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ON THE 
 
 CAUSES OF THE SUCCESS 
 
 ENGLISH REVOLUTION 
 
 OF lGin-lf)88. 
 
ON THE 
 
 CAUSES OF THE SUCCESS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ENGLISH REVOLUTION 
 
 OF 1640-1688. 
 A DISCOURSE. 
 
 DESIGNED AS AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF THE REIGN 
 OF CHARLES THE FIRST. 
 
 BY M. GUIZOT. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1850. 
 
EEPLAc:::3 
 
 rniNTF.Il UV \V. CLOM-F.S ANU SONS, STAMFOIID STREET. 
 

 ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 
 
 The success by which the English Revolution was 
 crowned has not only been permanent, but has 
 borne a double fruit: its authors founded Consti- 
 tutional Monarchy in England ; and in America, 
 their descendants founded the Republic of the 
 United States. These great events are now com- 
 pletely known and understood ; time, which has 
 given them its sanction, has also shed over them its 
 light. Sixty years ago France entered on the path 
 opened by England, and Europe lately rushed head- 
 long in the same direction. It is my purpose to 
 show what are the causes which have crowned con- 
 stitutional monarchy in England, and republican 
 government in the United States, with that solid and 
 lasting success which France and the rest of Europe 
 are still vainly pursuing, through those mysterious 
 trials and revolutionary struggles, which, according 
 as they are well or ill passed through^ elevate or 
 pervert a nation for ages. 
 
 fi 
 
 MV7rS2V 
 
y" 
 
 2 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 y It was in the name of religion and liberty of con- 
 science that the conflict which l^egan in the sixteenth 
 century, and, though occasionally suspended, has 
 been constantly renewed, was undertaken. The 
 tempest which still agitates the world, or hurries it 
 along in an impetuous torrent, gathered in the 
 inmost recesses of men's minds, and burst over the 
 Church before it reached the State. 
 
 It has been said that Protestantism was a poli- 
 tical rather than a religious revolution ; an insur- 
 rection of worldly interests against the established 
 order of the Church, rather than the outbreak 
 of an ardent conviction concerning the eternal 
 interests of man. This judgment has been super- 
 ficially formed and lightly pronounced ; and the error 
 on which it rests has led the powers, whether spiri- 
 tual or temporal, who have adopted it. into a line 
 of conduct fatal to their own security. Intent on 
 repressing the revolutionary element of Protestant- 
 ism, they have overlooked or misunderstood its 
 religious element. The spirit of revolt is doubtless 
 very powerful, but not powerful enough to accom- 
 plish, alone and unaided, things of such magnitude. 
 It was not merely to shake off a yoke, it was also 
 to secure the free profession and practice of a faith, 
 that the Reformers of the sixteenth century rose up 
 against authority, and persevered in the conflict. 
 This is demonstrated by a decisive and incontestable 
 fact. The two most protestant countries of Europe, 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 3 
 
 England and Holland, are still the countries in 
 which the Christian faith has the greatest vital energy 
 and power. Itbetraj^s a strange ignorance of human 
 nature to believe that religious zeal would have 
 remained at such a pitch of elevation, after the suc- 
 cessful termination of the revolt, if religion had not 
 been the mainspring of the whole movement. 
 
 The revolution which took place in Germany, in 
 the sixteenth century, was religious and not political ; 
 that in France, in the eighteenth, was political and 
 not religious. It was the peculiar fehcity of Eng- 
 land in the seventeenth century, that the spirit of 
 religious faith and the spirit of political liberty 
 reigned together, and that she entered upon the 
 two revolutions at the same time. All the great 
 passions of the human soul were thus excited and 
 brought into action, while some of the most power- 
 ful restraints by which they are controlled remained 
 unbroken ; and the hopes and aspirations of eternity 
 remained to console and tranquillize those whose 
 earthly hopes and ambitions had suffered shipwreck. 
 
 The English Reformers, especially those who 
 aimed only at political reform, did not think a revo- 
 lution necessary. The whole past history of their 
 country, its laws, traditions, and precedents, were 
 dear and sacred in their eyes ; they found in them 
 the justification of their claims, as well as the sanction 
 of their principles. It was in the name of the Great 
 Charter, and of all those statutes by which, through 
 
 B 2 
 
4 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTOKY OF 
 
 the course oF four centuries, it had been confirmed, 
 that they demanded their liberties. For four cen- 
 turies not a generation of men had dwelt upon the 
 soil of England, without uttering the name and 
 beholding the presence of Parliament. The great 
 barons and the people, the country gentlemen and 
 the burgesses, met together in 1640, not to dispute 
 with each other claims to new acquisitions, but to 
 regain, in concert, their common inheritance ; they 
 met to recover their ancient and positive rights, 
 not to pursue the boundless combinations and hopes 
 suggested by the imagination of man. 
 
 The claims and projects of the religious reformers 
 who sat in the Long Parliament were not, however, 
 equally legal. The Episcopal Church of England, 
 such as it had been constituted, first by the cruel 
 and capricious despotism of Henr}'- VIII.. and after- 
 wards by the able and persevering despotism of 
 Elizabeth, did not satisfy them ; it was in their 
 eyes the offspring of an incomplete and incon- 
 sistent reformation, still so nearly approaching Ca- 
 tholicism as to be incessantly exposed to the dan- 
 ger of a relapse. They meditated a complete remo- 
 delling and a new constitution of the national church. 
 In this party the revolutionary spirit was more 
 ardent and open than in the party mainly occupied 
 with political reforms. Nevertheless the religious 
 innovators were not utterly absorbed by the fanta- 
 sies of their own minds. There Mas an anchor to 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 5 
 
 which they all held fast; a compass by which they 
 all were guided. The Gospel was their great • 
 charter; subject, it is true, to their interpretations 
 and commentaries, but anterior and superior to their 
 will. They held it in sincere veneration, and, spite 
 of their pride, humbled themselves before the law 
 which they had not made. 
 
