser evil. The
question of what are to be the powers of the crown, is surely of superior
importance to that of who shall wear it? Those, at least, who consider
the royal prerogative as vested in the king, not for his sake but for
that of his subjects, must consider the one of these questions as much
above the other in dignity as the rights of the public are more valuable
than those of an individual. In this view the prerogatives of the crown
are, in substance and effect, the rights of the people; and these rights
of the people were not to be sacrificed to the purpose of preserving the
succession to the most favoured prince much less to one who, on account
of his religious persuasion, was justly feared and suspected. In truth,
the question between the exclusion and restrictions seems peculiarly
calculated to ascertain the different views in which the different
parties in this country have seen, and perhaps ever will see, the
prerogatives of the crown. The Whigs, who consider them as a trust for
the people--a doctrine which the Tories themselves, when pushed in
argument, will sometimes admit--naturally think it their duty rather to
change the manager of the trust than to impair the subject of it; while
others, who consider them as the right or property of the king, will as
naturally act as they would do in the case of any other property, and
consent to the loss or annihilation of any part of it, for the purpose of
preserving the remainder to him whom they style the rightful owner. If
the people be the sovereign and the king the delegate, it is better to
change the bailiff than to injure the farm; but if the king be the
proprietor, it is better the farm should be impaired--nay, part of it
destroyed--than that the whole should pass over to an usurper. The royal
prerogative ought, according to the Whigs (not in the case of a popish
successor only, but in all cases), to be reduced to such powers as are in
their exercise beneficial to the people; and of the benefit of these they
will not rashly suffer the people to be deprived, whether the executive
power be in the hands of an hereditary or of an elected king, of a
regent, or of any other denomination of magistrate; while, on the other
hand, they who consider prerogative with reference only to royalty, will,
with equal readiness, consent either to the extension or the suspension
of its exercise, as the occasional interests of the prince may seem to
require. The senseless plea of a divine and indefeasible right in James,
which even the legislature was incompetent to set aside, though as
inconsistent with the declarations of parliament in the statute book, and
with the whole practice of the English constitution, as it is repugnant
to nature and common sense, was yet warmly insisted upon by the high
church party. Such an argument, as might naturally be expected, operated
rather to provoke the Whigs to perseverance than to dissuade them from
their measure: it was, in their eyes, an additional merit belonging to
the exclusion bill that it strengthened, by one instance more, the
authority of former statutes in reprobating a doctrine which seems to
imply that man can have a property in his fellow-creatures. By far the
best argument in favour of the restrictions, is the practical one that
they could be obtained, and that the exclusion could not; but the value
of this argument is chiefly proved by the event. The exclusionists had a
fair prospect of success, and their plan being clearly the best, they
were justified in pursuing it.
The spirit of resistance which the king showed in the instance of the
militia and the exclusion bills, seems to have been systematically
confined to those cases where he supposed his power to be more
immediately concerned. In the prosecution of the aged and innocent Lord
Stafford, he was so far from interfering in behalf of that nobleman, that
many of those most in his confidence, and, as it is affirmed, the Duchess
of Portsmouth herself, openly favoured the prosecution. Even after the
dissolution of him last parliament, when he had so far subdued his
enemies as to be no longer under any apprehensions from them, he did not
think it worth while to save the life of Plunket, the popish Archbishop
of Armagh, of whose innocence no doubt could be entertained. But this is
not to be wondered at, since, in all transactions relative to the popish
plot, minds of a very different cast from Charles's became, as by some
fatality, divested of all their wonted sentiments of justice and
humanity. Who can read without horror, the account of that savage murmur
of applause, which broke out upon one of the villains at the bar,
swearing positively to Stafford's having proposed the murder of the king?
And how is this horror deepened, when we reflect, that in that odious cry
were probably mingled the voices of men to whose memory every lover of
the English constitution is bound to pay the tribute of gratitude and
respect! Even after condemnation, Lord Russell himself, whose character
is wholly (this instance excepted) free from the stain of rancour or
cruelty, stickled for the severer mode of executing the sentence, in a
manner which his fear of the king's establishing a precedent of pardoning
in cases of impeachment (for this, no doubt, was his motive) cannot
satisfactorily excuse.
