The members of the English Parliament are fond of comparing themselves to
the old Romans.
Not long since Mr. Shippen opened a speech in the House of Commons with
these words, "The majesty of the people of England would be wounded." The
singularity of the expression occasioned a loud laugh; but this
gentleman, so far from being disconcerted, repeated the same words with a
resolute tone of voice, and the laugh ceased. In my opinion, the majesty
of the people of England has nothing in common with that of the people of
Rome, much less is there any affinity between their Governments. There
is in London a senate, some of the members whereof are accused (doubtless
very unjustly) of selling their voices on certain occasions, as was done
in Rome; this is the only resemblance. Besides, the two nations appear
to me quite opposite in character, with regard both to good and evil. The
Romans never knew the dreadful folly of religious wars, an abomination
reserved for devout preachers of patience and humility. Marius and
Sylla, Caesar and Pompey, Anthony and Augustus, did not draw their swords
and set the world in a blaze merely to determine whether the flamen
should wear his shirt over his robe, or his robe over his shirt, or
whether the sacred chickens should eat and drink, or eat only, in order
to take the augury. The English have hanged one another by law, and cut
one another to pieces in pitched battles, for quarrels of as trifling a
nature. The sects of the Episcopalians and Presbyterians quite
distracted these very serious heads for a time. But I fancy they will
hardly ever be so silly again, they seeming to be grown wiser at their
own expense; and I do not perceive the least inclination in them to
murder one another merely about syllogisms, as some zealots among them
once did.
But here follows a more essential difference between Rome and England,
which gives the advantage entirely to the latter--viz., that the civil
wars of Rome ended in slavery, and those of the English in liberty. The
English are the only people upon earth who have been able to prescribe
limits to the power of kings by resisting them; and who, by a series of
struggles, have at last established that wise Government where the Prince
is all-powerful to do good, and, at the same time, is restrained from
committing evil; where the nobles are great without insolence, though
there are no vassals; and where the people share in the Government
without confusion.
The House of Lords and that of the Commons divide the legislative power
under the king, but the Romans had no such balance. The patricians and
plebeians in Rome were perpetually at variance, and there was no
intermediate power to reconcile them. The Roman senate, who were so
unjustly, so criminally proud as not to suffer the plebeians to share
with them in anything, could find no other artifice to keep the latter
out of the administration than by employing them in foreign wars. They
considered the plebeians as a wild beast, whom it behoved them to let
loose upon their neighbours, for fear they should devour their masters.
Thus the greatest defect in the Government of the Romans raised them to
be conquerors. By being unhappy at home, they triumphed over and
possessed themselves of the world, till at last their divisions sunk them
to slavery.
The Government of England will never rise to so exalted a pitch of glory,
nor will its end be so fatal. The English are not fired with the
splendid folly of making conquests, but would only prevent their
neighbours from conquering. They are not only jealous of their own
liberty, but even of that of other nations. The English were exasperated
against Louis XIV. for no other reason but because he was ambitious, and
declared war against him merely out of levity, not from any interested
motives.
The English have doubtless purchased their liberties at a very high
price, and waded through seas of blood to drown the idol of arbitrary
power. Other nations have been involved in as great calamities, and have
shed as much blood; but then the blood they spilt in defence of their
liberties only enslaved them the more.
That which rises to a revolution in England is no more than a sedition in
other countries. A city in Spain, in Barbary, or in Turkey, takes up
arms in defence of its privileges, when immediately it is stormed by
mercenary troops, it is punished by executioners, and the rest of the
nation kiss the chains they are loaded with. The French are of opinion
that the government of this island is more tempestuous than the sea which
surrounds it, which indeed is true; but then it is never so but when the
king raises the storm--when he attempts to seize the ship of which he is
only the chief pilot. The civil wars of France lasted longer, were more
cruel, and productive of greater evils than those of England; but none of
these civil wars had a wise and prudent liberty for their object.
In the detestable reigns of Charles IX. and Henry III. the whole affair
was only whether the people should be slaves to the Guises. With regard
to the last war of Paris, it deserves only to be hooted at. Methinks I
see a crowd of schoolboys rising up in arms against their master, and
afterwards whipped for it. Cardinal de Retz, who was witty and brave
(but to no purpose), rebellious without a cause, factious without design,
and head of a defenceless party, caballed for caballing sake, and seemed
to foment the civil war merely out of diversion. The Parliament did not
know what he intended, nor what he did not intend. He levied troops by
Act of Parliament, and the next moment cashiered them. He threatened, he
begged pardon; he set a price upon Cardinal Mazarin's head, and
afterwards congratulated him in a public manner. Our civil wars under
Charles VI. were bloody and cruel, those of the League execrable, and
that of the Frondeurs ridiculous.
That for which the French chiefly reproach the English nation is the
murder of King Charles I., whom his subjects treated exactly as he would
have treated them had his reign been prosperous. After all, consider on
one side Charles I., defeated in a pitched battle, imprisoned, tried,
sentenced to die in Westminster Hall, and then beheaded. And on the
other, the Emperor Henry VII., poisoned by his chaplain at his receiving
the Sacrament; Henry III. stabbed by a monk; thirty assassinations
projected against Henry IV., several of them put in execution, and the
last bereaving that great monarch of his life. Weigh, I say, all these
wicked attempts, and then judge.