|
We do not dispute that the royal party contained many excellent men and
excellent citizens. But this we say, that they did not discern those times. The
peculiar glory of the Houses of Parliament is that, in the great plague and
mortality of constitutions, they took their stand between the living and the
dead. At the very crisis of our destiny, at the very moment when the fate which
had passed on every other nation was about to pass on England, they arrested the
danger.
Those who conceive that the parliamentary leaders were desirous merely to
maintain the old constitution, and those who represent them as conspiring to
subvert it, are equally in error. The old constitution, as we have attempted to
show, could not be maintained. The progress of time, the increase of wealth, the
diffusion of knowledge, the great change in the European system of war, rendered
it impossible that any of the monarchies of the middle ages should continue to
exist on the old footing. The prerogative of the crown was constantly advancing.
If the privileges of the people were to remain absolutely stationary, they would
relatively retrograde. The monarchical and democratical parts of the government
were placed in a situation not unlike that of the two brothers in the Fairy
Queen, one of whom saw the soil of his inheritance daily, washed away by the
tide and joined to that of his rival. The portions had at first been fairly
meted out. By a natural and constant transfer, the one had been extended; the
other had dwindled to nothing. A new partition, or a compensation, was necessary
to restore the original equality.
It was now, therefore, absolutely necessary to violate the formal part of the
constitution, in order to preserve its spirit. This might have been done, as it
was done at the Revolution, by expelling the reigning family, and calling to the
throne princes who, relying solely on an elective title, would find it necessary
to respect the privileges and follow the advice of the assemblies to which they
owed everything, to pass every bill which the Legislature strongly pressed upon
them, and to fill the offices of state with men in whom the Legislature
confided. But, as the two Houses did not choose to change the dynasty, it was
necessary that they should do directly what at the Revolution was done
indirectly. Nothing is more usual than to hear it said that, if the Houses had
contented themselves with making such a reform in the government under Charles
as was afterwards made under William, they would have had the highest claim to
national gratitude; and that in their violence they overshot the mark. But how
was it possible to make such a settlement under Charles? Charles was not, like
William and the princes of the Hanoverian line, bound by community of interests
and dangers to the Parliament. It was therefore necessary that he should be
bound by treaty and statute.
Mr. Hallam reprobates, in language which has a little surprised us, the nineteen
propositions into which the Parliament digested its scheme. Is it possible to
doubt that, if James the Second had remained in the island, and had been
suffered, as he probably would in that case have been suffered, to keep his
crown, conditions to the full as hard would have been imposed on him? On the
other hand, we fully admit that, if the Long Parliament had pronounced the
departure of Charles from London an abdication, and had called Essex or
Northumberland to the throne, the new prince might have safely been suffered to
reign without such restrictions. His situation would have been a sufficient
guarantee.
In the nineteen propositions we see very little to blame except the articles
against the Catholics. These, however, were in the spirit of that age; and to
some sturdy churchmen in our own, they may seem to palliate even the good which
the Long Parliament effected. The regulation with respect to new creations of
Peers is the only other article about which we entertain any doubt. One of the
propositions is that the judges shall hold their offices during good behavior.
To this surely no exception will be taken. The right of directing the education
and marriage of the princes was most properly claimed by the Parliament, on the
same ground on which, after the Revolution, it was enacted, that no king, on
pain of forfeiting, his throne, should espouse a Papist. Unless we condemn the
statesmen of the Revolution, who conceived that England could not safely be
governed by a sovereign married to a Catholic queen, we can scarcely condemn the
Long Parliament because, having a sovereign so situated, they thought it
necessary to place him under strict restraints. The influence of Henrietta Maria
had already been deeply felt in political affairs. In the regulation of her
family, in the education and marriage of her children, it was still more likely
to be felt; There might be another Catholic queen; possibly a Catholic king.
Little, as we are disposed to join in the vulgar clamor on this subject, we
think that such an event ought to be, if possible, averted; and this could only
be done, if Charles was to be left on the throne, by placing his domestic
arrangements under the control of Parliament.