 Such were the guarantees for moderation in the two 
 impending revolutions, afforded by the dispositions of 
 their several partisans. Providence also granted them 
 an especial favour; they were not doomed, at the 
 outset, to commit the dangerous wrong of attacking 
 spontaneously, and without a clear and urgent ne- 
 cessity, a mild and inoffensive ruler. In England 
 the royal power was the aggressor. Charles I., full 
 of haughty pretensions, though devoid of elevated 
 ambition, 'and moved rather by the desire of not 
 derogating in the eyes of the kings, his peers, than 
 by that of ruling with a strong hand over his people, 
 twice attempted to introduce into the country the 
 maxims and the practice of absolute monarchy: 
 the first time, in presence of Parliament, at the 
 instigation of a vain and frivolous favourite, whose 
 presumptuous incapacity shocked the good sense 
 and wounded the self-respect of the humblest citi- 
 zen : the second time, by dispensing with Parlia- 
 ment altogether, and ruling alone by the hand of a 
 minister, able and energetic, ambitious and impe- 
 rious, thouoli not without greatness of mmd, de- 
 
6 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 voted to his master, by whom he was imperfectly 
 understood and ill supported, and aware too late 
 that kings are not to be saved solely by incurring 
 ruin, however nobly, in their service. 
 
 To check this aggressive despotism, more enter- 
 prising than energetic, and assailing equally, in 
 Church and State, the ancient rights and recent 
 franchises to which the country laid claim, the mind 
 of the people of England did not go beyond legal re- 
 sistance, and this they entrusted to the hands of their 
 representatives in Parliament. The resistance was 
 as unanimous as it was legitimate. Men the most 
 imlike in origin and character, the great nobles, 
 gentlemen and citizens, those attached to the court 
 and those the most remote from its influence, the 
 friends and the enemies of the established church, 
 all rose with common accord against this accumu- 
 lated mass of grievances and abuses; and the abuses 
 were overthrown, and the grievances vanished, as 
 the old walls of a deserted citadel crumble at the 
 first stroke of its assailants. 
 
 In this burst of the indignation and the hopes 
 of the country, some minds of greater foresight, 
 some more scrupulous consciences, already began to 
 feel anxiety. Vengeance not only disfigures, but 
 perverts justice; and passion, exulting in its rights, 
 oversteps not only those rights, but its own inten- 
 tions. Strafford was justly accused, and unjustly 
 condemned. The political party, which did not 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 7 
 
 desire the ruin of the Episcopal Church, suffered 
 the Bishops to be insulted and humiliated, as if 
 they were utterly and hopelessly overthrown. The 
 blows which struck down the usurpations and the 
 unlawful pretensions of the Crown were so ill aimed 
 that they wounded it in its just prerogatives. 
 The birth of revolutions is always preceded by 
 vague but intelligible warnings, and gleams of 
 light thrown on the future by passing events; 
 and the revolutionary spirit, lurking under the 
 demand for reforms, was now betrayed by alarm- 
 ing incidents and denounced by courageous voices. 
 But the importance and the splendour of victory 
 blinded people to the perception of faults, and stifled 
 the presentiment of their attendant dangers. 
 
 When the work of reform was accomplished ; 
 when the grievances which had excited the unani- 
 mous reprobation of the country were redressed ; 
 when the powers in which these grievances had ori- 
 ginated, and the men who were the instruments of 
 those powers, were overthrown, the scene changed. 
 People began to ask themselves, How were these con- 
 quests to be maintained ? AMiat security was there 
 that England would henceforward be governed ac- 
 cording to the principles and the laws which she had 
 restored ? 
 
 The political reformers began to be perplexed. 
 Above them was the King, who conspired against 
 them while he was makins; concessions : if he 
 
8 • DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 recovered the power in the government, still com- 
 patible with the reforms that had been effected, 
 he would turn it against reform and the reformers. 
 Around them were their allies, their army, and 
 the religious innovators (Presb3'terians or other 
 sectaries), who would not rest satisfied with political 
 reforms, but, in their hatred to the Church, would 
 strive not only to throw off her yoke, but to trample 
 her under foot and impose their own upon her. 
 For the safety of their work and of their persons, 
 the leaders thought fit to remain under arms ; and 
 even if they had not wished it, their soldiers would 
 have compelled them to do so. 
 
 There was in their eyes only one possible gua- 
 rantee for safety; namely, that Parliament should 
 retain the sovereign power of which it had just taken 
 possession ; that it should be rendered permanently 
 impossible for the King to govern contrary to the 
 will of Parliament generally, and of the Commons' 
 House in particular. 
 
 This is the result at which Constitutional Mo- 
 narchy has arrived in England. This is the end 
 pursued by its partisans two centuries ago. But 
 in the seventeenth century they possessed neither 
 the political lights nor the political virtues which 
 that system of government requires. 
 
 The heart of man is at once so arrogant and so 
 weak that he would fain combine the splendour of 
 triumph with the repose of an inviolable peace. To 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 9 
 
 surmount obstacles is not enough ; he wants to an- 
 nihilate them for ever, tliat he may dismiss them 
 entirely from his mind ; victory itself does not sa- 
 tisfy^ him, unless he enjoy it in all the insolence of 
 complete security. Constitutional monarchy, how- 
 ever, is not formed to gratify these inconsistent desires 
 and l)ad tendencies of the human heart. To none 
 of the powers which it invests with a joint action, 
 can it grant the pleasure of undivided and secure 
 domination. On all, even on that which has tlie 
 ascendancy, it imposes the unremitting labour of 
 forced alliances, mutual concessions, frequent com- 
 promises, indirect influences, and a struggle inces- 
 santly renewed, with incessantly recurring chances 
 of success or defeat. It is on these conditions that 
 constitutional monarchy gives predominance to the 
 interests and feelings of the country ; which, in its 
 turn, is bound by its choice of such a govern- 
 ment, to moderation in its desires, to vigilance and 
 patience in its eflbrts. 
 
 In the seventeenth century neither the King nor 
 the Parliament of England understood these con- 
 ditions of their common government. The King 
 was obstinately bent on remaining, the House of 
 Commons on becoming, the immediate and infal- 
 lible sovereign of the country. Nothing short of 
 this could satisfy the pride or allay the fears of 
 either party. 
 