In an early period of the king's difficulties, Sir William Temple, whose
life and character is a refutation of the vulgar notion that philosophy
and practical good sense in business are incompatible attainments,
recommended to him the plan of governing by a council, which was to
consist in great part of the most popular noblemen and gentlemen in the
kingdom. Such persons being the natural, as well as the safest,
mediators between princes and discontented subjects, this seems to have
been the best possible expedient. Hume says it was found too feeble a
remedy; but he does not take notice that it was never in fact tried,
inasmuch as not only the king's confidence was withheld from the most
considerable members of the council, but even the most important
determinations were taken without consulting the council itself. Nor can
there be a doubt but the king's views, in adopting Temple's advice, were
totally different from those of the adviser, whose only error in this
transaction seems to have consisted in recommending a plan, wherein
confidence and fair dealing were of necessity to be principal
ingredients, to a prince whom he well knew to be incapable of either.
Accordingly, having appointed the council in April, with a promise of
being governed in important matters by their advice, he in July dissolved
one parliament without their concurrence, and in October forbade them
even to give their opinions upon the propriety of a resolution which he
had taken of proroguing another. From that time he probably considered
the council to be, as it was, virtually dissolved; and it was not long
before means presented themselves to him, better adapted, in his
estimation, even to his immediate objects, and certainly more suitable to
his general designs. The union between the court and the church party,
which had been so closely cemented by their successful resistance to the
Exclusion Bill, and its authors, had at length acquired such a degree of
strength and consistency, that the king ventured first to appoint Oxford,
instead of London, for the meeting of parliament; and then, having
secured to himself a good pension from France, to dissolve the parliament
there met, with a full resolution never to call another; to which
resolution, indeed, Louis had bound him, as one of the conditions on
which he was to receive a stipend. No measure was ever attended with
more complete success. The most flattering addresses poured in from all
parts of the kingdom; divine right, and indiscriminate obedience, were
everywhere the favourite doctrines; and men seemed to vie with each other
who should have the honour of the greatest share in the glorious work of
slavery, by securing to the king, for the present, and after him to the
duke, absolute and uncontrollable power. They who, either because
Charles had been called a forgiving prince by his flatterers (upon what
ground I could never discover), or from some supposed connection between
indolence and good nature, had deceived themselves into a hope that his
tyranny would be of the milder sort, found themselves much disappointed
in their expectations.
The whole history of the remaining part of his reign exhibits an
uninterrupted series of attacks upon the liberty, property, and lives of
his subjects. The character of the government appeared first, and with
the most marked and prominent features, in Scotland. The condemnation of
Argyle and Weir, the one for having subjoined an explanation when he took
the test oath, the other for having kept company with a rebel, whom it
was not proved he knew to be such, and who had never been proclaimed,
resemble more the acts of Tiberius and Domitian, than those of even the
most arbitrary modern governments. It is true, the sentences were not
executed; Weir was reprieved; and whether or not Argyle, if he had not
deemed it more prudent to escape by flight, would have experienced the
same clemency, cannot now be ascertained. The terror of these examples
would have been, in the judgment of most men, abundantly sufficient to
teach the people of Scotland their duty, and to satisfy them that their
lives, as well as everything else they had been used to call their own,
were now completely in the power of their masters. But the government
did not stop here, and having outlawed thousands, upon the same pretence
upon which Weir had been condemned, inflicted capital punishment upon
such criminals of both sexes as refused to answer, or answered otherwise
than was prescribed to them to the most ensnaring questions.
In England, the city of London seemed to hold out for a certain time,
like a strong fortress in a conquered country; and, by means of this
citadel, Shaftesbury and others were saved from the vengeance of the
court. But this resistance, however honourable to the corporation who
made it, could not be of long duration. The weapons of law and justice
were found feeble, when opposed to the power of a monarch who was at the
head of a numerous and bigoted party of the nation, and who, which was
most material of all, had enabled himself to govern without a parliament.