A veto on the appointment of ministers was demanded. But this veto Parliament
has virtually possessed ever since the Revolution. It is no doubt very far
better that this power of the Legislature should be exercised as it is now
exercised, when any great occasion calls for interference, than that at every
change the Commons should have to signify their approbation or disapprobation in
form. But, unless a new family had been placed on the throne, we do not see how
this power could have been exercised as it is now exercised. We again repeat
that no restraints which could be imposed on the princes who reigned after the
Revolution could have added to the security, which their title afforded. They
were compelled to court their parliaments. But from Charles nothing was to be
expected which was not set down in the bond.
It was not stipulated that the King should give up his negative on acts of
Parliament. But the Commons, had certainly shown a strong disposition to exact
this security also. "Such a doctrine," says Mr. Hallam, "was in this country as
repugnant to the whole history of our laws, as it was incompatible with the
subsistence of the monarchy in anything more than a nominal preeminence." Now
this article has been as completely carried into elect by the Revolution as if
it had been formally inserted in the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement.
We are surprised, we confess, that Mr. Hallam should attach so much importance
to a prerogative which has not been exercised for a hundred and thirty years,
which probably will never be exercised again, and which can scarcely, in any
conceivable case, be exercised for a salutary purpose.
But the great security, the security without which every other would have been
insufficient, was the power of the sword. This both parties thoroughly
understood. The Parliament insisted on having the command of the militia and the
direction of the Irish war. "By God, not for an hour!" exclaimed the King. "Keep
the militia," said the Queen, after the defeat of the royal party. "Keep the
militia; that will bring back everything." That, by the old constitution, no
military authority was lodged in the Parliament, Mr. Hallam has clearly shown.
That it is a species of authority which ought, not to be permanently lodged in
large and divided assemblies, must, we think in fairness be conceded.
Opposition, publicity, long discussion, frequent compromise; these are the
characteristics of the proceedings of such assemblies. Unity, secrecy, decision,
are the qualities which military arrangements require. There were, therefore,
serious objections to the proposition of the Houses on this subject. But, on the
other hand, to trust such a King, at such a crisis, with the very weapon which,
in hands less dangerous, had destroyed so many free constitutions, would have
been the extreme of rashness. The jealousy with which the oligarchy of Venice
and the States of Holland regarded their generals and armies induced them
perpetually to interfere in matters of which they were incompetent to judge.
This policy secured them against military usurpation, but placed them, under
great disadvantages in war. The uncontrolled power which the King of France
exercised over his troops enabled him to conquer his enemies, but enabled him
also to oppress his people. Was there any intermediate course? None, we confess
altogether free from objection. But on the whole, we conceive that the best
measure would have been that which the Parliament over and over proposed,
namely, that for a limited time the power of the sword should be left to the two
Houses, and that it should revert to the Crown when the constitution should be
firmly established, and when the new securities of freedom should be so far
strengthened by prescription that it would be difficult to employ even a
standing army for the purpose of subverting them.
Mr. Hallam thinks that the dispute might easily have been compromised, by
enacting that, the King should have no power to keep a standing army on foot
without the consent of Parliament. He reasons as if the question had been merely
theoretical, and as if at that time no army had been wanted. "The kingdom," he
says, "might have well dispensed, in that age, with any military organization"
Now, we think that Mr. Hallam overlooks the most important circumstance in the
whole case. Ireland was actually in rebellion; and a great expedition would
obviously be necessary to reduce that kingdom to obedience. The Houses had
therefore to consider, not at abstract question of law, but an urgent practical
question, directly involving the safety of the state. They had to consider the
expediency of immediately giving a great army to a King who was, at least, as
desirous to put down the Parliament of England as to conquer the insurgents of
Ireland.
Of course we do not mean to defend all the measures of the Houses. Far from it.
There never was a perfect man. It would, therefore, be the height of absurdity
to expect a perfect party or a perfect assembly. For large bodies are far more
likely to err than individuals. The passions are inflamed by sympathy; the fear
of punishment and the sense of shame are diminished by partition. Every day we
see men do for their faction what they would die rather than do for themselves.