 When things had reached this point, a great 
 
10 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 division took place among the reformers. Some, 
 more far-siglited or more timid, undertook the 
 defence of legal order and of the threatened mo- 
 narchy; others, more daring or less scrupulous, 
 embarked on the current of revolution. 
 
 At this moment arose the two great parties, 
 which, successively assuming different names and 
 aspects, have for two centuries presided over the 
 destinies of England ; — the party devoted to the 
 maintenance of the established order of things, and 
 the party favourable to the growth of popular 
 influences ; the Whigs and the Tories ; the Con- 
 servators and the Innovators. 
 
 To attain its end, — the maintenance and exercise 
 of the supreme power which it had seized, — the 
 Parliament could no longer rest satisfied with the 
 reform of abuses and the restoration of legal rights. 
 The ancient laws must be altered, and all powers 
 concentrated in its own hands. 
 
 Within the Parliament, the conflict was severe, 
 but short. The monarchical party tried to array 
 itself around the King, and to govern in his name. 
 These first essays at constitutional government 
 failed ere they had well begun ; they failed through 
 the faults of the King, who was inconsistent, frivo- 
 lously obstinate, and as insincere with his counsel- 
 lors as with his enemies ; through the inexperience 
 of those counsellors, alternately too exclusive and 
 too yielding, and constantly thwarted or betrayed in 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 1 1 
 
 the Palace, as well as in the Parliament ; and finally, 
 through the distrust and the pretensions of the 
 revolutionary party, determined not to yield or rest 
 till the absolute power, which they sought to over- 
 throw, should have passed into their own hands. 
 
 On the occasion of a new remonstrance, which it 
 was proposed to present to the King against the old 
 grievances (as if they had not already been re- 
 dressed), the strength of the two parties was dis- 
 tinctly put to the trial. The debate became so 
 violent that, in the Honse of Commons itself, the 
 members were on the point of coming to blows. 
 Victor}'^ was determined in favour of the revolution- 
 ary party by eleven votes. Fifty days after this 
 vote, the fugitive King quitted his palace of White- 
 hall, which he re-entered only on his way to the 
 scafiPold. The House of Commons immediately 
 ordered that the country should, with all diligence, 
 be put in a state of defence. The Parliamentary 
 struggle was at an end : Civil War had begun. 
 
 At this solemn moment, patriotic regrets and 
 glooni}^ forebodings were heard in both parties ; and 
 especially in that of the King, which was less con- 
 fident in its strength, and perhaps also in its cause. 
 But these sentiments were not general. In most 
 minds the ardent desire and hope of victory were 
 
12 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 predominant. The spirit of resistance to illegality 
 and oppression has been one of the most noble 
 and salutary dispositions of the English people 
 throughout the whole course of their history. Docile 
 and even favourable to authority, when it acts in 
 virtue of the laws, they are intrepid in resisting any 
 violation of what they regard as the law of the 
 land and their own right. Both parties, even in 
 the midst of their dissensions, were animated by this 
 sentiment. The revolutionary party struggled 
 against the encroachments and oppressions which 
 England had endured from the King, and which 
 she had still to apprehend from him. The mo- 
 narchical party resisted the illegal and oppressive 
 acts which Parliament was actually inflicting on the 
 country. The respect for right and law, though 
 continually disregarded or violated, was deeply 
 rooted in all minds, and threw a veil over the inju- 
 ries and the evils which civil war was preparing for 
 the country. 
 
 In neither party were the habits and manners 
 very repugnant to civil war. The Cavaliers were 
 impetuous and violent, and still given to that habit 
 of combat, that taste for an appeal to force, which 
 characterized the feudal times. The Puritans were 
 rigid, harsh, and pertinacious : they had imbibed 
 the passions, together with the traditions, of the He- 
 brew people, who defended and avenged their God 
 by destroying his enemies. To both, the sacrifice of 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 13 
 
 life was familiar; in neither, did bloodshed excite 
 any horror. 
 
 Another less obvious' cause hastened and aggra- 
 vated the explosion. The contest was not merely _,,^ 
 between the political and religious parties ; beneath 
 that, lay a social question — the struggle between the 
 various classes of society for influence and power. 
 Not that the separation between these classes was as 
 profound and as hostile in England as it has been in 
 other countries. The great barons had maintained 
 the liberties of the people together with their own, 
 and the people did not forget the debt they owed 
 them. The country gentlemen and the burgesses 
 had sat together in Parliament, in the name of the 
 Commons of England, for three centuries. But 
 during the preceding century a great change had 
 taken place in the relative strength of the several 
 classes of society, without any analogous change in \ 
 the government. Commercial activity and religious 
 zeal had given a prodigious impulse to wealth and 
 thought among the middle classes. It was ob- 
 served with surprise in one of the first parliaments 
 in the reign of Charles I. that the House of Com- 
 mons was three times as rich as the House of Lords. 
 The higher aristocracy no longer possessed the 
 same preponderance in the nation as heretofore, 
 and, though they still rallied round the King, could 
 no longer aflbrd him the same support. On the 
 other hand, the citizens, the country gentlemen 
 
14 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 and the yeomen (then a very numerous class), did 
 not exercise an influence over public affairs pro- 
 portionate to their weight in the country. Their 
 growth in wealth and importance had not been 
 accompanied by a corresponding increase of po- 
 litical power. Hence, among them and the classes 
 immediately below them, there existed a fierce and 
 vehement spirit of ambition, ready to burst forth on 
 the first occasion or pretext. Civil war offered a 
 vast field to their energy and their hopes. At 
 its outbreak, it did not wear the aspect of an ex- 
 clusive and jealous social classification ; for many 
 country gentlemen, and many even of the most 
 considerable of the great nobles, marched at the 
 head of the popular party. Nevertheless, the mass 
 of the nobility on the one hand, and of the citizens 
 and the people on the other, ranged themselves, the 
 former on the side of the Crown, the latter on that 
 of the Parliament. Unerring symptoms already 
 showed that a great social movement was going on 
 in the midst of a great political struggle ; and that 
 the effervescence of an ascendant democracy was 
 forcing its way through the ranks of an enfeebled 
 and divided aristocracy. 
 
