William Shakespeare - "The Tempest"

Alexandre Dumas - "The Three Musketeers"

Calvin Coolidge - "State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge"

Zane Grey - "The Border Legion"

Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1

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




The attempt to seize the five members was undoubtedly the real
cause of the war. From that moment, the loyal confidence with
which most of the popular party were beginning to regard the King
was turned into hatred and incurable suspicion. From that moment,
the Parliament was compelled to surround itself with defensive
arms. From that moment, the city assumed the appearance of a
garrison. From that moment, in the phrase of Clarendon, the
carriage of Hampden became fiercer, that he drew the sword and
threw away the scabbard. For, from that moment, it must have been
evident to every impartial observer, that, in the midst of
professions, oaths, and smiles, the tyrant was constantly looking
forward to an absolute sway, and to a bloody revenge.

The advocates of Charles have very dexterously contrived to
conceal from their readers the real nature of this transaction.
By making concessions apparently candid and ample, they elude the
great accusation. They allow that the measure was weak and even
frantic, an absurd caprice of Lord Digby, absurdly adopted by the
King. And thus they save their client from the full penalty of
his transgression, by entering a plea of guilty to the minor
offence. To us his conduct appears at this day as at the time it
appeared to the Parliament and the city. We think it by no means
so foolish as it pleases his friends to represent it, and far
more wicked.

In the first place, the transaction was illegal from beginning to
end. The impeachment was illegal. The process was illegal. The
service was illegal. If Charles wished to prosecute the five
members for treason, a bill against them should have been sent to
a grand jury. That a commoner cannot be tried for high treason by
the Lords at the suit of the Crown, is part of the very alphabet
of our law. That no man can be arrested by the King in person is
equally clear. This was an established maxim of our jurisprudence
even in the time of Edward the Fourth. "A subject," said Chief
Justice Markham to that Prince, "may arrest for treason: the King
cannot; for, if the arrest be illegal, the party has no remedy
against the King."

The time at which Charles took his step also deserves
consideration. We have already said that the ardour which the
Parliament had displayed at the time of its first meeting had
considerably abated, that the leading opponents of the court were
desponding, and that their followers were in general inclined to
milder and more temperate measures than those which had hitherto
been pursued. In every country, and in none more than in England,
there is a disposition to take the part of those who are
unmercifully run down, and who seem destitute of all means of
defence. Every man who has observed the ebb and flow of public
feeling in our own time will easily recall examples to illustrate
this remark. An English statesman ought to pay assiduous worship
to Nemesis, to be most apprehensive of ruin when he is at the
height of power and popularity, and to dread his enemy most when
most completely prostrated. The fate of the Coalition Ministry in
1784 is perhaps the strongest instance in our history of the
operation of this principle. A few weeks turned the ablest and
most extended Ministry that ever existed into a feeble
Opposition, and raised a King who was talking of retiring to
Hanover to a height of power which none of his predecessors had
enjoyed since the Revolution. A crisis of this description was
evidently approaching in 1642. At such a crisis, a Prince of a
really honest and generous nature, who had erred, who had seen
his error, who had regretted the lost affections of his people,
who rejoiced in the dawning hope of regaining them, would be
peculiarly careful to take no step which could give occasion of
offence, even to the unreasonable. On the other hand, a tyrant,
whose whole life was a lie, who hated the Constitution the more
because he had been compelled to feign respect for it, and to
whom his own honour and the love of his people were as nothing,
would select such a crisis for some appalling violation of the
law, for some stroke which might remove the chiefs of an
Opposition, and intimidate the herd. This Charles attempted. He
missed his blow; but so narrowly, that it would have been mere
madness in those at whom it was aimed to trust him again.

It deserves to be remarked that the King had, a short time
before, promised the most respectable Royalists in the House of
Commons, Falkland, Colepepper, and Hyde, that he would take no
measure in which that House was concerned, without consulting
them. On this occasion he did not consult them. His conduct
astonished them more than any other members of the Assembly.
Clarendon says that they were deeply hurt by this want of
confidence, and the more hurt, because, if they had been
consulted, they would have done their utmost to dissuade Charles
from so improper a proceeding. Did it never occur to Clarendon,
will it not at least occur to men less partial, that there was
good reason for this? When the danger to the throne seemed
imminent, the King was ready to put himself for a time into the
hands of those who, though they disapproved of his past conduct,
thought that the remedies had now become worse than the
distempers. But we believe that in his heart he regarded both the
parties in the Parliament with feelings of aversion which
differed only in the degree of their intensity, and that the
awful warning which he proposed to give, by immolating the
principal supporters of the Remonstrance, was partly intended for
the instruction of those who had concurred in censuring the ship-
money and in abolishing the Star-Chamber.

