I am myself, and always have been, a member of the Church of England, and
am grieved to hear the many attacks against the Church [frequently most
illiberal attacks], which not so much religion as political rancor gives
birth to in every third journal that I take up. This I say to acquit
myself of all dishonorable feelings, such as I would abhor to co-operate
with, in bringing a very heavy charge against that great body in its
literary capacity. Whosoever has reflected on the history of the English
constitution--must be aware that the most important stage of its
development lies within the reign of Charles I. It is true that the
judicial execution of that prince has been allowed by many persons to
vitiate all that was done by the heroic parliament of November, 1640: and
the ordinary histories of England assume as a matter of course that the
whole period of parliamentary history through those times is to be
regarded as a period of confusion. Our constitution, say they, was formed
in 1688-9. Meantime it is evident to any reflecting man that the
revolution simply re-affirmed the principles developed in the strife
between the two great parties which had arisen in the reign of James I.,
and had ripened and come to issue with each other in the reign of his son.
Our constitution was not a birth of a single instant, as they would
represent it, but a gradual growth and development through a long tract of
time. In particular the doctrine of the king's vicarious responsibility in
the person of his ministers, which first gave a sane and salutary meaning
to the doctrine of the king's personal irresponsibility ['The king can do
no wrong'], arose undeniably between 1640 and 1648. This doctrine is the
main pillar of our constitution, and perhaps the finest discovery that was
ever made in the theory of government. Hitherto the doctrine _that the
King can do no wrong_ had been used not to protect the indispensable
sanctity of the king's constitutional character, but to protect the wrong.
Used in this way, it was a maxim of Oriental despotism, and fit only for a
nation where law had no empire. Many of the illustrious patriots of the
Great Parliament saw this; and felt the necessity of abolishing a maxim so
fatal to the just liberties of the people. But some of them fell into the
opposite error of supposing that this abolition could be effected only by
the direct negation of it; _their_ maxim accordingly was--'The king
_can_ do wrong,' _i.e._ is responsible in his own person. In this great
error even the illustrious wife of Colonel Hutchinson participated; [1]
and accordingly she taxes those of her own party who scrupled to accede to
the new maxim, and still adhered to the old one, with unconscientious
dealing. But she misapprehended their meaning, and failed to see where
they laid the emphasis: the emphasis was not laid, as it was by the royal
party, on the words 'can do no _wrong_'--but on 'The king:' that is, wrong
may be done; and in the king's name; but it cannot be the king who did it
[the king cannot constitutionally be supposed the person who did it]. By
this exquisite political refinement, the old tyrannical maxim was disarmed
of its sting; and the entire redress of all wrong, so indispensable to the
popular liberty, was brought into perfect reconciliation with the entire
inviolability of the sovereign, which is no less indispensable to the
popular liberty. There is moreover a double wisdom in the new sense: for
not only is one object [the redress of wrong] secured in conjunction with
another object [the king's inviolability] hitherto held irreconcilable,--
but even with a view to the first object alone a much more effectual means
is applied, because one which leads to no schism in the state, than could
have been applied by the blank negation of the maxim; _i.e._ by lodging
the responsibility exactly where the executive power [_ergo_ the power of
resisting this responsibility] was lodged. Here then is one example in
illustration of my thesis--that the English constitution was in a great
measure gradually evolved in the contest between the different parties in
the reign of Charles I. Now, if this be so, it follows that for
constitutional history no period is so important as that: and indeed,
though it is true that the Revolution is the great era for the
constitutional historian, because he there first finds the constitution
fully developed as the 'bright consummate _flower_,' and what is equally
important he there first finds the principles of our constitution