 Each party found in the state of society — it 
 would hardly be too much to sa}^ in the laws of 
 tlie country — natural and almost regular means of 
 maintaininir their rifrhts and enforciuG; their claims 
 by arms. Ever since the reign of Ehzabeth, the 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 15 
 
 House of Commons had laboured with ardour to 
 destroy the hist tottering institutions of feudalism. 
 But profound traces of it still remained; and 
 the habits, sentiments, and even occasionally the 
 rules, to which it had given birth, still determined 
 the relations of the possessors of fiefs, both to the 
 King their suzerain, and to the part of the popula- 
 tion grouped around their castles or settled on their 
 lands. These people rose at their bidding, and 
 attended them to festivities or to battle, as they 
 themselves answered the call of the King when he 
 claimed their services. It was one of those epochs 
 of transition in which ancient laws, honoured 
 though antiquated, still determine the actions of 
 men on whom they are no longer binding. Attach- 
 ment had taken the place of servitude ; the fidelity 
 of the vassal had become the loyalty of the subject ; 
 and the Cavaliers, whether rich or poor, thronged 
 around the King, ready to fight and to die for him, 
 and followed by a troop or a handful of servants, 
 equally ready to fight and to die for them. 
 
 On the other hand, the middle classes, consisting 
 generally of artisans and townspeople, had, under 
 other forms, their means of independent action, and 
 even of waging war. Organized in municipal or 
 trading corporations, they met freely to discuss and 
 settle their affairs ; they levied taxes, called out mi- 
 litia or trained bands, and, in short, deliberated and 
 acted within the circuit of their walls, or the often 
 
16 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 obscure limits of their charters, almost with the 
 independence of petty sovereigns. And the ex- 
 tension of commerce and manufactures, the wealth, 
 connexions and credit of these corporations, in- 
 vested them with a power which they used in the 
 service of their cause with the audacity of new-born 
 and inexperienced pride. 
 
 Neither in the country nor in the towns did the 
 King possess the authority of a central and exclu- 
 sive administration. The business of the nation, 
 financial, military, and even judicial, was almost 
 entirely in the hands of local and nearly inde- 
 pendent authorities. In the country, it was in the 
 hands of the landholders ; in the towns, in those of 
 municipal or other corporate bodies ; and these 
 respectively appropriated to themselves as much as 
 possible of the administrative functions, for the 
 purpose of serving the cause in which they had 
 engaged. 
 
 And where these established means were insuffi- 
 cient, where the action extended be3^ond the sphere 
 of the ancient and recognised local powers, the 
 ancient spirit and usage of association (which was 
 still in full force in the country) promptly esta- 
 blished practical and efficient concert between tlie 
 counties and cities ; between the diffi^rent parts of 
 the country, or the different classes of society. By 
 means of this concert, free and extemporaneous 
 associations levied taxes and troops, formed com- 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 17 
 
 mittees, and elected leaders charged with the 
 conduct of the part they were to take in the general 
 defence of the cause they had embraced. 
 
 It was in an association of this kind — that of the 
 Eastern Counties — formed to support the Parlia- 
 ment, that Cromwell gave the first proofs of his 
 capacity, and laid the first foundations of his power. 
 
 In a community thus organized and thus dis- 
 posed, civil war was neither impossible nor revolt- 
 ing. It soon overspread the whole country ; in 
 some places under the command of the agents 
 of the King or the Parliament, in others spon- 
 taneously levied by the inhabitants ; and main- 
 tained on both sides with an energy sometimes 
 sad, but always unhesitating, as the exercise of a 
 right and the fulfilment of a duty. Each party 
 felt profoundly the justice and the greatness of 
 its cause ; each party made those efforts and 
 sacrifices in its behalf which elevate the mind, 
 even when confused and misled, and give to pas- 
 sion the appearance, and sometimes the merit of 
 virtue. Nor was virtue itself wanting to either 
 party. The Cavaliers, though generally violent 
 and licentious, had in their ranks the noblest models 
 of the high-bred and generous manners of men of 
 ancient family, full of unexacting devotedness and 
 dignified submission. The Puritans, arrogant and 
 hard, rendered an inappreciable service to their 
 country ; they founded the austerity of private life 
 
 c 
 
1 8 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 and the sanctity of domestic manners. The two 
 parties fought with the most determined acrimony ; 
 but, in the midst of the mortal struggle, they did 
 not renounce all sentiments of order and peace. 
 There were no sanguinary riots, no judicial mas- 
 sacres. There was civil war, fierce, obstinate, full 
 of violence and of evil, but without cynical or atro- 
 cious excesses, and restrained, by the general man- 
 ners of the people, within certain bounds of justice 
 and humanity. 
 
 I hasten to render this justice to the conflicting 
 parties; for the virtues of parties are frail and 
 transient when breathed upon by the hot breath, 
 and shaken by the storms, of revolutions. In pro- 
 portion as civil war was prolonged, respect for 
 rights and sentiments of justice and generosity 
 grew more and more feeble. The natural conse- 
 quences of a state of revolution manifested them- 
 selves ; gradually perverting, in both parties, the 
 ideas and habits of law and morals. The King was 
 in want of money ; the Cavaliers used this as a 
 reason or a pretext for unlicensed pillage. The 
 taxes levied by the Parliament did not suffice for the 
 expenses of the war; the Parliament established a 
 system of confiscation more or less disguised, which, 
 by branding its enemies with the name of Malig- 
 nants, rendered it master of tlieir revenues, often 
 even of their lands, and thus became a daily source 
 of wealth to its partisans. In this general and 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 19 
 
 protracted disorder, amidst the abuses of power 
 and the extremities of distress, bad passions were 
 incessantly excited, and lawless desires exposed 
 to the temptation of cliance and opportunity ; hate 
 and revenge took possession of the more energetic 
 minds; fear and baseness, of the feebler. The 
 Parliament, which pretended to act in the name of 
 the laws, and to serve tlie King\ even while resist- 
 ing him, was compelled to clothe its most violent 
 deeds in false and hypocritical language. Among- 
 the Royalists, many, mistrusting the King's dupli- 
 city, called upon to make sacrifices beyond their 
 means, and daily more doubtful of the success of 
 their cause, felt the warmth of their devotion 
 decline, and either submitted in despair, or sought 
 compensation in licence. Falsehood, violence, rapa- 
 city, pusillanimity and selfishness under every 
 variety of form, rapidly increased among the men 
 engaged in the conflict ; while the people, who took 
 only a remote or indirect part in it, and were 
 subjected to the detestable influence of the spectacle 
 of a revolution, gradually lost their notions of 
 right, duty, justice and virtue, or preserved only 
 dim and wavering traces of them. 
 