Civil resistance in this country, even to the most illegal attacks of
royal tyranny, has never, I believe, been successful, unless when
supported by parliament, or at least by a great party in one or other of
the two houses. The court having wrested from the livery of London,
partly by corruption, and partly by violence, the free election of their
mayor and sheriffs, did not wait the accomplishment of their plan for the
destruction of the whole corporation, which, from their first success,
they justly deemed certain, but immediately proceeded to put in execution
their system of oppression. Pilkington, Colt, and Oates, were fined a
hundred thousand pounds each for having spoken disrespectfully of the
Duke of York; Barnardiston, ten thousand, for having in a private letter
expressed sentiments deemed improper; and Sidney, Russell, and Armstrong,
found that the just and mild principles which characterise the criminal
law of England could no longer protect their lives, when the sacrifice
was called for by the policy or vengeance of the king. To give an
account of all the oppression of this period would be to enumerate every
arrest, every trial, every sentence, that took place in questions between
the crown and the subjects.
Of the Rye House plot it may be said, much more truly than of the popish,
that there was in it some truth, mixed with much falsehood; and though
many of the circumstances in Kealing's account are nearly as absurd and
ridiculous as those in Oates's, it seems probable that there was among
some of those accused a notion of assassinating the king; but whether
this notion was over ripened into what may be called a design, and, much
more, whether it were ever evinced by such an overt act as the law
requires for conviction, is very doubtful. In regard to the conspirators
of higher ranks, from whom all suspicion of participation in the intended
assassination has been long since done away, there is unquestionably
reason to believe that they had often met and consulted, as well for the
purpose of ascertaining the means they actually possessed as for that of
devising others for delivering their country from the dreadful servitude
into which it had fallen; and thus far their conduct appears clearly to
have been laudable. If they went further, and did anything which could
be fairly construed into an actual conspiracy to levy war against the
king, they acted, considering the disposition of the nation at that
period, very indiscreetly. But whether their proceedings had ever gone
this length, is far from certain. Monmouth's communications with the
king, when we reflect upon all the circumstances of those communications,
deserve not the smallest attention; nor indeed, if they did, does the
letter which he afterwards withdrew prove anything upon this point. And
it is an outrage to common-sense to call Lord Grey's narrative written,
as he himself states in his letter to James II., while the question of
his pardon was pending, an authentic account. That which is most certain
in this affair is, that they had committed no overt act, indicating the
imagining of the king's death, even according to the most strained
construction of the statute of Edward III.; much less was any such act
legally proved against them. And the conspiring to levy war was not
treason, except by a recent statute of Charles II., the prosecutions upon
which were expressly limited to a certain time, which in these cases had
elapsed so that it is impossible not to assent to the opinion of those
who have ever stigmatised the condemnation and execution of Russell as a
most flagrant violation of law and justice.
The proceedings in Sidney's case were still more detestable. The
production of papers, containing speculative opinions upon government and
liberty, written long before, and perhaps never even intended to be
published, together with the use made of those papers, in considering
them as a substitute for the second witness to the overt act, exhibited
such a compound of wickedness and nonsense as is hardly to be paralleled
in the history of juridical tyranny. But the validity of pretences was
little attended to at that time, in the case of a person whom the court
had devoted to destruction, and upon evidence such as has been stated was
this great and excellent man condemned to die. Pardon was not to be
expected. Mr. Hume says, that such an interference on the part of the
king, though it might have been an act of heroic generosity, could not be
regarded as an indispensable duty. He might have said with more
propriety, that it was idle to expect that the government, after having
incurred so much guilt in order to obtain the sentence, should, by
remitting it, relinquish the object just when it was within its grasp.
