His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a
spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful. He lived at one of
the most memorable eras in the history of mankind, at the very crisis
of the great conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and
despotism, reason and prejudice. That great battle was fought for no
single generation, for no single land. The destinies of the human
race were staked on the same cast with the freedom of the English
people. Then were first proclaimed those mighty principles which have
since worked their way into the depths of the American forests, which
have roused Greece from the slavery and degradation of two thousand
years, and which, from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an
unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed the knees
of the oppressors with an unwonted fear.
Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence,
Milton was the most devoted and eloquent literary champion. We need
not say how much we admire his public conduct. But we cannot disguise
from ourselves that a large portion of his countrymen still think it
unjustifiable. The civil war, indeed, has been more discussed, and is
less understood, than any event in English history. The friends of
liberty laboured under the disadvantage of which the lion in the fable
complained so bitterly. Though they were the conquerors, their enemies
were the painters. As a body the Roundheads had done their utmost to
decry and ruin literature; and literature was even with them, as, in
the long run, it always is with its enemies. The best book on their
side of the question is the charming narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson.
May's History of the Parliament is good; but it breaks off at the
most interesting crisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is
foolish and violent; and most of the later writers who have espoused
the same cause, Oldmixon for instance, and Catherine Macaulay, have, to
say the least, been more distinguished by zeal than either by candour
or by skill. On the other side are the most authoritative and the most
popular historical works in our language, that of Clarendon, and that
of Hume. The former is not only ably written and full of valuable
information, but has also an air of dignity and sincerity which makes
even the prejudices and errors with which it abounds respectable. Hume,
from whose fascinating narrative the great mass of the reading public
are still contented to take their opinions, hated religion so much that
he hated liberty for having been allied with religion, and has pleaded
the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate while affecting
the impartiality of a judge.
The public conduct of Milton must be approved or condemned according
as the resistance of the people to Charles the First shall appear to
be justifiable or criminal. We shall therefore make no apology for
dedicating a few pages to the discussion of that interesting and most
important question. We shall not argue it on general grounds. We shall
not recur to those primary principles from which the claim of any
government to the obedience of its subjects is to be deduced. We are
entitled to that vantage-ground; but we will relinquish it. We are,
on this point, so confident of superiority, that we are not unwilling
to imitate the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights, who
vowed to joust without helmet or shield against all enemies, and to
give their antagonists the advantage of sun and wind. We will take
the naked constitutional question. We confidently affirm, that every
reason which can be urged in favour of the Revolution of 1688 may be
urged with at least equal force in favour of what is called the Great
Rebellion.
In one respect only, we think, can the warmest admirers of Charles
venture to say that he was a better sovereign than his son. He was
not, in name and profession, a Papist; we say in name and profession,
because both Charles himself and his creature Laud, while they
abjured the innocent badges of Popery, retained all its worst vices,
a complete subjection of reason to authority, a weak preference of
form to substance, a childish passion for mummeries, an idolatrous
veneration for the priestly character, and, above all, a merciless
intolerance. This, however, we waive. We will concede that Charles was
a good Protestant; but we say that his Protestantism does not make the
slightest distinction between his case and that of James.
The principles of the Revolution have often been grossly
misrepresented, and never more than in the course of the present year.
There is a certain class of men who, while they profess to hold in
reverence the great names and great actions of former times, never
look at them for any other purpose than in order to find in them some
excuse for existing abuses. In every venerable precedent they pass by
what is essential, and take only what is accidental: they keep out of
sight what is beneficial, and hold up to public imitation all that
is defective. If, in any part of any great example, there be anything
unsound, these flesh-flies detect it with an unerring instinct, and
dart upon it with a ravenous delight. If some good end has been
attained in spite of them, they feel, with their prototype, that
"Their labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil."
To the blessings which England has derived from the Revolution these
people are utterly insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn
recognition of popular rights, liberty, security, toleration, all go
for nothing with them. One sect there was, which, from unfortunate
temporary causes, it was thought necessary to keep under close
restraint. One part of the empire there was so unhappily circumstanced,
that at that time its misery was necessary to our happiness, and its
slavery to our freedom. These are the parts of the Revolution which
the politicians of whom we speak love to contemplate, and which seem
to them not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate, the
good which it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, or of
South America. They stand forth zealots for the doctrine of Divine
Right which has now come back to us, like a thief from transportation,
under the _alias_ of Legitimacy. But mention the miseries of Ireland.