 At the same time they suffered severely in their 
 pecuniary interests. War, unrestrained by dis- 
 cipline and spread over the whole face of the land, 
 ravaged town and country, destroying the subsist- 
 ence, or defeating the hopes and the labours of the 
 
 c 2 
 
20 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 people. The financial measures of Parliament, 
 made subservient to local hostilities and intrigues, 
 threw landed property into confusion and depre- 
 ciated its value. All security for the business of 
 the present or the labours of the future was at an 
 end. Even domestic life was aftected by the gene- 
 ral disorder, and families the furthest removed from 
 political strife were sharers in the general calamity. 
 And as alarm always travels further and swifter 
 than suffering, the country, fallen into a state of 
 fearful distress, was a prey to an anxiety more 
 general and more fearful than the distress itself. 
 
 Its complaints and wishes were not long in 
 bursting forth. War was still raging in all its 
 fierceness, when already the cry of " Peace," 
 " Peace," resounded at the doors of the Parliament. 
 Frequent petitions demanding it were brought up 
 by assemblages of men so numerous and so excited 
 that it was necessary to disperse them by force. 
 In the House of Commons, notwithstanding the 
 general secession of the original Royalist party, 
 a second was formed in the name of peace, whose 
 main object was to seize every occasion of pro- 
 claiming its necessity, and of opening negotiations 
 with the King. These were attempted several times, 
 but failed, through the intrigues of those, in both 
 parties, who were averse to the mutual concessions 
 which peace Avould have required ; and through the 
 incapacity or the weakness of those who, while they 
 
 1 
 
 I 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 21 
 
 would willingly have consented to the inevitable 
 conditions of a peace, dared not openly accede to 
 them. Civil war continued to rage ; but the 
 party which had begun it was divided, and the 
 strus'ole for and ao-ainst revolution was renewed in 
 the Parliament. 
 
 Out of doors, especially in the country, the 
 people did not rest satisfied with demanding peace 
 at the hands of the Parliament ; they tried to en- 
 force it themselves, locally at least, on both the con- 
 tending parties. Associations were formed and took 
 arms, declaring that they would no longer suffer 
 their fields to be ravaged either by Parliamentarians 
 or Royalists, and giving battle to wliicliever 
 party fell in their way ; — a sort of armed neutrality 
 in the midst of civil war. The attempt, however 
 vain, sufficed to prove how profoundl}^ the furious 
 and obstinate conflicts of the two parties were at 
 variance with the sentiments and interests of the 
 country. 
 
 So long as the war was hot and the issue doubtful, 
 the sufferings and impressions of the people, though 
 they produced a reaction in favour of peace, excited 
 in them buta feeble and hesitating return of loyalty 
 towards the King. They accused him of stubborn- 
 ness and falsehood, and complained bitterly of his 
 secret plots with the Queen and the Catholics, who 
 were the objects of vehement hatred and dread. 
 They reproached him, at least as much as the 
 
22 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 Parliament, with the evils and the prolongation of 
 the war. 
 
 When the war was ended, and the King a prisoner 
 in the hands of the Parliament, the reaction in 
 favour of peace assumed a more general and de- 
 cided royalist character. The King was utterly 
 powerless, and bore his misfortunes with dignity. 
 The Parliament was all powerful, and did not put 
 an end to the calamities of the country. On the 
 Parliament now rested the whole responsibility ; 
 on the Parliament were thrown all the discontents, 
 the disappointed hopes, the suspicions and hates, 
 the curses of the present, the terrors of the future. 
 
 Urged by this national sentiment, and enlightened 
 by the imminence of the danger, the political re- 
 formers, (who had been the first leaders of the par- 
 liamentary resistance,) and in their train a portion 
 of the religious innovators (the Presbyterians, who, 
 though enemies to the Episcopal Church, were 
 friendly to the monarchy), made a last effort to 
 bring about a peace with the King and to put an 
 end at once to war and revolution. 
 
 They were sincere, and even ardent, in their de- 
 sire, but they were still full of the revolutionary 
 prejudices and pretensions which had repeatedly 
 rendered peace impossible. By the conditions they 
 sought to impose upon the King, they required him 
 to sanction tlie ruin they had brought on the 
 Monarchy and the Church ; they required him to 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 23 
 
 complete witJi his own hands the demolition of the 
 edifice in which alone he could hope for safety, and 
 of that on which his faith was fixed. 
 
 They had proclaimed as a principle, and reduced 
 to practice, the substantial sovereignty of the House 
 of Commons ; and now, constrained in their turn 
 to resist the popular torrent, they were astonished 
 at finding distrust and hostility, instead of support 
 and strength, from the high aristocracy and the 
 church which they had decried and demolished. 
 
 Even if they had succeeded in concluding a peace 
 with the King, that peace would have been vain. 
 It was too late to stop the course of the revolution, 
 and too soon to bring it to its permanent and satis- 
 factory conclusion. God had only begun to execute 
 his judgments and to teach his lessons. As soon as 
 the first leaders of the insurrection tried to rebuild 
 the structure which they had overthrown, the real 
 revolutionar}^ party arose ; and treating their newly 
 acquired wisdom with open contempt, drove them 
 from the Parliament, condemned the King to death, 
 and proclaimed the Republic. 
 