_ratified_ by a competent authority,--yet, to trace the _root_ and growth
of the constitution, the three reigns immediately preceding are still more
properly the objects of his study. In proportion then as the reign of
Charles I. is Important to the history of our constitution, in that
proportion are those to be taxed with the most dangerous of all possible
falsifications of our history, who have misrepresented either the facts or
the principles of those times. Now I affirm that the clergy of the Church
of England have been in a perpetual conspiracy since the era of the
restoration to misrepresent both. As an illustration of what I mean I
refer to the common edition of Hudibras by Dr. Grey: for the proof I might
refer to some thousands of books. Dr. Grey's is a disgusting case: for he
swallowed with the most anile credulity every story, the most extravagant
that the malice of those times could invent against either the
Presbyterians or the Independents: and for this I suppose amongst other
deformities his notes were deservedly ridiculed by Warburton. But, amongst
hundreds of illustrations more respectable than Dr. Grey's I will refer
the reader to a work of our own days, the Ecclesiastical Biography [in
part a republication of Walton's Lives] edited by the present master of
Trinity College, Cambridge, who is held in the highest esteem wherever he
is known, and is I am persuaded perfectly conscientious and as impartial
as in such a case it is possible for a high churchman to be. Yet so it is
that there is scarcely one of the notes having any political reference to
the period of 1640-1660, which is not disfigured by unjust prejudices: and
the amount of the moral which the learned editor grounds upon the
documents before him--is this, that the young student is to cherish the
deepest abhorrence and contempt of all who had any share on the
parliamentary side in the 'confusions' of the period from 1640 to 1660:
that is to say of men to whose immortal exertions it was owing that the
very revolution of 1688, which Dr. W. will be the first to applaud, found
us with any such stock of political principles or feelings as could make a
beneficial revolution possible. Where, let me ask, would have been the
willingness of some Tories to construe the flight of James II. into a
virtual act of abdication, or to consider even the most formal act of
abdication binding against the king,-had not the great struggle of
Charles's days gradually substituted in the minds of all parties a
rational veneration of the king's _office_ for the old superstition
in behalf of the king's _person_, which would have protected him from
the effects of any acts however solemnly performed which affected
injuriously either his own interests or the liberties of his people.
Tempora mutantur: _nos et mutamur in illis_. Those whom we find in
fierce opposition to the popular party about 1640 we find still in the
same personal opposition fifty years after, but an opposition resting on
far different principles: insensibly the principles of their antagonists
had reached even them: and a courtier of 1689 was willing to concede more
than a patriot of 1630 would have ventured to ask. Let me not be
understood to mean that true patriotism is at all more shown in supporting
the rights of the people than those of the king: as soon as both are
defined and limited, the last are as indispensable to the integrity of the
constitution--as the first: and popular freedom itself would suffer as
much, though indirectly, from an invasion of Caesar's rights--as by a more
direct attack on itself. But in the 17th century the rights of the people
were as yet _not_ defined: throughout that century they were gradually
defining themselves--and, as happiness to all great practical interests,
defining themselves through a course of fierce and bloody contests. For
the kingly rights are almost inevitably carried too high in ages of
imperfect civilization: and the well-known laws of Henry the Seventh, by
which he either broke or gradually sapped the power of the aristocracy,
had still more extravagantly exalted them. On this account it is just to
look upon democratic or popular politics as identical in the 17th century
with patriotic politics. In later periods, the democrat and the patriot
have sometimes been in direct opposition to each other: at that period
they were inevitably in conjunction. All this, however, is in general
overlooked by those who either write English history or comment upon it.