The same historian considers the jury as highly blamable, and so do I;
but what was their guilt in comparison of that of the court who tried,
and of the government who prosecuted, in this infamous cause? Yet the
jury, being the only party that can with any colour be stated as acting
independently of the government, is the only one mentioned by him as
blamable. The prosecutor is wholly omitted in his censure, and so is the
court; this last, not from any tenderness for the judge (who, to do this
author justice, is no favourite with him), but lest the odious connection
between that branch of the judicature and the government should strike
the reader too forcibly; for Jeffreys, in this instance, ought to be
regarded as the mere tool and instrument (a fit one, no doubt), of the
prince who had appointed him for the purpose of this and similar
services. Lastly, the king is gravely introduced on the question of
pardon, as if he had had no prior concern in the cause, and were now to
decide upon the propriety of extending mercy to a criminal condemned by a
court of judicature; nor are we once reminded what that judicature was,
by whom appointed, by whom influenced, by whom called upon, to receive
that detestable evidence, the very recollection of which, even at this
distance of time, fires every honest heart with indignation. As well
might we palliate the murders of Tiberius, who seldom put to death his
victims without a previous decree of his senate. The moral of all this
seems to be, that whenever a prince can, by intimidation, corruption,
illegal evidence, or other such means, obtain a verdict against a subject
whom he dislikes, he may cause him to be executed without any breach of
indispensable duty; nay, that it is an act of heroic generosity if he
spares him. I never reflect on Mr. Hume's statement of this matter but
with the deepest regret. Widely as I differ from him upon many other
occasions, this appears to me to be the most reprehensible passage of his
whole work. A spirit of adulation towards deceased princes, though in a
good measure free from the imputation of interested meanness, which is
justly attached to flattery when applied to living monarchs, yet, as it
is less intelligible with respect to its motives than the other, so is it
in its consequences still more pernicious to the general interests of
mankind. Fear of censure from contemporaries will seldom have much
effect upon men in situations of unlimited authority: they will too often
flatter themselves that the same power which enables them to commit the
crime will secure them from reproach. The dread of posthumous infamy,
therefore, being the only restraint, their consciences excepted, upon the
passions of such persons, it is lamentable that this last defence (feeble
enough at best) should in any degree be impaired; and impaired it must
be, if not totally destroyed, when tyrants can hope to find in a man like
Hume, no less eminent for the integrity and benevolence of his heart than
for the depth and soundness of his understanding, an apologist for even
their foulest murders.
Thus fell Russell and Sidney, two names that will, it is hoped, be for
ever dear to every English heart. When their memory shall cease to be an
object of respect and veneration, it requires no spirit of prophecy to
foretell that English liberty will be fast approaching to its final
consummation. Their department was such as might be expected from men
who knew themselves to be suffering, not for their crimes, but for their
virtues. In courage they were equal, but the fortitude of Russell, who
was connected with the world by private and domestic ties, which Sidney
had not, was put to the severer trial; and the story of the last days of
this excellent man's life fills the mind with such a mixture of
tenderness and admiration, that I know not any scene in history that more
powerfully excites our sympathy, or goes more directly to the heart.
The very day on which Russell was executed, the University of Oxford
passed their famous decree, condemning formally, as impious and heretical
propositions, every principle upon which the constitution of this or any
other free country can maintain itself. Nor was this learned body
satisfied with stigmatising such principles as contrary to the Holy
Scriptures, to the decrees of councils, to the writings of the fathers,
to the faith and profession of the primitive church, as destructive of
the kingly government, the safety of his majesty's person, the public
peace, the laws of nature, and bounds of human society; but after
enumerating the several obnoxious propositions, among which was one
declaring all civil authority derived from the people; another, asserting
a mutual contract, tacit or express, between the king and his subjects; a
third, maintaining the lawfulness of changing the succession to the
crown; with many others of a like nature, they solemnly decreed all and
every of those propositions to be not only false and seditious, but
impious, and that the books which contained them were fitted to lead to
rebellion, murder of princes, and atheism itself. Such are the
absurdities which men are not ashamed to utter in order to cast odious
imputations upon their adversaries; and such the manner in which
churchmen will abuse, when it suits their policy, the holy name of that
religion whose first precept is to love one another, for the purpose of
teaching us to hate our neighbours with more than ordinary rancour. If
_Much Ado about Nothing_ had been published in those days, the
town-clerk's declaration, that receiving a thousand ducats for accusing
the Lady Hero wrongfully, was flat burglary, might be supposed to be a
satire upon this decree; yet Shakespeare, well as he knew human nature,
not only as to its general course, but in all its eccentric deviations,
could never dream that, in the persons of Dogberry, Verges, and their
followers, he was representing the vice-chancellors and doctors of our
learned university.