 Two centuries have elapsed since the English Re- 
 public put to death King Charles I., and, in a few 
 short years, crumbled to dust on the soil still wet 
 with the blood it had shed. The French Republic 
 
24 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTOKY OF 
 
 has since exhibited the same spectacle. And we still 
 hear it said that these great crimes were acts of a 
 great policy ; that they were enjoined by the 
 necessity of founding those Republics which hardly 
 survived them a day ! 
 
 Thus do men try to clothe their folly and wicked- 
 ness in the garb of greatness ; but neither the 
 truth of history nor the interest of mankind can 
 tolerate so darins: and mischievous a falsehood. 
 
 The fervour of religious conviction and religious 
 liberty had degenerated in some sects into an arro- 
 ofant ao;oTessive fanaticism, intractable to all au- 
 thority, and delighting only in outbursts of intellec- 
 tual licentiousness and spiritual pride. Civil war 
 had converted these sectarians into soldiers, at once 
 disputatious and . devoted, enthusiastic and disci- 
 plined. Having risen in general from the humbler 
 classes and professions, they greedily relished the 
 pleasure of commanding and predominating over 
 others; they exulted in the belief that they were 
 the chosen and powerful instruments of God's 
 will and judgments on earth. By alternately 
 appealing to religious and democratic enthusiasm, 
 and enforcing military discipline, Cromwell had 
 gained the confidence of these men, and had be- 
 come their leader. He had spent his youth in the 
 excesses of an ungovernable temperament, which 
 were succeeded by fits of ardent and restless piety, 
 and by active services rendered to the people among 
 
THE ENGLISH PxEVOLUTION. 25 
 
 whom he lived. As soon as a political and war- 
 like career opened before him, he rushed headlong 
 into it, as the only one in which he could find 
 room for the employment of his powers and the 
 satisfaction of his passions. He was the most vehe- 
 ment of sectaries, the most active of revolutionists, 
 the ablest of soldiers; ready alike to speak, to 
 pray, to conspire, and to fight; atone time pour- 
 ins; out his thouohts with a warmth and frank- 
 ness that carried away his hearers ; and, in case 
 of need, playing the hypocrite with a cool and 
 inexhaustible mendacity, and a fertility of invention, 
 which surprised and perplexed even his enemies; 
 enthusiastic yet worldly, rash j^et perspicacious, 
 mystical yet practical, he set no bounds to the 
 soarings of his imagination, and he felt no scruples 
 Vn perpetrating any act which the necessity of 
 the case enjoined ; determined on success at all 
 costs, discerning and seizing with matchless promp- 
 titude the means necessary to obtain it, and im- 
 pressing on all, whether friends or foes, the con- 
 viction that he was gifted above all men with 
 the qualities necessary to the vigorous conduct and 
 complete success of an enterprise. 
 
 To such a party, led by such a man, a Republic 
 was sure to be welcome. It gratified their passions, 
 opened a vista to their most ambitious hopes, and 
 gave security to the interests which civil v.ar had 
 created in their favour. It delivered the country 
 
26 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 into the hands of the army by the genius of 
 its commander, and the sovereign power into 
 those of Cromwell by the disciplined aid of his 
 soldiers. 
 
 Respect for their sincerity, their genius, and tlieir 
 misfortunes, restrains me from fully expressing my 
 opinion concerning some illustrious men. Sidney, 
 Vane, Ludlow, Harrington, Hutchinson and Mil- 
 ton were Republicans, but rather in accordance with 
 the political systems and models of antiquity, than 
 from religious fanaticism. They were men of lofty 
 spirits and proud hearts, full of noble ambition for 
 their country and for mankind ; but so injudicious 
 and so insanely proud, that they learned nothing 
 either from power or from defeat. Credulous as 
 childhood, and obstinate as age ; blinded by hope to 
 their perils and their faults ; they were, while 
 preparing the way by their own anarchical tyranny 
 for a more consistent and a more powerful tyrann}^ 
 persuaded that they Avere founding the freest and 
 most glorious of governments. 
 
 Excepting these sects enrolled into regiments, 
 and these coteries constituting a Parliament, nobody 
 in England wished for a Republic. It offended 
 against the traditions, the manners, the laws, the 
 old attachments, the old reverence, the regular 
 interests, the good order, the good sense, and the 
 moral sentiments of the country. 
 
 Irritated and alarmed by the manifest aversion 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 27 
 
 of the public for their designs, Cromwell and the 
 sectaries thought that a form of government so 
 generally and vehemently rejected conld only be 
 established by instantly striking a terrible and irre- 
 vocable blow, which would prove its strength and 
 vindicate its right. They determined to consecrate 
 the Republic on the scaffold of Charles I. 
 
 But even the ablest leaders of revolutions are 
 not long-sighted. Intoxicated by the passion, 
 or hurried away by the necessity, of the moment, 
 they do not see that the very acts which secure 
 their triumph to-day, will bring about their down- 
 fall to-morrow. The execution of Charles I., 
 which struck the country with consternation, de- 
 livered England into the hands of Cromwell and 
 the Republicans. But the blow which killed the 
 King rebounded with mortal force on the Republic 
 and the Protector ; from that moment, their rule 
 was nothing more than a violent and ephemeral 
 domination, branded with that mark of consummate 
 iniquity which dooms the strongest and most im- 
 posing power to certain ruin. 
 