Then William is a hero. Then Somers and Shrewsbury are great men. Then
the Revolution is a glorious era. The very same persons who, in this
country, never omit an opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite
slander respecting the Whigs of that period, have no sooner crossed St.
George's Channel than they begin to fill their bumpers to the glorious
and immortal memory. They may truly boast that they look not at men,
but at measures. So that evil be done, they care not who does it; the
arbitrary Charles, or the liberal William, Ferdinand the Catholic, or
Frederic the Protestant. On such occasions their deadliest opponents
may reckon upon their candid construction. The bold assertions of
these people have of late impressed a large portion of the public
with an opinion that James the Second was expelled simply because he
was a Catholic, and that the Revolution was essentially a Protestant
Revolution.
But this certainly was not the case; nor can any person who has
acquired more knowledge of the history of those times than is to be
found in Goldsmith's Abridgment believe that, if James had held his own
religious opinions without wishing to make proselytes, or if, wishing
even to make proselytes, he had contented himself with exerting only
his constitutional influence for that purpose, the Prince of Orange
would ever have been invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew
their own meaning; and, if we may believe them, their hostility was
primarily not to popery, but to tyranny. They did not drive out a
tyrant because he was a Catholic; but they excluded Catholics from
the crown, because they thought them likely to be tyrants. The ground
on which they, in their famous resolution, declared the throne vacant,
was this, "that James had broken the fundamental laws of the kingdom."
Every man, therefore, who approves of the Revolution of 1688 must
hold that the breach of fundamental laws on the part of the sovereign
justifies resistance. The question, then, is this: Had Charles the
First broken the fundamental laws of England?
No person can answer in the negative, unless he refuses credit, not
merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his opponents,
but to the narratives of the warmest Royalists, and to the confessions
of the king himself. If there be any truth in any historian of any
party who has related the events of that reign, the conduct of Charles,
from his accession to the meeting of the Long Parliament, had been a
continued course of oppression and treachery. Let those who applaud
the Revolution, and condemn the Rebellion mention one act of James
the Second to which a parallel is not to be found in the history of
his father. Let them lay their fingers on a single article in the
Declaration of Right, presented by the two Houses to William and
Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged to have violated. He had,
according to the testimony of his own friends, usurped the functions
of the legislature, raised taxes without the consent of Parliament,
and quartered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexatious
manner. Not a single session of Parliament had passed without some
unconstitutional attack on the freedom of debate; the right of petition
was grossly violated; arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and
unwarranted imprisonments were grievances of daily occurrence. If these
things do not justify resistance, the Revolution was treason; if they
do, the Great Rebellion was laudable.
But, it is said, why not adopt milder measures? Why, after the king
had consented to so many reforms, and renounced so many oppressive
prerogatives, did the Parliament continue to rise in their demands at
the risk of provoking a civil war? The ship-money had been given up.
The Star Chamber had been abolished. Provision had been made for the
frequent convocation and secure deliberation of Parliaments. Why not
pursue an end confessedly good by peaceable and regular means? We recur
again to the analogy of the Revolution. Why was James driven from the
throne? Why was he not retained upon conditions? He too had offered to
call a free Parliament, and to submit to its decision all the matters
in dispute. Yet we are in the habit of praising our forefathers, who
preferred a revolution, a disputed succession, a dynasty of strangers,
twenty years of foreign and intestine war, a standing army, and a
national debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a tried and proved
tyrant. The Long Parliament acted on the same principle, and is
entitled to the same praise. They could not trust the king. He had no
doubt passed salutary laws; but what assurance was there that he would
not break them? He had renounced oppressive prerogatives; but where was
the security that he would not resume them? The nation had to deal with
a man whom no tie could bind, a man who made and broke promises with
equal facility, a man whose honour had been a hundred times pawned, and
never redeemed.
Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still stronger ground than
the Convention of 1688. No action of James can be compared to the
conduct of Charles with respect to the Petition of Right. The Lords and
Commons present him with a bill in which the constitutional limits of
his power are marked out. He hesitates; he evades; at last he bargains
to give his assent for five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn
assent; the subsidies are voted; but no sooner is the tyrant relieved,
than he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures which he had
bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of the very Act
which he had been paid to pass.