Among the oppressions of this period, most of which were attended with
consequences so much more important to the several objects of
persecution, it may seem scarcely worth while to notice the expulsion of
John Locke from Christ Church College, Oxford. But besides the interest
which every incident in the life of a person so deservedly eminent
naturally excites, there appears to have been something in the
transaction itself characteristic of the spirit of the times, as well as
of the general nature of absolute power. Mr. Locke was known to have
been intimately connected with Lord Shaftesbury, and had very prudently
judged it advisable for him to prolong for some time his residence upon
the Continent, to which he had resorted originally on account of his
health. A suspicion, as it has been since proved unfounded, that he was
the author of a pamphlet which gave offence to the government, induced
the king to insist upon his removal from his studentship at Christ
Church. Sunderland writes, by the king's command, to Dr. Fell, bishop of
Oxford and dean of Christ Church. The reverend prelate answers that he
has long had an eye upon Mr. Locke's behaviour; but though frequent
attempts had been made (attempts of which the bishop expresses no
disapprobation), to draw him into imprudent conversation, by attacking,
in his company, the reputation, and insulting the memory of his late
patron and friend, and thus to make his gratitude and all the best
feelings of his heart instrumental to his ruin, these attempts all proved
unsuccessful. Hence the bishop infers, not the innocence of Mr. Locke,
but that he was a great master of concealment both as to words and looks;
for looks, it is to be supposed, would have furnished a pretext for his
expulsion, more decent than any which had yet been discovered. An
expedient is then suggested to drive Mr. Locke to a dilemma, by summoning
him to attend the college on the first of January ensuing. If he do not
appear, he shall be expelled for contumacy; if he come, matter of charge
may be found against him for what he shall have said at London or
elsewhere, where he will have been less upon his guard than at Oxford.
Some have ascribed Fell's hesitation, if it can be so called, in
executing the king's order, to his unwillingness to injure Locke, who was
his friend; others, with more reason, to the doubt of the legality of the
order. However this may have been, neither his scruple nor his
reluctance was regarded by a court who knew its own power. A peremptory
order was accordingly sent, and immediate obedience ensued. Thus, while
without the shadow of a crime, Mr. Locke lost a situation attended with
some emolument and great convenience, was the university deprived of, or
rather thus, from the base principles of servility, did she cast away the
man, the having produced whom is now her chiefest glory; and thus, to
those who are not determined to be blind, did the true nature of absolute
power discover itself, against which the middling station is not more
secure than the most exalted. Tyranny, when glutted with the blood of
the great, and the plunder of the rich, will condescend to bent humbler
game, and make a peaceable and innocent fellow of a college the object of
its persecution. In this instance one would almost imagine there was
some instinctive sagacity in the government of that time, which pointed
out to them, even before he had made himself known to the world, the man
who was destined to be the most successful adversary of superstition and
tyranny.
The king, during the remainder of his reign, seems, with the exception of
Armstrong's execution, which must be added to the catalogue of his
murders, to have directed his attacks more against the civil rights,
properties, and liberties, than against the lives of his subjects.
