_Heroes both_;--_Each his side_;--In regard to the main issue at stake in
the Civil War, and the view taken of it throughout this book, let me here
once for all remark that no competent and impartial student of our
history can deny a fair cause to each side, whatever errors may have been
committed by Charles and by the Parliament, or however fatal for some
fifteen years to liberty and national happiness were the excesses and the
tyranny into which the victorious party gradually, and as it were
inevitably, drifted. 'No one,' says Ranke (whom I must often quote,
because to this distinguished foreigner we owe the single, though too
brief, narrative of this period in which history has been hitherto,
treated historically, that is, without judging of the events by the light
either of their remote results, or of modern political party), 'will make
any very heavy political charge against Strafford on the score of his
government of Ireland, or of the partisan attitude which he had taken up
in the intestine struggle in England in general; for the ideas for which
he contended were as much to be found in the past history of England as
were those which he attacked:' --and Hampden's conduct may claim
analogous justification. If the Parliament could appeal to those
mediaeval precedents which admitted the right of the people through their
representatives, to control taxation and (more or less) direct national
policy, Charles, (and Strafford with him), might as lawfully affirm that
they too were standing 'on the ancient ways'; on the royal supremacy
undeniably exercised by Henry II or Edward I. by Henry VIII and by
Elizabeth. Both parties could equally put forward the prosperity of
England under these opposed modes of government: Patriotism, honour,
conscience, were watchwords which either might use with truth or abuse
with profit. If the great struggle be patiently studied, the moral
praise and censure so freely given, according to a reader's personal
bias, will be found very rarely justified. There was far, very far, less
of tyranny or of liberty involved in the contest, up to 1642, than
partisans aver. To the actual actors (nor, as retrospectively criticized
by us) it is a fair battle on both sides, not a contest 'between light
and darkness.'
We, looking back after two centuries, are of course free to recognize,
that one effect of the Tudor despotism had been to train Englishmen
towards ruling themselves;--we may agree that the time had come for Lords
and Commons to take their part in the Kingdom. But no proof, I think it
may be said, can be shown that this great idea, in any conscious sense,
governed the Parliaments of James and Charles. It is we who,--reviewing
our history since the definite establishment of the constitutional
balance after 1688, and the many blessings the land has enjoyed,--can
perceive what in the seventeenth century was wholly hidden from
Commonwealth and from King. And even if in accordance with the common
belief, we ascribe English freedom and prosperity and good government to
the final triumph of the popular side, yet deeper consideration should
suggest that such retrospective judgments are always inevitably made
under our human entire ignorance what might have been the result had the
opposite party prevailed. Who should say how often, in case of these
long and wide extended struggles,--political and dynastic,--the effects
which we confidently claim as _propter hoc_, are only _post hoc_ in the
last reality?
Waiving however these somewhat remote and what many will judge
over-sceptical considerations, this is certain, that unless we can purify
our judgment from reading into the history of the past the long results
of time;--from ascribing to the men of the seventeenth century prophetic
insight into the nineteenth;--unless, in short, we can free ourselves
from the chain of present or personal prepossessions;--no approach can be
made to a fair or philosophical judgment upon such periods of strife and
crisis as our Civil War preeminently offers.