The Commons informed the King that their members should be
forthcoming to answer any charge legally brought against them.
The Lords refused to assume the unconstitutional office with
which he attempted to invest them. And what was then his conduct?
He went, attended by hundreds of armed men, to seize the objects
of his hatred in the House itself. The party opposed to him more
than insinuated that his purpose was of the most atrocious kind.
We will not condemn him merely on their suspicions. We will not
hold him answerable for the sanguinary expressions of the loose
brawlers who composed his train. We will judge of his act by
itself alone. And we say, without hesitation, that it is
impossible to acquit him of having meditated violence, and
violence which might probably end in blood. He knew that the
legality of his proceedings was denied. He must have known that
some of the accused members were men not likely to submit
peaceably to an illegal arrest. There was every reason to
expect that he would find them in their places, that they would
refuse to obey his summons, and that the House would support them
in their refusal. What course would then have been left to him?
Unless we suppose that he went on this expedition for the sole
purpose of making himself ridiculous, we must believe that he
would have had recourse to force. There would have been a
scuffle; and it might not, under such circumstances, have been in
his power, even if it had been in his inclination, to prevent a
scuffle from ending in a massacre. Fortunately for his fame,
unfortunately perhaps for what he prized far more, the interests
of his hatred and his ambition, the affair ended differently. The
birds, as he said, were flown, and his plan was disconcerted.
Posterity is not extreme to mark abortive crimes; and thus the
King's advocates have found it easy to represent a step, which,
but for a trivial accident, might have filled England with
mourning and dismay, as a mere error of judgment, wild and
foolish, but perfectly innocent. Such was not, however, at the
time, the opinion of any party. The most zealous Royalists were
so much disgusted and ashamed that they suspended their
opposition to the popular party, and, silently at least,
concurred in measures of precaution so strong as almost to amount
to resistance.

From that day, whatever of confidence and loyal attachment had
survived the misrule of seventeen years was, in the great body of
the people, extinguished, and extinguished for ever. As soon as
the outrage had failed, the hypocrisy recommenced. Down to the
very eve of this flagitious attempt Charles had been talking of
his respect for the privileges of Parliament and the liberties of
his people. He began again in the same style on the morrow; but
it was too late. To trust him now would have been, not
moderation, but insanity. What common security would suffice
against a Prince who was evidently watching his season with that
cold and patient hatred which, in the long-run, tires out every
other passion?

It is certainly from no admiration of Charles that Mr. Hallam
disapproves of the conduct of the Houses in resorting to arms.
But he thinks that any attempt on the part of that Prince to
establish a despotism would have been as strongly opposed by his
adherents as by his enemies, and that therefore the Constitution
might be considered as out of danger, or, at least that it had
more to apprehend from the war than from the King. On this
subject Mr. Hallam dilates at length, and with conspicuous
ability. We will offer a few considerations which lead us to
incline to a different opinion.

The Constitution of England was only one of a large family. In
all the monarchies of Western Europe, during the middle ages,
there existed restraints on the royal authority, fundamental
laws, and representative assemblies. In the fifteenth century,
the government of Castile seems to have been as free as that of
our own country. That of Arragon was beyond all question more so.
In France, the sovereign was more absolute. Yet even in France,
the States-General alone could constitutionally impose taxes;
and, at the very time when the authority of those assemblies was
beginning to languish, the Parliament of Paris received such an
accession of strength as enabled it, in some measure, to perform
the functions of a legislative assembly. Sweden and Denmark had
constitutions of a similar description.

Let us overleap two or three hundred years, and contemplate
Europe at the commencement of the eighteenth century. Every free
constitution, save one, had gone down. That of England had
weathered the danger, and was riding in full security. In Denmark
and Sweden, the kings had availed themselves of the disputes
which raged between the nobles and the commons, to unite all the
powers of government in their own hands. In France the
institution of the States was only mentioned by lawyers as a part
of the ancient theory of their government. It slept a deep sleep,
destined to be broken by a tremendous waking. No person
remembered the sittings of the three orders, or expected ever to
see them renewed. Louis the Fourteenth had imposed on his
parliament a patient silence of sixty years. His grandson, after
the War of the Spanish Succession, assimilated the constitution
of Arragon to that of Castile, and extinguished the last feeble
remains of liberty in the Peninsula. In England, on the other
hand, the Parliament was infinitely more powerful than it had
ever been. Not only was its legislative authority fully
established; but its right to interfere, by advice almost
equivalent to command, in every department of the executive
government, was recognised. The appointment of ministers, the
relations with foreign powers, the conduct of a war or a
negotiation, depended less on the pleasure of the Prince than on
that of the two Houses.