Scarcely any private quarrel ever happens, in which the right and wrong are so
exquisitely divided that all the right lies on one side, and all the wrong on
the other. But here was a schism which separated a great nation into two
parties. Of these parties, each was composed of many smaller parties. Each
contained many members, who differed far less from their moderate opponents than
from their violent allies. Each reckoned among its supporters many who were
determined in their choice by some accident of birth, of connection, or of local
situation. Each of them attracted to itself in multitudes those fierce and
turbid spirits, to whom the clouds and whirlwinds of the political hurricane are
the atmosphere of life. A party, like a camp, has its sutlers and
camp-followers, as well as its soldiers. In its progress it collects round it a
vast retinue, composed of people who thrive by its custom or are amused by its
display, who may be sometimes reckoned, in an ostentatious enumeration, as
forming a part of it, but who give no aid to its operations, and take but a
languid interest in its success, who relax its discipline and dishonor its flag
by their irregularities, and who, after a disaster, are perfectly ready to cut
the throats and rifle the baggage of their companions.
Thus it is in every great division; and thus it was in our civil war. On both
sides there was, undoubtedly, enough of crime and enough of error to disgust any
man who did not reflect that the whole history of the species is made up of
little except crimes and errors. Misanthropy is not the temper which qualifies a
man to act in great affairs, or to judge of them.
"Of the Parliament," says Mr. Hallam, "it may be said I think, with not greater
severity than truth, that scarce two or three public acts of justice, humanity,
or generosity, and very few of political wisdom or courage, are recorded of
them, from their quarrel with the King, to their expulsion by Cromwell." Those
who may agree with us in the opinion which we have expressed as to the original
demands of the Parliament will scarcely concur in this strong censure. The
propositions which the Houses made at Oxford, at Uxbridge, and at Newcastle,
were in strict accordance with these demands. In the darkest period of the war,
they showed no disposition to concede any vital principle. In the fullness of
their success, they showed no disposition to encroach beyond these limits. In
this respect we cannot but think that they showed justice and generosity, as
well as political wisdom and courage.
The Parliament was certainly far from faultless. We fully agree with Mr. Hallam
in reprobating their treatment of Laud. For the individual, indeed, we entertain
a more unmitigated contempt than, for any other character in our history. The
fondness with which a portion of the church regards his memory, can be compared
only to that perversity of affection which sometimes leads a mother to select
the monster or the idiot of the family as the object of her especial favor, Mr.
Hallam has incidentally observed, that, in the correspondence of Laud with
Strafford, there are no indications of a sense of duty towards God or man. The
admirers of the Archbishop have, in consequence, inflicted upon the public a
crowd of extracts designed to prove the contrary. Now, in all those passages, we
see nothing, which a prelate as wicked as Pope Alexander or Cardinal Dubois
might not have written. Those passages indicate no sense of duty to God or man,
but simply a strong interest in the prosperity and dignity of the order to which
the writer belonged; an interest which, when kept within certain limits, does
not deserve censure, but which can never be considered as a virtue. Laud is
anxious to accommodate satisfactorily the disputes in the University of Dublin.
He regrets to hear that a church is used as a stable, and that the benefices of
Ireland are very poor. He is desirous that, however small a congregation may be,
service should be regularly performed. He expresses a wish that the judges of
the court before which questions of tithe are generally brought should be
selected with a view to the interest of the clergy. All this may be very proper;
and it may be very proper that an alderman should stand up for the tolls of his
borough, and an East India director for the charter of his Company. But it is
ridiculous to say that these things indicate piety and benevolence. No primate,
though he were the most abandoned of mankind, could wish to see the body, with
the influence of which his own influence was identical, degraded in the public
estimation by internal dissensions, by the ruinous state of its edifices, and by
the slovenly performance of its rites. We willingly acknowledge that the
particular letters in question have very little harm in them; a compliment which
cannot often be paid either to the writings or to the actions of Laud.
