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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 any thing 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 labor 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
Abridgement 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 honor 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 recognized 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 defense 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 Vandyck 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 labored, 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 reveling 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 scepters. 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 splendor 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
afterwards 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 colors, or recognize 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 opinion 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 favorite 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 Jeffreys 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 "Aeneae 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 mere 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.
We wish to add a few words relative to another subject, on which the enemies of
Milton delight to dwell, his conduct during the administration of the Protector.
That an enthusiastic votary of liberty should accept office under a military
usurper seems, no doubt, at first sight, extraordinary. But all the
circumstances in which the country was then placed were extraordinary. The
ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems to have coveted
despotic power. He at first fought sincerely and manfully for the Parliament,
and never deserted it, till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by
force, it was not till he found that the few members who remained after so many
deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to themselves a
power which they held only in trust, and to inflict upon England the curse of a
Venetian oligarchy. But even when thus placed by violence at the head of
affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. He gave the country a constitution
far more perfect than any which had at that time been known in the world. He
reformed the representative system in a manner which has extorted praise even
from Lord Clarendon. For himself he demanded indeed the first place in the
commonwealth; but with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder,
or an American president. He gave the parliament a voice in the appointment of
ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not even reserving to
himself a veto on its enactments; and he did not require that the chief
magistracy should be hereditary in his family. Thus far, we think, if the
circumstances of the time and the opportunities which he had of aggrandizing
himself be fairly considered, he will not lose by comparison with Washington or
Bolivar. Had his moderation been met by corresponding moderation, there is no
reason to think that he would have overstepped the line which he had traced for
himself. But when he found that his parliaments questioned the authority under
which they met, and that he was in danger of being deprived of the restricted
power which was absolutely necessary to his personal safety, then, it must be
acknowledged, he adopted a more arbitrary policy.
Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were at first honest,
though we believe that he was driven from the noble course which he had marked
out for himself by the almost irresistible force of circumstances, though we
admire, in common with all men of all parties, the ability and energy of his
splendid administration, we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power,
even in his hands. We know that a good constitution is infinitely better than
the best despot. But we suspect, that at the time of which we speak, the
violence of religious and political enmities rendered a stable and happy
settlement next to impossible. The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty,
but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton chose well, no man can doubt
who fairly compares the events of the Protectorate with those of the thirty
years which succeeded it, the darkest and most disgraceful in the English
annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the
foundations of an admirable system. Never before had religious liberty and the
freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national
honor been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at home.
And it was rarely that any opposition which stopped short of open rebellion
provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions
which he had established, as set down in the Instrument of Government, and the
Humble Petition and Advice, were excellent. His practice, it is true, too often
departed from the theory of these institutions. But, had he lived a few years
longer, it is probable that his institutions would have survived him, and that
his arbitrary practice would have died with him. His power had not been
consecrated by ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his great personal
qualities. Little, therefore, was to be dreaded from a second protector, unless
he were also a second Oliver Cromwell. The events which followed his decease are
the most complete vindication of those who exerted themselves to uphold his
authority. His death dissolved the whole frame of society. The army rose against
the Parliament, the different corps of the army against each other. Sect raved
against sect. Party plotted against party, The Presbyterians, in their eagerness
to be revenged on the Independents, sacrificed their own liberty, and deserted
all their old principles. Without casting one glance on the past, or requiring
one stipulation for the future, they threw down their freedom at the feet of the
most frivolous and heartless of tyrants.
Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days of
servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and
gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of
the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King cringed to his rival that he
might trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with
complacent infamy, her degrading insults, and her more degrading gold. The
caresses of harlots, and the jests of buffoons, regulated the policy of the
State. The Government had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion
enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning
courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place,
worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch; and England
propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest
children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race
accursed of God and man was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of
the earth, and to be a by-word and a shaking of the head to the nations.
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