 Charles the First's judges did everything in 
 their power to divest their act of its fatal cha- 
 racter, and to represent it as a judgment of God, 
 which they were commissioned to execute. Charles 
 had aimed at absolute power, and had carried on 
 civil war ; many rights had unquestionabl}^ been 
 violated, and much blood had been shed, by his 
 
28 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 orders or with liis consent. Upon him, then, they 
 threw the whole responsibihty of the misgovern- 
 ment and the war; tliey called him to account 
 for all the liberties that had been trodden under 
 foot, and all the blood that had been spilt ; — 
 nameless crimes which only death could expiate. 
 But the conscience of a people, even when dis- 
 tracted with trouble and terror, is not to be so com- 
 pletely misled. Others, besides the King, had been 
 guilty of oppression and bloodshed. If the King 
 had violated the rights of his subjects, the rights of 
 the Crown, which were no less ancient, no less 
 established by law, and no less necessary to the 
 maintenance of the public liberties, had been equally 
 assailed and violated. The King had made war, but 
 in his own defence. It was notorious that at the mo- 
 ment when he resolved on war, they were preparing 
 to wage it against him ; to force him, after all the 
 concessions he had made, to surrender the small 
 remains of his rights and prerogatives, and the last 
 wreck of the legal government of the countr)^ 
 And now that the King was utterly subdued, he 
 was tried and condemned without law and contrary 
 to law for acts which no law had ever contem- 
 plated or treated as crimes ; whicli it had never 
 occurred either to tlie King or the people to regard 
 as coming under the jurisdiction of men, or punish- 
 able by tlicir hands. What universal indignation 
 and horror would have burst forth if the most 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 29 
 
 obscure citizen of Eno-land had been treated in the 
 same manner, and put to death for crimes created 
 ex j^ost facto by pretended judges, who had been 
 his enemies, and who were now aspiring to succeed 
 him in his power ! And what no one would have 
 dared to attempt against the meanest Englishman, 
 was now actually done against the King of Eng- 
 land, the supreme head of the Church as well as 
 of the State, the representative and the symbol of 
 authority and order, law and justice; of every- 
 thing in human society that approaches the 
 boundary and suggests the idea of the attributes 
 of divinity. 
 
 There is no fanaticism, however blnid, which, 
 even in the moment of its triumph, has not seen 
 some bright ray of truth break upon it, — sometimes 
 even from its own centre ; there is no policy, 
 however deep and crooked, which has not lieard 
 some solemn and unexpected protest from the con- 
 science of mankind. Vane and Sidney, the two 
 most illustrious men of the Republican party, and 
 one of whom had been nominated amono; the Kino's 
 judges, refused, either from conscientious or pru- 
 dential scruples, to take any part in the trial, and 
 left London to avoid being witnesses of it. And 
 when the House of Commons, now absolute sove- 
 reign of the country, nominated the republican 
 Council of State, twenty-two, out of its forty-one 
 members, positively refused to take the oath which 
 
30 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 contained an a}3proval of the King's sentence. The 
 republican regicides, with Cromwell at their head, 
 were compelled to accept as colleagues men whom 
 nothing could induce to pass for tlieir accomplices. 
 
 The resistance which the new form of government 
 encountered was at first merely passive, but it was 
 almost universal. 
 
 Six out of the twelve judges absolutely refused 
 to continue the exercise of their functions, and the 
 six others only consented to sit, on condition that 
 they should continue to administer justice according 
 to the ancient laws of the country. To these terms 
 the Republican Parliament acceded. 
 
 Orders had been given that the Republic should be 
 proclaimed in the City of London. The Lord Mayor 
 refused ; he was superseded and thrown into prison : 
 but though a new Lord Mayor was chosen, three 
 months passed away before the proclamation was 
 attempted, and when at length it was read, several 
 aldermen absented themselves from the ceremony, 
 which, in spite of the presence of troops, was inter- 
 rupted by popular insult. The Common Council 
 of the City was re-organized ; several of the mem- 
 bers elected refused to serve, and it was necessary 
 that a smaller number than that appointed by law 
 should be empowered to act. The Government was 
 on the point of being driven to abolish the francliises 
 of the City. 
 
 When the Mint was ordered to coin Republican 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 31 
 
 money, the Master declared that he would have 
 nothing to do with it, and threw up his office. 
 
 Civil functionaries and beneficed clergymen were 
 required to take an oath of fidelity to the Republic, 
 and though it was rendered as simple and inoffen- 
 sive as possible, thousands gave up their places or 
 their livings rather than comply. ]\Iore than a 
 year after the establishment of the Republic, the 
 Assembly of the Presbyterian Clergy, held in 
 London, formally declared that it was not lawful to 
 take it. In the Universities of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge it was made compulsory ; upon which the 
 most eminent members of those learned corpo- 
 rations resigned their offices. 
 
 The order issued to efface and destroy the in- 
 signia of royalty on all public edifices throughout 
 England, vras scarcely anywhere executed. It was 
 reiterated several times with no better success ; and 
 the Republic, which had been established for more 
 than two years, was compelled to repeat the same 
 injunction all over the country, and to render the 
 parishes responsible for its execution. 
 
 Lastly, it was not till nearly two years after the 
 King's death, that the Republican Parliament dared 
 to pass a formal vote, declaring that the authors, 
 judges, and executors of that act had done their 
 duty, approving the whole proceeding, and order- 
 ing it to be entered on the journals of Parliament. 
 
 Never did a people, vanquislied by a révolu- 
 
.32 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 tionary faction, and enduring its defeat without 
 open insurrection, more distinctly refuse to recog- 
 nise the authority of its conquerors. 
 
 The passive resistance of the country to the 
 Republican Government was soon succeeded by 
 the attacks of declared enemies. 
 
 The first proceeded from the Republicans them- 
 selves. In the seventeenth century, as in tlie nine- 
 teenth, that name covered ideas, designs, and parties 
 profoundly different in character. Behind thereform- 
 ers of political institutions came the reformers of social 
 order, and behind them, again, the destroyers of all 
 order and all society. The Republic of Sidney and 
 of Milton did not go far enough to satisfy the pas- 
 sions and pretensions of fanatics or democrats, more 
 blind and more unbridled in proportion as their 
 social condition was meaner. Levellers openly 
 arose, and Communists began to show themselves. 
 The Republic had hardly existed six months when 
 four insurrections of sectarian soldiers, excited and 
 kept alive by an incessant fire of pamphlets, ser- 
 mons, and popular processions, revealed to the W' orld 
 the dissensions of its partisans, and endangered the 
 stability of its government. 
 