Most writers _of_ or _upon_ English history proceed either upon servile
principles, or upon no principles: and a good _Spirit of English History_,
that is, a history which should abstract the tendencies and main results
[as to laws, manners, and constitution] from every age of English history,
is a work which I hardly hope to see executed. For it would require the
concurrence of some philosophy, with a great deal of impartiality. How
idly do we say, in speaking of the events of our own time which affect our
party feelings,--'We stand too near to these events for an impartial
estimate: we must leave them to the judgment of posterity!' For it is a
fact that of the many books of memoirs written by persons who were not
merely contemporary with the great civil war, but actors and even leaders
in its principal scenes--there is hardly one which does not exhibit a more
impartial picture of that great drama than the histories written at his
day. The historian of Popery does not display half so much zealotry and
passionate prejudice in speaking of the many events which have affected
the power and splendor of the Papal See for the last thirty years, and
under his own eyes, as he does when speaking of a reformer who lived three
centuries ago--of a translator of the Bible into a vernacular tongue who
lived nearly five centuries ago--of an Anti-pope--of a Charlemagne or a
Gregory the Great still further removed from himself. The recent events he
looks upon as accidental and unessential: but in the great enemies, or
great founders of the Romish temporal power, and in the history of their
actions and their motives, he feels that the whole principle of the Romish
cause and its pretensions are at stake. Pretty much under the same feeling
have modern writers written with a rancorous party spirit of the political
struggles in the 17th century: here they fancy that they can detect the
_incunabula_ of the revolutionary spirit: here some have been so
sharpsighted as to read the features of pure jacobinism: and others [2]
have gone so far as to assert that all the atrocities of the French
revolution had their direct parallelisms in acts done or countenanced by
the virtuous and august Senate of England in 1640! Strange distortion of
the understanding which can thus find a brotherly resemblance between two
great historical events, which of all that ever were put on record stand
off from each other in most irreconcilable enmity: the one originating, as
Mr. Coleridge has observed, in excess of principle; the other in the utter
defect of all moral principle whatever; and the progress of each being
answerable to its origin! Yet so it is. And not a memoir-writer of that
age is reprinted in this, but we have a preface from some red-hot Anti-
jacobin warning us with much vapid common-place from the mischiefs and
eventual anarchy of too rash a spirit of reform as displayed in the French
revolution--_not_ by the example of that French revolution, but by that of
our own in the age of Charles I. The following passage from the
Introduction to Sir William Waller's Vindication published in 1793, may
serve as a fair instance: 'He' (Sir W. Waller) 'was, indeed, at length
sensible of the misery which he had contributed to bring on his country;'
(by the way, it is a suspicious circumstance--that Sir William [3] first
became sensible that his country was miserable, when he became sensible
that he himself was not likely to be again employed; and became fully
convinced of it, when his party lost their ascendancy:) 'he was convinced,
by fatal experience, that anarchy was a bad step towards a perfect
government; that the subversion of every establishment was no safe
foundation for a permanent and regular constitution: he found that
pretences of reform were held up by the designing to dazzle the eyes of
the unwary, &c.; he found in short that reformation, by popular
insurrection, must end in the destruction and cannot tend to the formation
of a regular Government.' After a good deal more of this well-meaning
cant, the Introduction concludes with the following sentence:--the writer
is addressing the reformers of 1793, amongst whom--'both leaders and
followers,' he says, 'may together reflect--that, upon speculative and
visionary reformers,' (_i.e._ those of 1640) 'the severest punishment
which God in his vengeance ever yet inflicted--was to curse them with the
complete gratification of their own inordinate desires.' I quote this
passage--not as containing any thing singular, but for the very reason
that it is _not_ singular: it expresses in fact the universal opinion:
notwithstanding which I am happy to say that it is false. What 'complete
gratification of their own desires' was ever granted to the 'reformers' in
question? On the contrary, it is well known (and no book illustrates that
