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he had the imprudence to exert with rigour an authority which he had no ultimate resources to support: an union was at last effected in the nation; and he saw his enervated prerogatives dissipated with a breath.* By the famous act, called the Petition of Right, and a posterior act, to both which he assented, the compulsory loans and taxes, disguised under the name of benevolences, were declared to be contrary to law; arbitrary imprisonments, and the exercise of martial law, were abolished; the court of high commission, and the star-chamber, were suppressed;† and the constitution, freed from the apparatus of despotic powers with which the Tudors had obscured it, was restored to its ancient lustre. Happy had been the people if their

* It might here be objected, that when, under Charles the First, the regal power was obliged to submit to the power of the people, the king possessed other dominions besides England, viz., Scotland and Ireland, and therefore seemed to enjoy the same advantage as the kings of France, that of reigning over a divided empire or nation. But, to this it is to be answered, that, at the time we mention, Ireland, scarcely civilised, only increased the necessities, and consequently the dependence, of the king; while Scotland, through the conjunction of peculiar circumstances, had thrown off her obedience. And though those two states, even at present, bear no proportion to the compact body of the kingdom of England, and seem never to have been able, by their union with it, to procure to the king any dangerous resources; yet the circumstances which took place in both at the time of the revolution, or since, sufficiently prove that it was no unfavourable circumstance to English liberty, that the great crisis of the reign of Charles the First, and the advance which the constitution was to make at that time, should precede the period at which the king of England might have been able to call in the assistance of two other kingdoms.

The star-chamber differed from all the other courts of law in this: the latter were governed only by the common law, or immemorial customs, and acts of parliament; whereas the former often admitted for law the proclamations of the king and council, and grounded its judgments upon them. The abolition of this tribunal, therefore, was justly looked upon as a great victory over regal authority.

This is a remarkable exaggeration with respect to the ancient lustre of the constitution-there never existed before such ancient lustre. De Lolme omits to tell us that this restoration of the constitutional laws of the country was carried into effect by the distinguished men who assembled in the Parliament of 1640, and who, even by that courtly historian Clarendon, are designated as "England's prime intellectual manhood." The Petition of Rights itself was drawn up by that great lawyer, then an octogenarian, Sir Edward Coke. The Pyms,

leaders, after having executed so noble a work, had contented themselves with the glory of being the benefactors of their country! Happy had been the king, if, obliged at last to submit, his submission had been sincere, and if he had become sufficiently sensible that the only resource he had left was the affection of his subjects!

But Charles knew not how to survive the loss of a power he had conceived to be indisputable: he could not reconcile himself to limitations and restraints so injurious, according to his notions, to sovereign authority. His discourse and conduct betrayed his secret designs; distrust took possession of the nation; certain ambitious persons availed themselves of it to promote their own views; and the storm, which seemed to have blown over, burst forth anew.

The

contending fanaticism of persecuting sects joined in the conflict between regal haughtiness and the ambition of individuals; the tempest blew from every point of the compass; the constitution was rent asunder; and Charles exhibited in his fall an awful example to the universe.

The royal power being thus annihilated, the English made fruitless attempts to substitute a republican government in its stead. "It was a curious spectacle," says Montesquieu, "to behold the vain efforts of the English to establish among themselves a democracy." Subjected, at first, to the power of the principal leaders in the Long Parliament, they saw that power expire only to pass without bounds into the hands of a Protector. They saw it afterwards parcelled out among the chiefs of different bodies of soldiers; and thus, shifting without end from one kind of subjection to another, they were at length convinced, that an attempt to establish liberty in a great nation, by making the people interfere in the common business of government, is, of all attempts, the most chimerical; that the authority of all, with which men are amused, is in reality no more than the authority of a few powerful individuals, who divide the republic among themselves; and they at last rested in the bosom of the only constitution which is fit for a great state and a free people: I mean that in which a chosen number

Hampdens, Vanes, Bradshaws, and many others, will ever remain in the annals of England as the greatest of patriots.-Ed.

deliberate, and a single hand executes; but in which, at the same time, the public satisfaction is rendered, by the general relation and arrangement of things, a necessary condition of the duration of government.*

Charles the Second, therefore, was called over; and he experienced on the part of the people that enthusiasm of affection which usually attends the return from a long alienation. He could not, however, bring himself to forgive them the inexpiable crime of which he looked upon them to have been guilty. He saw with the deepest concern that they still entertained their former notions with regard to the nature of the royal prerogative; and, bent upon the recovery of the ancient powers of the crown, he only waited for an opportunity to break those promises which had procured his restoration.