Convictions against evidence, sentences against law, enormous fines,
cruel imprisonments, were the principal engines employed for the purpose
of breaking the spirit of individuals, and fitting their necks for the
yoke. But it was not thought fit to trust wholly to the effect which
such examples would produce upon the public. That the subjugation of the
people might be complete, and despotism be established upon the most
solid foundation, measures of a more general nature and effect were
adopted; and first, the charter of London, and then those of almost all
the other corporations in England, were either forfeited or forced to a
surrender. By this act of violence two important points were thought to
be gained; one, that in every regular assemblage of the people in any
part of the kingdom the crown would have a commanding influence; the
other, that in case the king should find himself compelled to break his
engagement to France, and to call a parliament, a great majority of
members would be returned by electors of his nomination, and subject to
his control. In the affair of the charter of London, it was seen, as in
the case of ship-money, how idle it is to look to the integrity of judges
for a barrier against royal encroachments, when the courts of justice are
not under the constant and vigilant control of parliament. And it is not
to be wondered at, that, after such a warning, and with no hope of seeing
a parliament assemble, even they who still retained their attachment to
the true constitution of their country, should rather give way to the
torrent than make a fruitless and dangerous resistance.
Charles being thus completely master, was determined that the relative
situation of him and his subjects should be clearly understood, for which
purpose he ordered a declaration to be framed, wherein, after having
stated that he considered the degree of confidence they had reposed in
him as an honour particular to his reign, which not one of his
predecessors had ever dared even to hope for, he assured them he would
use it with all possible moderation, and convince even the most violent
republicans, that as the crown was the origin of the rights and liberties
of the people, so was it their most certain and secure support. This
gracious declaration was ready for the press at the time of the king's
death, and if he had lived to issue it, there can be little doubt how it
would have been received at a time when
"nunquam libertas gratior extat
Quam sub rege pio,"
was the theme of every song, and, by the help of some perversion of
Scripture, the text of every sermon. But whatever might be the language
of flatterers, and how loud soever the cry of a triumphant, but deluded
party, there were not wanting men of nobler sentiments and of more
rational views. Minds once thoroughly imbued with the love of what
Sidney, in his last moments, so emphatically called the good old cause,
will not easily relinquish their principles: nor was the manner in which
absolute power was exercised, such as to reconcile to it, in practice,
those who had always been averse to it in speculation. The hatred of
tyranny must, in such persons, have been exasperated by the experience of
its effects, and their attachment to liberty proportionably confirmed. To
them the state of their country must have been intolerable: to reflect
upon the efforts of their fathers, once their pride and glory, and whom
they themselves had followed with no unequal steps, and to see the result
of all in the scenes that now presented themselves, must have filled
their minds with sensations of the deepest regret, and feelings bordering
at least on despondency. To us, who have the opportunity of combining in
our view of this period, not only the preceding but subsequent
transactions, the consideration of it may suggest reflections far
different and speculations more consolatory. Indeed, I know not that
history can furnish a more forcible lesson against despondency, than by
recording that within a short time from those dismal days in which men of
the greatest constancy despaired, and had reason to do so, within five
years from the death of Sidney arose the brightest era of freedom known
to the annals of our country.