particular fact so well as Sir William Waller's) that as early as 1647 the
army had too effectually subverted the just relations between itself and
parliament--not to have suggested fearful anticipations to all discerning
patriots of that unhappy issue which did in reality blight their
prospects. And, when I speak of an 'unhappy issue,' I would be understood
only of the immediate issue: for the remote issue was--the revolution of
1688, as I have already asserted. Neither is it true that even the
immediate issue was 'unhappy' to any extent which can justify the ordinary
language in which it is described. Here again is a world of delusions. We
hear of 'anarchy,' of 'confusions,' of 'proscriptions,' of 'bloody and
ferocious tyranny.' All is romance; there was no anarchy; no confusions;
no proscriptions; no tyranny in the sense designed. The sequestrations,
forfeitures, and punishments of all sorts which were inflicted by the
conquering party on their antagonists--went on by due course of law; and
the summary justice of courts martial was not resorted to in England:
except for the short term of the two wars, and the brief intermediate
campaign of 1648, the country was in a very tranquil state. Nobody was
punished without an open trial; and all trials proceeded in the regular
course, according to the ancient forms, and in the regular courts of
justice. And as to 'tyranny,' which is meant chiefly of the acts of
Cromwell's government, it should be remembered that the Protectorate
lasted not a quarter of the period in question (1640-1660); a fact which
is constantly forgotten even by very eminent writers, who speak as though
Cromwell had drawn his sword in January 1649--cut off the king's head--
instantly mounted his throne--and continued to play the tyrant for the
whole remaining period of his life (nearly ten years). Secondly, as to the
_kind_ of tyranny which Cromwell exercised, the misconception is
ludicrous: continental writers have a notion, well justified by the
language of English writers, that Cromwell was a ferocious savage who
built his palace of human skulls and desolated his country. Meantime, he
was simply a strong-minded--rough-built Englishman, with a character
thoroughly English, and exceedingly good-natured. Gray valued himself upon
his critical knowledge of English history: yet how thoughtlessly does he
express the abstract of Cromwell's life in the line on the village
Cromwell--'Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood!' How was
Cromwell guilty of his country's blood? What blood did he cause to be
shed? A great deal was shed no doubt in the wars (though less, by the way,
than is imagined): but in those Cromwell was but a servant of the
parliament: and no one will allege that he had any hand in causing a
single war. After he attained the sovereign power, no more domestic wars
arose: and as to a few persons who were executed for plots and
conspiracies against his person, they were condemned upon evidence openly
given and by due course of law. With respect to the general character of
his government, it is evident that in the unsettled and revolutionary
state of things which follows a civil war some critical cases will arise
to demand an occasional 'vigor beyond the law'--such as the Roman
government allowed of in the dictatorial power. But in general, Cromwell's
government was limited by law: and no reign in that century, prior to the
revolution, furnishes fewer instances of attempts to tamper with the laws
--to overrule them--to twist them to private interpretations--or to
dispense with them. As to his major-generals of counties, who figure in
most histories of England as so many _Ali Pachas_ that impaled a few
prisoners every morning before breakfast--or rather as so many ogres that
ate up good Christian men, women and children alive, they were
disagreeable people who were disliked much in the same way as our
commissioners of the income-tax were disliked in the memory of us all; and
heartily they would have laughed at the romantic and bloody masquerade in
which they are made to figure in the English histories. What then was the
'tyranny' of Cromwell's government, which is confessedly complained of
even in those days? The word 'tyranny' was then applied not so much to the
mode in which his power was administered (except by the prejudiced)--as to
its origin. However mercifully a man may reign,--yet, if he have no right
to reign at all, we may in one sense call him a tyrant; his power not
being justly derived, and resting upon an unlawful (_i.e._ a military)
basis. As a usurper, and one who had diverted the current of a grand
national movement to selfish and personal objects, Cromwell was and
will be called a tyrant; but not in the more obvious sense of the word.
