Arthur Conan Doyle - "Songs of Action"

Thomas H. Huxley - "Yeast"

Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): Ecclesiastes"

Gerald R. Ford - "State of the Union Addresses of Gerald R. Ford"

Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1




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 blameable, 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 aggrandising 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 honour 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.

Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public
character of Milton, apply to him only as one of a large body. We
shall proceed to notice some of the peculiarities which
distinguished him from his contemporaries. And, for that purpose,
it is necessary to take a short survey of the parties into which
the political world was at that time divided. We must premise,
that our observations are intended to apply only to those who
adhered, from a sincere preference, to one or to the other side.
In days of public commotion, every faction, like an Oriental
army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, an useless and
heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope
of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in
the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a
defeat. England, at the time of which we are treating, abounded
with fickle and selfish politicians, who transferred their
support to every government as it rose, who kissed the hand of
the King in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649, who shouted with
equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and
when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn, who dined on calves'
heads or stuck-up oak-branches, as circumstances altered, without
the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out of the
account. We take our estimate of parties from those who really
deserved to be called partisans.

We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of
men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and
ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that
runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and
malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the
Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and
derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the
press and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage
were most licentious. They were not men of letters; they were, as
a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the
public would not take them under its protection. They were
therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of
the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of
their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff
posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural
phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt
of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were
indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the
laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learnt.
And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against
the influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so
many excellent writers.

"Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio
Che mortali perigli in so contiene:
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio,
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene."

Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their
measures through a long series of eventful years, who formed, out
of the most unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe
had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy,
who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion,
made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of
the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities
were mere external badges, like the signs of freemasonry, or the
dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were not more
attractive. We regret that a body to whose courage and talents
mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not the lofty
elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles the
First, or the easy good-breeding for which the court of Charles
the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we
shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets
which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix
on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure.

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar
character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and
eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general
terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every
event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was
too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know
him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of
existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage
which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul.
Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an
obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable
brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence
originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The
difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed
to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which
separated the whole race from him on whom their own eyes were
constantly fixed. They recognised no title to superiority but his
favour; and, confident of that favour, they despised all the
accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were
unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were
deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found
in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of
Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of
menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them.
Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems
crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the
eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt:
for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure,
and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of
an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier
hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a
mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest
action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious
interest, who had been destined, before heaven and earth were
created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven
and earth should have passed away. Events which shortsighted
politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his
account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and
decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the
pen of the evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been
wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe.
He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the
blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had
been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had
risen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her
expiring God.

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all
self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud,
calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust
before his Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In
his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and
groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible
illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers
of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke
screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought
himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like
Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had
hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in the council,
or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the
soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw
nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing
from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh
at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered
them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These
fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of
judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have
thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in
fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings
on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One
overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred,
ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its
charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and
their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm
had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar
passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of
danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue
unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through
the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail,
crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human
beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities,
insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be
pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.

Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We
perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen
gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of
their minds was often injured by straining after things too high
for mortal reach: and we know that, in spite of their hatred of
Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad
system, intolerance and extravagant austerity, that they had
their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De
Montforts, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet, when all
circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to
pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful body.

The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly because
it was the cause of religion. There was another party, by no
means numerous, but distinguished by learning and ability, which
acted with them on very different principles. We speak of those
whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were,
in the phraseology of that time, doubting Thomases or careless
Gallios with regard to religious subjects, but passionate
worshippers of freedom. Heated by the study of ancient
literature, they set up their country as their idol, and proposed
to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They seem
to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines of the French
Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of
distinction between them and their devout associates, whose tone
and manner they sometimes found it convenient to affect, and
sometimes, it is probable, imperceptibly adopted.

We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them,
as we have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect candour. We
shall not charge upon a whole party the profligacy and baseness
of the horseboys, gamblers and bravoes, whom the hope of licence
and plunder attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars to the
standard of Charles, and who disgraced their associates by
excesses which, under the stricter discipline of the
Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more
favourable specimen. Thinking as we do that the cause of the King
was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from
looking with complacency on the character of the honest old
Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparing them with the
instruments which the despots of other countries are compelled to
employ, with the mutes who throng their ante-chambers, and the
Janissaries who mount guard at their gates. Our royalist
countrymen were not heartless dangling courtiers, bowing at every
step, and simpering at every word. They were not mere machines
for destruction dressed up in uniforms, caned into skill,
intoxicated into valour, defending without love, destroying
without hatred. There was a freedom in their subserviency, a
nobleness in their very degradation. The sentiment of individual
independence was strong within them. They were indeed misled, but
by no base or selfish motive. Compassion and romantic honour, the
prejudices of childhood, and the venerable names of history,
threw over them a spell potent as that of Duessa; and, like the
Red-Cross Knight, they thought that they were doing battle for an
injured beauty, while they defended a false and loathsome
sorceress. In truth they scarcely entered at all into the merits
of the political question. It was not for a treacherous king or
an intolerant church that they fought, but for the old banner
which had waved in so many battles over the heads of their
fathers, and for the altars at which they had received the hands
of their brides. Though nothing could be more erroneous than
their political opinions, they possessed, in a far greater degree
than their adversaries, those qualities which are the grace of
private life. With many of the vices of the Round Table, they had
also many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity,
tenderness, and respect for women. They had far more both of
profound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners
were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes more
elegant, and their households more cheerful.

Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which we
have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a freethinker.
He was not a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of
every party were combined in harmonious union. From the
Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and from the
Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the
Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable
Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was
great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious
ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the
Puritans, he lived

"As ever in his great taskmaster's eye."

Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an Almighty
judge and an eternal reward. And hence he acquired their contempt
of external circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity,
their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the
most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion
of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous
jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure.
Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the
estimable and ornamental qualities which were almost entirely
monopolised by the party of the tyrant. There was none who had a
stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for
every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honour
and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his
associations were such as harmonise best with monarchy and
aristocracy. He was under the influence of all the feelings by
which the gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings he
was the master and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he
enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination; but he was not
fascinated. He listened to the song of the Syrens; yet he glided
by without being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup
of Circe; but he bore about him a sure antidote against the
effects of its bewitching sweetness. The illusions which
captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers.
The statesman was proof against the splendour, the solemnity, and
the romance which enchanted the poet. Any person who will
contrast the sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy
with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music
in the Penseroso, which was published about the same time, will
understand our meaning. This is an inconsistency which, more than
anything else, raises his character in our estimation, because it
shows how many private tastes and feelings he sacrificed, in
order to do what he considered his duty to mankind. It is the
very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents; but his
hand is firm. He does nought in hate, but all in honour. He
kisses the beautiful deceiver before he destroys her.

That from which the public character of Milton derives its great
and peculiar splendour, still remains to be mentioned. If he
exerted himself to overthrow a forsworn king and a persecuting
hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunction with others. But the
glory of the battle which he fought for the species of freedom
which is the most valuable, and which was then the least
understood, the freedom of the human mind, is all his own.
Thousands and tens of thousands among his contemporaries raised
their voices against Ship-money and the Star-Chamber. But there
were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and
intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result from
the liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of private
judgment. These were the objects which Milton justly conceived to
be the most important. He was desirous that the people should
think for themselves as well as tax themselves, and should be
emancipated from the dominion of prejudice as well as from that
of Charles. He knew that those who, with the best intentions,
overlooked these schemes of reform, and contented themselves with
pulling down the King and imprisoning the malignants, acted like
the heedless brothers in his own poem, who in their eagerness to
disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected the means of
liberating the captive. They thought only of conquering when they
should have thought of disenchanting.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.