It is said that the king, when at the summit of his power, was far from
happy; and a notion has been generally entertained that not long before
his death he had resolved upon the recall of Monmouth, and a
correspondent change of system. That some such change was apprehended
seems extremely probable, from the earnest desire which the court of
France, as well as the Duke of York's party in England, entertained, in
the last years of Charles's life, to remove the Marquis of Halifax, who
was supposed to have friendly dispositions to Monmouth. Among the
various objections to that nobleman's political principles, we find the
charge most relied upon, for the purpose of injuring him in the mind of
the king, was founded on the opinion he had delivered in council, in
favour of modelling the charters of the British colonies in North America
upon the principles of the rights and privileges of Englishmen. There
was no room to doubt (he was accused of saying) that the same laws under
which we live in England, should be established in a country composed of
Englishmen. He even dilated upon this, and omitted none of the reasons
by which it can be proved that an absolute government is neither so happy
nor so safe as that which is tempered by laws, and which limits the
authority of the prince. He exaggerated, it was said, the mischiefs of a
sovereign power, and declared plainly that he could not make up his mind
to live under a king who should have it in his power to take, when he
pleased, the money he might have in his pocket. All the other ministers
had combated, as might be expected, sentiments so extraordinary; and
without entering into the general question of the comparative value of
different forms of government, maintained that his majesty could and
ought to govern countries so distant in the manner that should appear to
him most suitable for preserving or augmenting the strength and riches of
the mother country. It had been, therefore, resolved that the government
and council of the provinces under the new charter should not be obliged
to call assemblies of the colonists for the purpose of imposing taxes, or
making other important regulations, but should do what they thought fit,
without rendering any account of their actions except to his Britannic
Majesty. The affair having been so decided with a concurrence only short
of unanimity, was no longer considered as a matter of importance, nor
would it be worth recording, if the Duke of York and the French court had
not fastened upon it, as affording the best evidence of the danger to be
apprehended from having a man of Halifax's principles in any situation of
trust or power. There is something curious in discovering that even at
this early period a question relative to North American liberty, and even
to North American taxation, was considered as the test of principles
friendly or adverse to arbitrary power at home. But the truth is, that
among the several controversies which have arisen there is no other
wherein the natural rights of man on the one hand, and the authority of
artificial institution on the other, as applied respectively by the Whigs
and Tories to the English constitution, are so fairly put in issue, nor
by which the line of separation between the two parties is so strongly
and distinctly marked.
There is some reason for believing that the court of Versailles had
either wholly discontinued, or, at least, had become very remiss in, the
payments of Charles's pension; and it is not unlikely that this
consideration induced him either really to think of calling a parliament,
or at least to threaten Louis with such a measure, in order to make that
prince more punctual in performing his part of their secret treaty. But
whether or not any secret change was really intended, or if it were to
what extent, and to what objects directed, are points which cannot now be
ascertained, no public steps having ever been taken in this affair, and
his majesty's intentions, if in truth he had any such, becoming abortive
by the sudden illness which seized him on the 1st of February, 1685, and
which, in a few days afterwards, put an end to his reign and life. His
death was by many supposed to have been the effect of poison; but
although there is reason to believe that this suspicion was harboured by
persons very near to him, and, among others, as I have heard, by the
Duchess of Portsmouth, it appears, upon the whole, to rest upon very
slender foundations.
With respect to the character of this prince, upon the delineation of
which so much pains have been employed, by the various writers who treat
of the history of his time, it must be confessed that the facts which
have been noticed in the foregoing pages furnish but too many
illustrations of the more unfavourable parts of it. From these we may
collect that his ambition was directed solely against his subjects, while
he was completely indifferent concerning the figure which he or they
might make in the general affairs of Europe; and that his desire of power
was more unmixed with love of glory than that of any other man whom
history has recorded; that he was unprincipled, ungrateful, mean, and
treacherous, to which may be added, vindictive and remorseless. For
Burnet, in refusing to him the praise of clemency and forgiveness, seems
to be perfectly justifiable, nor is it conceivable upon what pretence his
partisans have taken this ground of panegyric. I doubt whether a single
instance can be produced of his having spared the life of any one whom
motives either of policy, or of revenge, prompted him to destroy. To
allege that of Monmouth as it would be an affront to human nature, so
would it likewise imply the most severe of all satires against the
monarch himself, and we may add, too, an undeserved one; for, in order to
consider it as an act of meritorious forbearance on his part, that he did
not follow the example of Constantine and Philip II., by imbruing his
hands in the blood of his son, we must first suppose him to have been
wholly void of every natural affection, which does not appear to have
been the case. His declaration that he would have pardoned Essex, being
made when that nobleman was dead, and not followed by any act evincing
its sincerity, can surely obtain no credit from men of sense. If he had
really had the intention, he ought not to have made such a declaration,
unless he accompanied it with some mark of kindness to the relations, or
with some act of mercy to the friends of the deceased. Considering it as
a mere piece of hypocrisy, we cannot help looking upon it as one of the
most odious passages of his life. This ill-timed boast of his intended
mercy, and the brutal taunt with which he accompanied his mitigation (if
so it may be called) of Russell's sentence, show his insensibility and
hardness to have been such, that in questions where right feelings were
concerned, his good sense, and even the good taste for which he has been
so much extolled, seemed wholly to desert him.