What then made us to differ? Why was it that, in that epidemic
malady of constitutions, ours escaped the destroying influence;
or rather that, at the very crisis of the disease, a favourable
turn took place in England, and in England alone? It was not
surely without a cause that so many kindred systems of
government, having flourished together so long, languished and
expired at almost the same time.

It is the fashion to say that the progress of civilisation is
favourable to liberty. The maxim, though in some sense true, must
be limited by many qualifications and exceptions. Wherever a poor
and rude nation, in which the form of government is a limited
monarchy, receives a great accession of wealth and knowledge, it
is in imminent danger of falling under arbitrary power.

In such a state of society as that which existed all over Europe
during the middle ages, very slight checks sufficed to keep the
sovereign in order. His means of corruption and intimidation were
very scanty. He had little money, little patronage, no military
establishment. His armies resembled juries. They were drawn out
of the mass of the people: they soon returned to it again: and
the character which was habitual prevailed over that which was
occasional. A campaign of forty days was too short, the
discipline of a national militia too lax, to efface from their
minds the feelings of civil life. As they carried to the camp the
sentiments and interests of the farm and the shop, so they
carried back to the farm and the shop the military
accomplishments which they had acquired in the camp. At home the
soldier learned how to value his rights, abroad how to defend
them.

Such a military force as this was a far stronger restraint on the
regal power than any legislative assembly. The army, now the most
formidable instrument of the executive power, was then the most
formidable check on that power. Resistance to an established,
government, in modern times so difficult and perilous an
enterprise, was in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the
simplest and easiest matter in the world. Indeed, it was far too
simple and easy. An insurrection was got up then almost as easily
as a petition is got up now. In a popular cause, or even in an
unpopular cause favoured by a few great nobles, a force of ten
thousand armed men was raised in a week. If the King were, like
our Edward the Second and Richard the Second, generally odious,
he could not procure a single bow or halbert. He fell at once and
without an effort. In such times a sovereign like Louis the
Fifteenth or the Emperor Paul would have been pulled down before
his misgovernment had lasted for a month. We find that all the
fame and influence of our Edward the Third could not save his
Madame de Pompadour from the effects of the public hatred.

Hume and many other writers have hastily concluded, that, in the
fifteenth century, the English Parliament was altogether servile,
because it recognised, without opposition, every successful
usurper. That it was not servile its conduct on many occasions of
inferior importance is sufficient to prove. But surely it was not
strange that the majority of the nobles, and of the deputies
chosen by the commons, should approve of revolutions which the
nobles and commons had effected. The Parliament did not blindly
follow the event of war, but participated in those changes of
public sentiment on which the event of war depended. The legal
check was secondary and auxiliary to that which the nation held
in its own hands.

There have always been monarchies in Asia, in which the royal
authority has been tempered by fundamental laws, though no
legislative body exists to watch over them. The guarantee is the
opinion of a community of which every individual is a soldier.
Thus, the king of Cabul, as Mr. Elphinstone informs us, cannot
augment the land revenue, or interfere with the jurisdiction of
the ordinary tribunals.

In the European kingdoms of this description there were
representative assemblies. But it was not necessary that those
assemblies should meet very frequently, that they should
interfere with all the operations of the executive government,
that they should watch with jealousy, and resent with prompt
indignation, every violation of the laws which the sovereign
might commit. They were so strong that they might safely be
careless. He was so feeble that he might safely be suffered to
encroach. If he ventured too far, chastisement and ruin were at
hand. In fact, the people generally suffered more from his
weakness than from his authority. The tyranny of wealthy and
powerful subjects was the characteristic evil of the times. The
royal prerogatives were not even sufficient for the defence of
property and the maintenance of police.

The progress of civilisation introduced a great change. War
became a science, and, as a necessary consequence, a trade. The
great body of the people grew every day more reluctant to undergo
the inconveniences of military service, and better able to pay
others for undergoing them. A new class of men, therefore,
dependent on the Crown alone, natural enemies of those popular
rights which are to them as the dew to the fleece of Gideon,
slaves among freemen, freemen among slaves, grew into importance.
That physical force which in the dark ages had belonged to the
nobles and the commons, and had, far more than any charter, or
any assembly, been the safeguard of their privileges, was
transferred entire to the King. Monarchy gained in two ways. The
sovereign was strengthened, the subjects weakened. The great mass
of the population, destitute of all military discipline and
organisation, ceased to exercise any influence by force on
political transactions. There have, indeed, during the last
hundred and fifty years, been many popular insurrections in
Europe: but all have failed except those in which the regular
army has been induced to join the disaffected.