For more than ten years the people had seen the rights which were
theirs by a double claim, by immemorial inheritance and by recent
purchase, infringed by the perfidious king who had recognised them. At
length, circumstances compelled Charles to summon another Parliament:
another chance was given to our fathers: were they to throw it away
as they had thrown away the former? Were they again to be cozened by
_le Roi le veut_? Were they again to advance their money on pledges
which had been forfeited over and over again? Were they to lay a second
Petition of Right at the foot of the throne, to grant another lavish
aid in exchange for another unmeaning ceremony, and then to take
their departure, till, after ten years more of fraud and oppression,
their prince should again require a supply, and again repay it with
a perjury? They were compelled to choose whether they would trust a
tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose wisely and nobly.
The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors
against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline
all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling
testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James
the Second no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest
enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And
what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious
zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and
narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half
the tombstones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good
father! A good husband! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of
persecution, tyranny, and falsehood!
We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are
told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having given up
his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and
hard-hearted of prelates; and the defence is, that he took his little
son on his knee and kissed him! We censure him for having violated the
articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable
consideration, promised to observe them; and we are informed that he
was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning! It is
to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his
handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe,
most of his popularity with the present generation.
For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the common phrase,
a good man, but a bad king. We can as easily conceive a good man
and an unnatural father, or a good man and a treacherous friend. We
cannot, in estimating the character of an individual, leave out of our
consideration his conduct in the most important of all human relations;
and if in that relation we find him to have been selfish, cruel, and
deceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of
all his temperance at table, and all his regularity at chapel.
We cannot refrain from adding a few words respecting a topic on which
the defenders of Charles are fond of dwelling. If, they say, he
governed his people ill, he at least governed them after the example
of his predecessors. If he violated their privileges, it was because
those privileges had not been accurately defined. No act of oppression
has ever been imputed to him which has not a parallel in the annals
of the Tudors. This point Hume has laboured, with an art which is
as discreditable in a historical work as it would be admirable in a
forensic address. The answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles
had assented to the Petition of Right. He had renounced the oppressive
powers said to have been exercised by his predecessors, and he had
renounced them for money. He was not entitled to set up his antiquated
claims against his own recent release.
These arguments are so obvious, that it may seem superfluous to dwell
upon them. But those who have observed how much the events of that time
are misrepresented and misunderstood will not blame us for stating
the case simply. It is a case of which the simplest statement is the
strongest.
The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose to take issue on
the great points of the question. They content themselves with exposing
some of the crimes and follies to which public commotions necessarily
give birth. They bewail the unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate
the lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the Scriptural names
of the preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts; soldiers
revelling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry; upstarts, enriched by
the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides
and hereditary trees of the old gentry; boys smashing the beautiful
windows of cathedrals; Quakers riding naked through the market-place;
Fifth-monarchy men shouting for King Jesus; agitators lecturing from
the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag; all these, they tell us, were the
offspring of the Great Rebellion.
Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this matter. These charges,
were they infinitely more important, would not alter our opinion of
an event which alone has made us to differ from the slaves who crouch
beneath despotic sceptres. Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the
civil war. They were the price of our liberty. Has the acquisition
been worth the sacrifice? It is the nature of the Devil of tyranny to
tear and rend the body which he leaves. Are the miseries of continued
possession less horrible than the struggles of the tremendous exorcism?
If it were possible that a people brought up under an intolerant and
arbitrary system could subvert that system without acts of cruelty
and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be removed. We
should, in that case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least
produces no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character
of a nation. We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions.
But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a
revolution was necessary. The violence of those outrages will always
be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people; and the
ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the
oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to
live. Thus it was in our civil war. The heads of the church and state
reaped only that which they had sown. The government had prohibited
free discussion: it had done its best to keep the people unacquainted
with their duties and their rights. The retribution was just and
natural. If our rulers suffered from popular ignorance, it was because
they had themselves taken away the key of knowledge. If they were
assailed with blind fury, it was because they had exacted an equally
blind submission.
It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst
of them at first. Till men have been some time free, they know not
how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally
sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly
liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the
Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation
first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare
and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon,
however, plenty teaches discretion; and, after wine has been for a few
months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever
been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent
fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate
effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on
points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is
just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull
down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice: they point to the
flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful
irregularity of the whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where
the promised splendour and comfort is to be found. If such miserable
sophisms were to prevail there would never be a good house or a good
government in the world.
Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mysterious law of
her nature, was condemned to appear at certain seasons in the form of
a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured her during the period of
her disguise were for ever excluded from participation in the blessings
which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her loathsome
aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterward revealed herself in
the beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her, accompanied
their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses with wealth,
made them happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is
Liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels,
she hisses, she stings. But woe to those who in disgust shall venture
to crush her! And happy are those who, having dared to receive her in
her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her
in the time of her beauty and her glory!
There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom
produces; and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his
cell he cannot bear the light of day: he is unable to discriminate
colours, or recognise faces. But the remedy is not to remand him into
his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze
of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which
have become half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on,
and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to
reason. The extreme violence of opinions subsides. Hostile theories
correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to contend,
and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is
educed out of the chaos.
Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a
self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they
are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the
old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to
swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in
slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.
Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct of Milton and
the other wise and good men who, in spite of much that was ridiculous
and hateful in the conduct of their associates, stood firmly by the
cause of Public Liberty. We are not aware that the poet has been
charged with personal participation in any of the blamable excesses of
that time. The favourite topic of his enemies is the line of conduct
which he pursued with regard to the execution of the king. Of that
celebrated proceeding we by no means approve. Still we must say, in
justice to the many eminent persons who concurred in it, and in justice
more particularly to the eminent person who defended it, that nothing
can be more absurd than the imputations which, for the last hundred
and sixty years, it has been the fashion to cast upon the Regicides.
We have, throughout, abstained from appealing to first principles.
We will not appeal to them now. We recur again to the parallel case
of the Revolution. What essential distinction can be drawn between
the execution of the father and the deposition of the son? What
constitutional maxim is there which applies to the former and not to
the latter? The king can do no wrong. If so, James was as innocent as
Charles could have been. The minister only ought to be responsible
for the acts of the sovereign. If so, why not impeach Jefferies and
retain James? The person of a king is sacred. Was the person of James
considered sacred at the Boyne? To discharge cannon against an army
in which a king is known to be posted is to approach pretty near to
regicide. Charles, too, it should always be remembered, was put to
death by men who had been exasperated by the hostilities of several
years, and who had never been bound to him by any other tie than that
which was common to them with all their fellow citizens. Those who
drove James from his throne, who seduced his army, who alienated his
friends, who first imprisoned him in his palace, and then turned him
out of it, who broke in upon his very slumbers by imperious messages,
who pursued him with fire and sword from one part of the empire to
another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, and attainted
his innocent heir, were his nephew and his two daughters. When we
reflect on all these things, we are at a loss to conceive how the
same persons who, on the fifth of November, thank God for wonderfully
conducting his servant William, and for making all opposition fall
before him until he became our king and governor, can, on the thirtieth
of January, contrive to be afraid that the blood of the Royal Martyr
may be visited on themselves and their children.
We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of Charles; not because the
constitution exempts the king from responsibility, for we know that
all such maxims, however excellent, have their exceptions; nor because
we feel any peculiar interest in his character, for we think that his
sentence describes him with perfect justice as "a tyrant, a traitor, a
murderer, and a public enemy;" but because we are convinced that the
measure was most injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed
was a captive and a hostage: his heir, to whom the allegiance of every
Royalist was instantly transferred, was at large. The Presbyterians
could never have been perfectly reconciled to the father: they had no
such rooted enmity to the son. The great body of the people, also,
contemplated that proceeding with feelings which, however unreasonable,
no government could safely venture to outrage.
But though we think the conduct of the Regicides blamable, that of
Milton appears to us in a very different light. The deed was done.
It could not be undone. The evil was incurred; and the object was to
render it as small as possible. We censure the chiefs of the army for
not yielding to the popular opinion; but we cannot censure Milton
for wishing to change that opinion. The very feeling which would
have restrained us from committing the act would have led us, after
it had been committed, to defend it against the ravings of servility
and superstition. For the sake of public liberty, we wish that the
thing had not been done, while the people disapproved of it. But, for
the sake of public liberty, we should also have wished the people to
approve of it when it was done. If anything more were wanting to the
justification of Milton, the book of Salmasius would furnish it. That
miserable performance is now with justice considered only as a beacon
to word-catchers, who wish to become statesmen. The celebrity of the
man who refuted it, the "Æneæ magni dextra," gives it all its fame with
the present generation. In that age the state of things was different.
It was not then fully understood how vast an interval separates the
more classical scholar from the political philosopher. Nor can it be
doubted that a treatise which, bearing the name of so eminent a critic,
attacked the fundamental principles of all free governments, must, if
suffered to remain unanswered, have produced a most pernicious effect
on the public mind.