Such are the misleading statements which disfigure the History of England
in its most important chapter. They mislead by more than a simple error of
fact: those, which I have noticed last, involve a moral anachronism; for
they convey images of cruelty and barbarism such as could not co-exist
with the national civilization at that time; and whosoever has not
corrected this false picture by an acquaintance with the English
literature of that age, must necessarily image to himself a state of
society as rude and uncultured as that which prevailed during the wars of
York and Lancaster--_i.e._ about two centuries earlier. But those,
with which I introduced this article, are still worse; because they
involve an erroneous view of constitutional history, and a most
comprehensive act of ingratitude: the great men of the Long Parliament
paid a heavy price for their efforts to purchase for their descendants a
barrier to irresponsible power and security from the anarchy of undefined
regal prerogative: in these efforts most of them made shipwreck of their
own tranquillity and peace; that such sacrifices were made unavailingly
(as it must have seemed to themselves), and that few of them lived to see
the 'good old cause' finally triumphant, does not cancel their claims upon
our gratitude--but rather strengthen them by the degree in which it
aggravated the difficulty of bearing such sacrifices with patience. But
whence come these falsifications of history? I believe, from two causes;
first (as I have already said) from the erroneous tone impressed upon the
national history by the irritated spirit of the clergy of the established
church: to the religious zealotry of those times--the church was the
object of especial attack; and its members were naturally exposed to heavy
sufferings: hence their successors are indisposed to find my good in a
cause which could lead to such a result. It is their manifest right to
sympathize with their own order in that day; and in such a case it is
almost their duty to be incapable of an entire impartiality. Meantime they
have carried this much too far: the literature of England must always be
in a considerable proportion lodged in their hands; and the extensive
means thus placed at their disposal for injuriously coloring that
important part of history they have used with no modesty or forbearance.
There is not a page of the national history even in its local subdivisions
which they have not stained with the atrabilious hue of their wounded
remembrances: hardly a town in England, which stood a siege for the king
or the parliament, but has some printed memorial of its constancy and its
sufferings; and in nine cases out of ten the editor is a clergyman of the
established church, who has contrived to deepen 'the sorrow of the time'
by the harshness of his commentary. Surely it is high time that the wounds
of the 17th century should close; that history should take a more
commanding and philosophic station; and that brotherly charity should now
lead us to a saner view of constitutional politics; or a saner view of
politics to a more comprehensive charity. The other cause of this
falsification springs out of a selfishness which has less claim to any
indulgence--viz. the timidity with which the English Whigs of former days
and the party to whom They [4] succeeded, constantly shrank from
acknowledging any alliance with the great men of the Long Parliament under
the nervous horror of being confounded with the regicides of 1649. It was
of such urgent importance to them, for any command over the public
support, that they should acquit themselves of an sentiment of lurking
toleration for regicide, with which their enemies never failed to load
them, that no mode of abjuring it seemed sufficiently emphatic to them
hence it was that Addison, with a view to the interest of his party,
thought fit when in Switzerland, to offer a puny insult to the memory of
General Ludlow; hence it is that even in our own days, no writers have
insulted Milton with so much bitterness and shameless irreverence as the
Whigs; though it is true that some few Whigs, more however in their
literary than in their political character, have stepped forward in his
vindication. At this moment I recollect a passage in the writings of a
modern Whig bishop--in which, for the sake of creating a charge of
falsehood against Milton, the author has grossly mis-translated a passage
in the _Defensio pro Pop. Anglicano_: and, if that bishop were not
dead, I would here take the liberty of rapping his knuckles--were it only
for breaking Priscian's head. To return over to the clerical feud against
the Long Parliament,--it was a passage in a very pleasing work of this day
(_Ecclesiastical Biography_) which suggested to me the whole of what
I have now written. Its learned editor, who is incapable of uncandid
feelings except in what concerns the interests of his order, has adopted
the usual tone in regard to the men of 1640 throughout his otherwise
valuable annotations: and somewhere or other (in the Life of Hammond,
according to my remembrance) he has made a statement to this effect--That
the custom prevalent among children in that age of asking their parents'
blessing was probably first brought into disuse by the Puritans. Is it
possible to imagine a perversity of prejudice more unreasonable? The
unamiable side of the patriotic character in the seventeenth century was
unquestionably its religious bigotry; which, however, had its ground in a
real fervor of religious feeling and a real strength of religious
principle somewhat exceeding the ordinary standard of the 19th century.