But the very eagerness of his measures frustrated their

*It is remarkable that De Lolme could have so briefly passed over the most remarkable legislative period of English History-that of the Long Parliament. It is true that, when it formed a tribunal to try and condemn the king, it became an illegally constituted assembly. Nor had the Rump of that Parliament more power confided to them by the people than the officers of the army, or any other arbitrary or usurped authority. But notwithstanding all the accusations that are brought forward against those men, when we consider that they were an executive as well as legislative, and even judicial body, we may only marvel at their general success in planning and carrying out great achievements. It cannot, therefore, be denied that the "Rump" Parliament comprised men indefatigable in business, and who administered the affairs of the country with remarkable energy, and, with some intolerant exceptions, with justice. They forced no one to serve either in the army or navy; there was no impressment; yet they never wanted either soldiers or seamen. They at the same time displayed wonderful abilities both in civil and in military affairs; nor did they, during the last two years of their existence, exercise the religious tyranny and intolerance which marked the spirit of the Presbyterians and Episcopalians; and, notwithstanding the unconstitutional character of the high courts of justice which were instituted, to the Long Parliament is due the credit of many reforms in the practice of the Common Law Courts.

It was under the Long Parliament that the civil war in England was successfully terminated; that Ireland was conquered by Cromwell, and Scotland reduced to obedience; that the navy of England, from a mean and feeble condition, became a magnificent and powerful defender of the country, able to cope with, and even defeat, the Dutch in several battles; and that in the Mediterranean Sea the fleets and name of

success.

His dangerous alliances on the continent, and the extravagant wars in which he involved England, joined to

England caused greater dread to the Papal throne than the conquest of Constantinople and all the armaments of the Mohammedans. (a)—Ed. The violent dissolution of the Long Parliament by Cromwell, when well considered, was neither so bold nor so hazardous an act as some have usually regarded it. Let it be kept in view that the Assembly at Westminster had now diminished from 506 members, the number originally elected in 1640, to rather less than 100,-first by the expulsion in 1648, and afterwards by deaths and various causes: they had no hold whatever on the great body of the nation; and notwithstanding the grandeur and success of their administration, the people only obeyed them through terror; while Cromwell, before he had attempted their dissolution, had become, to all intents and purposes, the master of Great Britain and Ireland. He had in a great degree constructed the government of the Commonwealth,-for it was he who had induced the most able, vigorous, and intelligent of its statesmen, Sir Harry Vane, and Oliver St. John, to enter the Council of State.-Ed.

But no sooner did the expulsion of those few members who constituted the Parliament take place, than the British Empire became vested in the absolute authority of the Lord General and the Council of War. Yet a self-government, which is so prominent a quality of the English character, existed then as it does now; then, as now, the people were equally disposed to obey the laws-to cherish the maintenance of order -to observe a high reverence for morality and religion-and to make the best use of their reason in weighing the advantages which they possessed against the risks and dangers of a general disturbance, or the calamities of another civil war. It was by those elements of character and morals in the British people that the three nations of England, Scotland, and Ireland, were saved from the mad disorders of anarchy, and from the tyranny of despotism, during this important era in their history; and it is by the same characteristics that they have in subsequent periods been saved from similar calamities to those which had formerly in England, and which have, among other nations, then, and down to the present century, so frequently, so unfortunately, and so unsuccessfully, been precipitated by oppression and by great public excitement.-Ed.

(a) Algernon Sidney says, that "When Van Tromp set upon Blake in Folkstone Bay, the Parliament had not above 13 ships against threescore, and not a man that had ever seen any other fight at sea than between a merchant-ship and a pirate, to oppose the best captain in the world, attended by men of valour and experience not much inferior to him. Many other difficulties were observed in this unsettled state: few ships, want of men, several factions, and some who, to advance particular interests, betrayed the public. But such was the power of wisdom and integrity in those who sat at the helm, that their diligence

the frequent abuse he made of his authority, betrayed his designs. The eyes of the nation were soon opened, and saw into his projects; when, convinced at length that nothing but fixed and irresistible bounds can be an effectual check on the views and efforts of power, they resolved finally to take away those remnants of despotism which still made a part of the regal prerogative.

The military services due to the crown, the remains of the ancient feudal tenures, had been already abolished: the laws against heretics were now repealed; the statute for holding parliaments once at least in three years was enacted ; the Habeas Corpus Act, that barrier of the subject's personal safety, was established; and such was the patriotism of the parliaments, that it was under a king the most destitute of principle that liberty received its most efficacious supports.

At length, on the death of Charles, began a reign which affords a most exemplary lesson both to kings and people. James the Second, a prince of a more rigid disposition, though of a less comprehensive understanding than his late brother, pursued still more openly the project which had already proved so fatal to his family. He would not see that the great alterations which had successively been effected in the constitution rendered the execution of it daily more and more impracticable: he imprudently suffered himself to be exasperated at a resistance he was in no condition to overcome; and, hurried away by a spirit of despotism and a monkish zeal, he ran headlong against the rock which was to wreck his authority.

He not only used in his declarations the alarming expressions of absolute power and unlimited obedience-he not only usurped to himself a right to dispense with the lawsbut moreover sought to convert that destructive pretension in choosing men was blessed with such success, that in two years our fleet grew to be as famous as our land armies. The reputation and power of our nation rose to a greater height than when we possessed the better half of France, and the kings of France and Scotland were our prisoners. All the states, kings, and potentates of Europe, respectfully, not to say submissively, sought our friendship; and the Romans were more afraid of Blake and his fleet than they had been of the great King of Sweden, when he was ready to invade Italy with 100,000 men," -Discourses concerning Government, ed. 1704.-Ed.

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