Bad as the Archbishop was, however, he was not a traitor within the statute. Nor
was he by any means so formidable as to be a proper subject for a retrospective
ordinance of the legislature. His mind had not expansion enough to comprehend a
great scheme, good or bad. His oppressive acts were not, like those of the Earl
of Strafford, parts of an extensive system. They were the luxuries in which a
mean and irritable disposition indulges itself from day to day, the excesses
natural to a little mind in a great place. The severest punishment which the two
Houses could have inflicted on him would have been to set him at liberty and
send him to Oxford. There he might have stayed, tortured by his own diabolical
temper, hungering for Puritans to pillory and mangle, plaguing the Cavaliers,
for want of somebody else to plague with his peevishness and absurdity,
performing grimaces and antics in the cathedral, continuing that incomparable
diary, which we never see without forgetting the vices of his heart In the
imbecility of his intellect minuting down his dreams, counting the drops of
blood which fell from his nose, watching the direction of the salt, and
listening for the note of the screech-owls. Contemptuous mercy was the only
vengeance which it became the Parliament to take on such a ridiculous old bigot.
The Houses, it must be acknowledged, committed great errors in the conduct of
the war, or rather one great error, which brought their affairs into a condition
requiring the most perilous expedients. The parliamentary leaders of what may be
called the first generation, Essex, Manchester, Northumberland, Hollis, even
Pym, all the most eminent men in short, Hampden excepted, were inclined to half
measures. They dreaded a decisive victory almost as much as a decisive
overthrow. They wished to bring the King into a situation which might render it
necessary for him to grant their just and wise demands, but not to subvert the
constitution or to change the dynasty. They were afraid of serving the purposes
of those fierce and determined enemies of monarchy, who now began to show
themselves in the lower ranks of the party. The war was, therefore, conducted in
a languid and inefficient manner. A resolute leader might have brought it to a
close in a month. At the end of three campaigns, however, the event was still
dubious; and that it had not been decidedly unfavorable to the cause of liberty
was principally owing to the skill and energy which the more violent roundheads
had displayed in subordinate situations. The conduct of Fairfax and Cromwell at
Marston had, exhibited a remarkable contrast to that of Essex at Edgehill, and
to that of Waller at Lansdowne.
If there be any truth established by the universal experience of nations, it is
this; that to carry the spirit of peace into war is weak and cruel policy. The
time for negotiation is the time for deliberation and delay. But when an extreme
case calls for that remedy which is in its own nature most violent, and which,
in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it is idle to think of
mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing which negotiation or
submission will not do better: and to act on any other principle is, not to save
blood and money, but to squander them.
This the parliamentary leaders found. The third year of hostilities was drawing
to a close; and they had not conquered the King. They had not obtained even
those advantages which they had expected from a policy obviously erroneous in a
military point of view. They had wished to husband their resources. They now
found that in enterprises like theirs, parsimony is the worst profusion. They
had hoped to effect a reconciliation. The event taught them that the best way to
conciliate is to bring the work of destruction to a speedy termination. By their
moderation many lives and much property had been wasted. The angry passions
which, if the contest had been short, would have died away almost as soon as
they appeared, had fixed themselves in the form of deep and lasting hatred. A
military caste had grown up. Those who had been induced to take up arms by the
patriotic feelings of citizens had begun to entertain the professional feelings
of soldiers. Above all, the leaders of the party had forfeited its confidence,
If they had, by their valor and abilities, gained a complete victory, their
influence might have been sufficient to prevent their associates from abusing
it. It was now necessary to choose more resolute and uncompromising commanders.
Unhappily the illustrious man who alone united in himself all the talents and
virtues which the crisis required, who alone could have saved his country from
the present dangers without plunging her into others, who alone could have
united all the friends of liberty in obedience to his commanding genius and his
venerable name, was no more. Something might still be done. The Houses might
still avert that worst of all evils, the triumphant return of an imperious and
unprincipled master. They might still preserve London from all the horrors of
rapine, massacre, and lust. But their hopes of a victory as spotless as their
cause, of a reconciliation which might knit together the hearts of all honest
Englishmen for the defense of the public good, of durable tranquility, of
temperate freedom, were buried in the grave of Hampden.