On the other hand, it would be want of candour to maintain that Charles
was entirely destitute of good qualities; nor was the propriety of
Burnet's comparison between him and Tiberius ever felt, I imagine, by any
one but its author. He was gay and affable, and, if incapable of the
sentiments belonging to pride of a laudable sort, he was at least free
from haughtiness and insolence. The praise of politeness, which the
stoics are not perhaps wrong in classing among the moral virtues,
provided they admit it to be one of the lowest order, has never been
denied him, and he had in an eminent degree that facility of temper
which, though considered by some moralists as nearly allied to vice, yet,
inasmuch as it contributes greatly to the happiness of those around us,
is in itself not only an engaging but an estimable quality. His support
of the queen during the heats raised by the popish plot ought to be taken
rather as a proof that he was not a monster than to be ascribed to him as
a merit; but his steadiness to his brother, though it may and ought, in a
great measure, to be accounted for upon selfish principles, had at least
a strong resemblance to virtue.
The best part of this prince's character seems to have been his kindness
towards his mistresses, and his affection for his children, and others
nearly connected to him by the ties of blood. His recommendation of the
Duchess of Portsmouth and Mrs. Gwyn, upon his death-bed, to his successor
is much to his honour; and they who censure it seem, in their zeal to
show themselves strict moralists, to have suffered their notions of vice
and virtue to have fallen into strange confusion. Charles's connection
with those ladies might be vicious, but at a moment when that connection
was upon the point of being finally and irrevocably dissolved, to concern
himself about their future welfare and to recommend them to his brother
with earnest tenderness was virtue. It is not for the interest of
morality that the good and evil actions, even of bad men, should be
confounded. His affection for the Duke of Gloucester and for the Duchess
of Orleans seems to have been sincere and cordial. To attribute, as some
have done, his grief for the loss of the first to political
considerations, founded upon an intended balance of power between his two
brothers, would be an absurd refinement, whatever were his general
disposition; but when we reflect upon that carelessness which, especially
in his youth, was a conspicuous feature of his character, the absurdity
becomes still more striking. And though Burnet more covertly, and Ludlow
more openly, insinuate that his fondness for his sister was of a criminal
nature, I never could find that there was any ground whatever for such a
suspicion; nor does the little that remains of their epistolary
correspondence give it the smallest countenance. Upon the whole, Charles
II. was a bad man and a bad king; let us not palliate his crimes, but
neither let us adopt false or doubtful imputations for the purpose of
making him a monster.
Whoever reviews the interesting period which we have been discussing,
upon the principle recommended in the outset of this chapter, will find
that, from the consideration of the past, to prognosticate the future
would at the moment of Charles's demise be no easy task. Between two
persons, one of whom should expect that the country would remain sunk in
slavery, the other, that the cause of freedom would revive and triumph,
it would be difficult to decide whose reasons were better supported,
whose speculations the more probable. I should guess that he who
desponded had looked more at the state of the public, while he who was
sanguine had fixed his eyes more attentively upon the person who was
about to mount the throne. Upon reviewing the two great parties of the
nation, one observation occurs very forcibly, and that is, that the great
strength of the Whigs consisted in their being able to brand their
adversaries as favourers of popery; that of the Tories (as far as their
strength depended upon opinion, and not merely upon the power of the
crown), in their finding colour to represent the Whigs as republicans.
From this observation we may draw a further inference, that, in
proportion to the rashness of the crown in avowing and pressing forward
the cause of popery, and to the moderation and steadiness of the Whigs in
adhering to the form of monarchy, would be the chance of the people of
England for changing an ignominious despotism for glory, liberty, and
happiness.