But, however palliated, their bigotry is not to be denied; it was often
offensive from its excess; and ludicrous in its direction. Many harmless
customs, many ceremonies and rituals that had a high positive value, their
frantic intolerance quarrelled with: and for my part I heartily join in
the sentiment of Charles II.--applying it as he did, but a good deal more
extensively, that their religion 'was not a religion for a gentleman:'
indeed all sectarianism, but especially that which has a modern origin--
arising and growing up within our own memories, unsupported by a grand
traditional history of persecutions--conflicts--and martyrdoms, lurking
moreover in blind alleys, holes, corners, and tabernacles, must appear
spurious and mean in the eyes of him who has been bred up in the grand
classic forms of the Church of England or the Church of Rome. But, because
the bigotry of the Puritans was excessive and revolting, is _that_ a
reason for fastening upon them all the stray evils of omission or
commission for which no distinct fathers can be found? The learned editor
does not pretend that there is any positive evidence, or presumption even,
for imputing to the Puritans a dislike to the custom in question: but,
because he thinks it a good custom, his inference is that nobody could
have abolished it but the Puritans. Now who does not see that, if this had
been amongst the usages discountenanced by the Puritans, it would on that
account have been the more pertinaciously maintained by their enemies in
church and state? Or, even if this usage were of a nature to be prohibited
by authority, as the public use of the liturgy--organs--surplices, &c.,
who does not see that with regard to _that_ as well as to other
Puritanical innovations there would have been a reflux of zeal in the
restoration of the king which would have established them in more strength
than ever? But it is evident to the unprejudiced that the usage in
question gradually went out in submission to the altered spirit of the
times. It was one feature of a general system of manners, fitted by its
piety and simplicity for a pious and simple age, and which therefore even
the 17th century had already outgrown. It is not to be inferred that
filial affection and reverence have decayed amongst us, because they no
longer express themselves in the same way. In an age of imperfect culture,
all passions and emotions are in a more elementary state--'speak a plainer
language'--and express themselves _externally_: in such an age the
frame and constitution of society is more picturesque; the modes of life
rest more undisguisedly upon the basis of the absolute and original
relation of things: the son is considered in his sonship, the father in
his fatherhood: and the manners take an appropriate coloring. Up to the
middle of the 17th century there were many families in which the children
never presumed to sit down in their parents' presence. But with us, in an
age of more complete intellectual culture, a thick disguise is spread over
the naked foundations of human life; and the instincts of good taste
banish from good company the expression of all the profounder emotions. A
son therefore, who should kneel down in this age to ask his papa's
blessing on leaving town for Brighton or Bath--would be felt by himself to
be making a theatrical display of filial duty, such as would be painful to
him in proportion as his feelings were sincere. All this would have been
evident to the learned editor in any case but one which regarded the
Puritans: they were at any rate to be molested: in default of any graver
matter, a mere fanciful grievance is searched out. Still, however, nothing
was effected; fanciful or real, the grievance must be connected with the
Puritans: here lies the offence, there lies the Puritans: it would be very
agreeable to find some means of connecting the one with the other: but how
shall this be done? Why, in default of all other means, the learned editor
_assumes_ the connection. He leaves the reader with an impression
that the Puritans are chargeable with a serious wound to the manners of
the nation in a point affecting the most awful of the household charities:
and he fails to perceive that for this whole charge his sole ground is--
that it would be very agreeable to him if he had a ground. Such is the
power of the _esprit de corps_ to palliate and recommend as colorable
the very weakest logic to a man of acknowledged learning and talent!--In
conclusion I must again disclaim any want of veneration and entire
affection for the Established Church: the very prejudices and injustice,
with which I tax the English clergy, have a generous origin: but it is
right to point the attention of historical students to their strength and
the effect which they have had. They have been indulged to excess; they
have disfigured the grandest page in English history; they have hid the
true descent and tradition of our constitutional history; and, by
impressing upon the literature of the country a false conception of the
patriotic party in and out of Parliament, they have stood in the way of a
great work,--a work which, according to my ideal of it, would be the most
useful that could just now be dedicated to the English public--viz. _a
philosophic record of the revolutions of English History_. The English
Constitution, as proclaimed and ratified in 1688-9, is in its kind, the
noblest work of the human mind working in conjunction with Time, and what
in such a case we may allowably call Providence. Of this _chef d'oeuvre_
of human wisdom it were desirable that we should have a proportionable
history: for such a history the great positive qualification would be a
philosophic mind: the great negative qualification would be this [which to
the established clergy may now be recommended as a fit subject for their
magnanimity]; viz. complete conquest over those prejudices which have
hitherto discolored the greatest era of patriotic virtue by contemplating
the great men of that era under their least happy aspect--namely, in
relation to the Established Church.