The self-denying ordinance was passed, and the army was remodeled. These
measures were undoubtedly full of danger. But all that was left to the
Parliament was to take the less of two dangers. And we think that, even if they
could have accurately foreseen all that followed, their decision ought to have
been the same. Under any circumstances, we should have preferred Cromwell to
Charles. But there could be no comparison between Cromwell and Charles
victorious, Charles restored, Charles enabled to feed fat all the hungry grudges
of his smiling rancor and his cringing pride. The next visit of his Majesty to
his faithful Commons would have been more serious than that with which he last
honored them; more serious than that which their own General paid them some
years after. The King would scarce have been content with praying that the Lord
would deliver him from Vane, or with pulling Marten by the cloak. If, by fatal
mismanagement, nothing was left to England but a choice of tyrants, the last
tyrant whom she should have chosen was Charles.
From the apprehension of this worst evil the Houses were soon delivered by their
new leaders. The armies of Charles were everywhere routed, his fastnesses
stormed, his party humbled and subjugated. The King himself fell into the hands
of the Parliament; and both the King and the Parliament soon fell into the hands
of the army. The fate of both the captives was the same. Both were treated
alternately with respect and with insult. At length the natural life of one, and
the political life of the other, were terminated by violence; and the power for
which both had struggled was united in a single hand. Men naturally sympathize
with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen
party with contempt rather than with pity. Thus misfortune turned the greatest
of Parliaments into the despised Rump, and the worst of Kings into the Blessed
Martyr.
Mr. Hallam decidedly condemns the execution of Charles; and in all that he says
on that subject we heartily agree. We fully concur with him in thinking that a
great social schism, such as the civil war, is not to be confounded with an
ordinary treason, and that the vanquished ought to be treated according to the
rules, not of municipal, but of international law. In this case the distinction
is of the less importance, because both international and municipal law were in
favor of Charles. He was a prisoner of war by the former, a King by the latter.
By neither was he a traitor. If he had been successful, and had put his leading
opponents to death, he would have deserved severe censure; and this without
reference to the justice or injustice of his cause. Yet the opponents of
Charles, it must be admitted, were technically guilty of treason. He might have
sent them to the scaffold without violating any established principle of
jurisprudence. He would not have been compelled to overturn the whole
constitution in order to reach them. Here his own case differed widely from
theirs. Not only was his condemnation in itself a measure which only the
strongest necessity could vindicate; but it could not be procured without taking
several previous steps, every one of which would have required the strongest
necessity to vindicate it. It could not be procured without dissolving the
Government by military force, without establishing precedents of the most
dangerous description, without creating difficulties which the next ten years
were spent in removing, without pulling down institutions which it soon became
necessary to reconstruct, and setting up others which almost every man was soon
impatient to destroy. It was necessary to strike the House of Lords out of the
constitution, to exclude members of the House of Commons by force, to make a new
crime, a new tribunal, a new mode of procedure. The whole legislative and
judicial systems were trampled down for the purpose of taking a single head. Not
only those parts of the constitution which the republicans were desirous to
destroy, but those which they wished to retain and exalt, were deeply injured by
these transactions. High Courts of justice began to usurp the functions of
juries. The remaining delegates of the people were soon driven from their seats
by the same military violence which had enabled them to exclude their
colleagues.
If Charles had been the last of his line, there would have been an intelligible
reason for putting him to death. But the blow which terminated his life at once
transferred the allegiance of every Royalist to an heir, and an heir who was at
liberty. To kill the individual was, under such circumstances, not to destroy,
but to release the King.
We detest the character of Charles; but a man ought not to be removed by a law
ex post facto, even constitutionally procured, merely because he is detestable.
He must also be very dangerous. We can scarcely conceive that any danger which a
state can apprehend from any individual could justify the violent, measures
which were necessary to procure a sentence against Charles. But in fact the
danger amounted to nothing. There was indeed, danger from the attachment of a
large party to his office. But this danger his execution only increased. His
personal influence was little indeed. He had lost the confidence of every party.
Churchmen, Catholics, Presbyterians, Independents, his enemies, his friends, his
tools, English, Scotch, Irish, all divisions and subdivisions of his people had
been deceived by him. His most attached councilors turned away with shame and
anguish from his false and hollow policy, plot intertwined with plot, mine
sprung beneath mine, agents disowned, promises evaded, one pledge given in
private, another in public. "Oh, Mr. Secretary," says Clarendon, in a letter to
Nicholas, "those stratagems have given me more sad hours than all the
misfortunes in war which have befallen the King, and look like the effects of
God's anger towards us."