Those legal checks which, while the sovereign remained dependent
on his subjects, had been adequate to the purpose for which they
were designed, were now found wanting. The dikes which had been
sufficient while the waters were low were not high enough to keep
out the springtide. The deluge passed over them and, according to
the exquisite illustration of Butler, the formal boundaries,
which had excluded it, now held it in. The old constitutions
fared like the old shields and coats of mail. They were the
defences of a rude age; and they did well enough against the
weapons of a rude age. But new and more formidable means of
destruction were invented. The ancient panoply became useless;
and it was thrown aside, to rust in lumber-rooms, or exhibited
only as part of an idle pageant.

Thus absolute monarchy was established on the Continent. England
escaped; but she escaped very narrowly. Happily our insular
situation, and the pacific policy of James, rendered standing
armies unnecessary here, till they had been for some time kept
up in the neighbouring kingdoms. Our public men, had therefore an
opportunity of watching the effects produced by this momentous
change on governments which bore a close analogy to that
established in England. Everywhere they saw the power of the
monarch increasing, the resistance of assemblies which were no
longer supported by a national force gradually becoming more and
more feeble, and at length altogether ceasing. The friends and
the enemies of liberty perceived with equal clearness the causes
of this general decay. It is the favourite theme of Strafford. He
advises the King to procure from the judges a recognition of his
right to raise an army at his pleasure. "This place well
fortified," says he, "for ever vindicates the monarchy at home
from under the conditions and restraints of subjects." We firmly
believe that he was in the right. Nay; we believe that, even if
no deliberate scheme, of arbitrary government had been formed, by
the sovereign and his ministers, there was great reason to
apprehend a natural extinction of the Constitution. If, for
example, Charles had played the part of Gustavus Adolphus, if he
had carried on a popular war for the defence of the Protestant
cause in Germany, if he had gratified the national pride by a
series of victories, if he had formed an army of forty or fifty
thousand devoted soldiers, we do not see what chance the nation
would have had of escaping from despotism. The judges would have
given as strong a decision in favour of camp-money as they gave
in favour of ship-money. If they had been scrupulous, it would
have made little difference. An individual who resisted would
have been treated as Charles treated Eliot, and as Strafford
wished to treat Hampden. The Parliament might have been summoned
once in twenty years, to congratulate a King on his accession, or
to give solemnity to some great measure of state. Such had been
the fate of legislative assemblies as powerful, as much
respected, as high-spirited, as the English Lords and Commons.

The two Houses, surrounded by the ruins of so many free
constitutions overthrown or sapped by the new military system,
were required to intrust the command of an army and the conduct
of the Irish war to a King who had proposed to himself the
destruction of liberty as the great end of his policy. We are
decidedly of opinion that it would have been fatal to comply.
Many of those who took the side of the King on this question
would have cursed their own loyalty, if they had seen him return
from war; at the head of twenty thousand troops, accustomed to
carriage and free quarters in Ireland.

We think with Mr. Hallam that many of the Royalist nobility and
gentry were true friends to the Constitution, and that, but for
the solemn protestations by which the King bound himself to
govern according to the law for the future, they never would have
joined his standard. But surely they underrated the public
danger. Falkland is commonly selected as the most respectable
specimen of this class. He was indeed a man of great talents and
of great virtues but, we apprehend, infinitely too fastidious for
public life. He did not perceive that, in such times as those on
which his lot had fallen, the duty of a statesman is to choose
the better cause and to stand by it, in spite of those excesses
by which every cause, however good in itself, will be disgraced.
The present evil always seemed to him the worst. He was always
going backward and forward; but it should be remembered to his
honour that it was always from the stronger to the weaker side
that he deserted. While Charles was oppressing the people,
Falkland was a resolute champion of liberty. He attacked
Strafford. He even concurred in strong measures against
Episcopacy. But the violence of his party annoyed him, and drove
him to the other party, to be equally annoyed there. Dreading the
success of the cause which he had espoused, disgusted by the
courtiers of Oxford, as he had been disgusted by the patriots of
Westminster, yet bound by honour not to abandon the cause, for
which he was in arms, he pined away, neglected his person, went
about moaning for peace, and at last rushed desperately on death,
as the best refuge in such miserable times. If he had lived
through the scenes that followed, we have little doubt that he
would have condemned himself to share the exile and beggary of
the royal family; that he would then have returned to oppose all
their measures; that he would have been sent to the Tower by the
Commons as a stifler of the Popish Plot, and by the King as an
accomplice in the Rye-House Plot; and that, if he had escaped
being hanged, first by Scroggs, and then by Jeffreys, he would,
after manfully opposing James the Second through years of
tyranny, have been seized with a fit of compassion, at the very
moment of the Revolution, have voted for a regency, and died a
non-juror.

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.

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