Now that I am on the subject of English History, I will notice one of the
thousand mis-statements of Hume's which becomes a memorable one from the
stress which he has laid upon it, and from the manner and situation in
which he has introduced it. Standing in the current of a narrative, it
would have merited a silent correction in an unpretending note: but it
occupies a much more assuming station; for it is introduced in a
philosophical essay; and being relied on for a particular purpose with the
most unqualified confidence, and being alleged in opposition to the very
highest authority [viz. the authority of an eminent person contemporary
with the fact] it must be looked on as involving a peremptory defiance to
all succeeding critics who might hesitate between the authority of Mr.
Hume at the distance of a century from the facts and Sir William Temple
speaking to them as a matter within his personal recollections. Sir
William Temple had represented himself as urging in a conversation with
Charles II., the hopelessness of any attempt on the part of an English
king to make himself a despotic and absolute monarch, except indeed
through the affections of his people. [5] This general thesis he had
supported by a variety of arguments; and, amongst the rest, he had
described himself as urging this--that even Cromwell had been unable to
establish himself in unlimited power, though supported by a military force
of _eighty thousand men_. Upon this Hume calls the reader's attention
to the extreme improbability which there must beforehand appear to be in
supposing that Sir W. Temple,--speaking of so recent a case, with so much
official knowledge of that case at his command, uncontradicted moreover by
the king whose side in the argument gave him an interest in contradicting
Sir William's statement, and whose means of information were paramount to
those of all others,--could under these circumstances be mistaken.
Doubtless, the reader will reply to Mr. Hume, the improbability _is_
extreme, and scarcely to be invalidated by any possible authority--which,
at best, must terminate in leaving an equilibrium of opposing evidence.
And yet, says Mr. Hume, Sir William was unquestionably wrong, and grossly
wrong: Cromwell never had an army at all approaching to the number of
eighty thousand. Now here is a sufficient proof that Hume had never read
Lord Clarendon's account of his own life: this book is not so common as
his 'History of the Rebellion;' and Hume had either not met with it, or
had neglected it. For, in the early part of this work, Lord Clarendon,
speaking of the army which was assembled on Blackheath to welcome the
return of Charles II., says that it amounted to fifty thousand men: and,
when it is remembered that this army was exclusive of the troops in
garrison--of the forces left by Monk in the North--and above all of the
entire army in Ireland,--it cannot be doubted that the whole would amount
to the number stated by Sir William Temple. Indeed Charles II. himself, in
the year 1678 [_i.e._ about four years after this conversation] as
Sir W. Temple elsewhere tells us, 'in six weeks' time raised an army of
twenty thousand men, the completest--and in all appearance the bravest
troops that could be any where seen, and might have raised many more; and
it was confessed by all the Foreign Ministers that no king in Christendom
could have made and completed such a levy as this appeared in such a
time.' William III. again, about eleven years afterwards, raised twenty-
three regiments with the same ease and in the same space of six weeks. It
may be objected indeed to such cases, as in fact it _was_ objected to
the case of William III. by Howlett in his sensible Examination of Dr.
Price's Essay on the Population of England, that, in an age when
manufactures were so little extended, it could ever have been difficult to
make such a levy of men--provided there were funds for paying and
equipping them. But, considering the extraordinary funds which were
disposable for this purpose in Ireland, &c. during the period of
Cromwell's Protectorate, we may very safely allow the combined authority
of Sir William Temple--of the king--and of that very prime minister who
disbanded Cromwell's army, to outweigh the single authority of Hume at the
distance of a century from the facts. Upon any question of fact, indeed,
Hume's authority is none at all.