The abilities of Charles were not formidable. His taste in the fine arts was
indeed exquisite; and few modern sovereigns have written or spoken better. But
he was not fit for active life. In negotiation he was always trying to dupe
others, and duping only himself. As a soldier, he was feeble, dilatory, and
miserably wanting, not in personal courage, but in the presence of mind which
his station required. His delay at Gloucester saved the parliamentary party from
destruction. At Naseby, in the very crisis of his fortune, his want of
self-possession spread a fatal panic through his army. The story which Clarendon
tells of that affair reminds us of the excuses by which Bessus and Bobadil
explain their cudgellings. A Scotch nobleman, it seems, begged the King not to
run upon his death, took hold of his bridle, and turned his horse round. No man
who had much value for his life would have tried to perform the same friendly
office on that day for Oliver Cromwell.
One thing, and one alone, could make Charles dangerous--a violent death. His
tyranny could not break the high spirit of the English people. His arms could
not conquer, his arts could not deceive them; but his humiliation and his
execution melted them into a generous compassion. Men who die on a scaffold for
political offences almost always die well. The eyes of thousands are fixed upon
them. Enemies and admirers are watching their demeanor. Every tone of voice,
every change of color, is to go down to posterity. Escape is impossible.
Supplication is vain. In such a situation pride and despair have often been
known to nerve the weakest minds with fortitude adequate to the occasion.
Charles died patiently and bravely; not more patiently or bravely, indeed, than
many other victims of political rage; not more patiently or bravely than his own
judges, who were not only killed, but tortured; or than Vane, who had always
been considered as a timid man. However, the king's conduct during his trial and
at his execution made a prodigious impression. His subjects began to love his
memory as heartily as they had hated his person; and posterity has estimated his
character from his death rather than from his life.
To represent Charles as a martyr in the cause of Episcopacy is absurd. Those who
put him to death cared as little for the Assembly of Divines, as for the
Convocation, and would, in all probability, only have hated him the more if he
had agreed to set up the Presbyterian discipline. Indeed, in spite of the
opinion of Mr. Hallam, we are inclined to think that the attachment of Charles
to the Church of England was altogether political. Human nature is, we admit, so
capricious that there may be a single, sensitive point, in a conscience which
everywhere else is callous. A man without truth or humanity may have some
strange scruples about a trifle. There was one devout warrior in the royal camp
whose piety bore a great resemblance to that which is ascribed to the King. We
mean Colonel Turner. That gallant Cavalier was hanged, after the Restoration,
for a flagitious burglary. At the gallows he told the crowd that his mind
received great consolation from one reflection: he had always taken off his hat
when he went into a church. The character of Charles would scarcely rise in our
estimation, if we believed that he was pricked in conscience after the manner of
this worthy loyalist, and that while violating all the first rules of Christian
morality, he was sincerely scrupulous about church-government. But we acquit him
of such weakness. In 1641 he deliberately confirmed the Scotch Declaration which
stated that the government of the church by archbishops and bishops was contrary
to the word of God. In 1645, he appears to have offered to set up Popery in
Ireland. That a King who had established the Presbyterian religion in one
kingdom, and who was willing to establish the Catholic religion in another,
should have insurmountable scruples about the ecclesiastical constitution of the
third, is altogether incredible. He himself says in his letters that he looks on
Episcopacy as a stronger support of monarchical power than even the army. From
causes which we have already considered, the Established Church had been, since
the Reformation, the great bulwark of the prerogative. Charles wished,
therefore, to preserve it. He thought himself necessary both to the Parliament
and to the army. He did not foresee, till too late, that by paltering with the
Presbyterians, he should put both them and himself into the power of a fiercer
and more daring party. If he had foreseen it, we suspect that the royal blood
which still cries to Heaven every thirtieth of January, for judgments only to be
averted by salt-fish and egg-sauce, would never have been shed. One who had
swallowed the Scotch Declaration would scarcely strain at the Covenant.
Previous |
Critical and Historical Essays, Volume I
| Next
Critical And Historical Essays, Volume I, Thomas Babbington Macaulay,
1843 |
|
Add/Correct a Link