 The royalist party was more tardy in its revolt. 
 Its repeated defeats, the execution of the King, and 
 the relentless severity with which it was kept down, 
 had struck it with a sort of stupor. But the dissen- 
 sions of its conquerors and the evident aversion 
 
THE ENGLISH KEVOLUTIOX. 33 
 
 of the people to the new government, soon awakened 
 it to life and hope. In two 3'ears, seven plots and 
 insurrections, emanating from pure or presbyterian 
 Royalists, who Avere equally ardent enemies of the 
 Republic, proved to its leaders that the blow which 
 had been fatal to the Monarch, had not eradicated 
 the attachment to the Monarchy. 
 
 In a short time a secret understanding arose 
 between the royalist and the republican conspira- 
 tors, the Cavaliers and the Levellers. They con- 
 spired together ; for a common hatred obliterates all 
 lesser hostilities. 
 
 And while England was torn by this wild 
 anarchy, Scotland and Ireland, both royalist, 
 thougli from very different motives and with very 
 different sentiments, openly declared against the 
 Republic, proclaimed Charles Stuart king, and en- 
 gaged in a war for his restoration ; the former in- 
 viting Charles himself, and the latter his represen- 
 tatives, to take the lead in the insurrection. 
 
 In this dislocation of the three kingdoms, 
 while plots laid by opposite parties, but tend- 
 ing to the same end, were no sooner defeated 
 than revived, and alternately raised or overthrew 
 the ambitions and the schemes of all parties 
 throughout the country, the bonds of society were 
 loosened, and the springs of authority rapidly 
 gave V\'a3\ There was no longer any order or 
 security. In the administration of counties and 
 
 D 
 
34 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 parishes, in the general and local finances, in public 
 employments and private fortunes, all the interests 
 of civil life were thrown into confusion. The high 
 roads, and even the neighbourhood of cities, were 
 infested with gangs of robbers, whose political pas- 
 sions served as pretexts for their crimes. They 
 asked those whom they stopped, whether they had 
 taken the oath of fidelity to the Republic, and 
 maltreated or released them according to the 
 tenor of their answer. It became necessary to 
 station bodies of troops at various points, and to 
 keep several regiments of cavalry incessantly in 
 motion; and even these energetic measures of 
 repression had but a very imperfect success; for 
 the disorganization of society produced more disor- 
 ders than it was in the power of the Republican 
 Government to put down. 
 
 Though assailed by dangers so numerous and 
 pressing, the leaders of the Republican Parliament 
 betrayed no weakness. They possessed energy and 
 firmness, the oflfspring, in some, of faith in their 
 cause, in others, of imperious personal interests. 
 Their noblest hopes and their most selfish fears, their 
 honour and their life, were equally engaged in their 
 enterprise. They devoted themselves to it cou- 
 rageously ; but they made a blind and prodigal 
 use of those vicious means which save a cause for 
 a moment to ruin it completely in the end. 
 
 From the very outset they carried political 
 
THE ENGLISH KEVOLUTIOX. 35 
 
 tyranny almost to its utmost limits ; for they decreed 
 that any man who, in the coarse of the civil war, 
 had adhered to the King or showed hostility to the 
 Parliament, should be incapable of being elected 
 Member of Parliament, or of holding any important 
 office in the state. Shortly after, the same dis- 
 ability was extended to every municipal function, 
 and even to the right of voting at elections ; 
 thus, at one stroke, reducing all the adversaries 
 of the Republic to the condition of Helots, without 
 political rights or pohtical existence in their own 
 country. 
 
 The oath of fidelity had, at first, been required 
 only from civil or ecclesiastical functionaries, and 
 their refusal was followed b}^ no other consequence 
 than the loss of their places. But the great number 
 of refusals irritated and alarmed tlie conquerors. 
 For the gratification of their anger, and in the vain 
 hope of freeing themselves from their uneasiness, 
 they imposed the oath on every Englishman above 
 eighteen years of age; and, visiting political dissent 
 with civil incapacity, they enacted that whoever 
 refused to take it, should not be allowed to appear 
 in a court of justice, even in defence of his own 
 interests. 
 
 Sequestration and confiscation were employed 
 against the vanquished, with the most intolerable 
 and revolting injustice; not according to any fixed 
 rule or general principle, but by particular and fluctu- 
 
 D 2 
 
36 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 ating decisions. They were aggravated or extenuated 
 according to the wants of the moment, the avidity 
 of a powerful enem}^ or some unforeseen accident. 
 The lists of names were incomplete and arbitrary ; 
 so that those who felt the danger impending over 
 them, could never know with any degree of cer- 
 tainty what was their situation, or what their pro- 
 bable fate. 
 
 Since the cessation of the war, the only weapon 
 left in the hands of the conquered Royalists or 
 Levellers was the Press. They used it boldly, as the 
 conquering party had done through the whole of 
 their struggle with the King. They might well 
 think they had a right to do so ; since Mr. Mabbott, 
 the last censor under the monarchy, had resigned 
 his office because he would no longer serve as 
 an instrument of tyranny ; and Milton, the first 
 Secretary of the republican Council of State, bad 
 eloquently vindicated the liberty of the press, as an 
 essential right of a free people. Though the repub- 
 lican government did not appoint a new censor, it 
 passed a law on the press, rigorous enough to satisfy 
 the most jealous despotism. The privilege of printing 
 was confined to four cities, London, York, Oxford, and 
 Cambridge; no journal or other periodical writing 
 could appear without a licence from the govern- 
 ment ; printers were compelled to find sureties ; 
 and not only were those who had in any way contri- 
 buted to a seditious publication declared guilty and 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. S? 
 
 punished, but every purchaser of any such publica- 
 tion was subject to a fine, if he did not deliver up 
 the book to the nearest magistrate within four and 
 twenty hours, and give notice of its dangerous ten- 
 dency. 
 
 There was one liberty, that of conscience, which, 
 it might have been presumed, would have been 
 more respected by the Republic. It had always 
 been put forward by the republican sectaries as 
 one of the main objects of the war. They not 
 only stood in need of it for themselves, but their 
 principles imperatively enjoined it, for they re- 
 jected all general and obligatory church govern- 
 ment, and held the right of each separate con- 
 gregation to govern itself. But from one of the 
 most deplorable perversities of our nature, it hap- 
 pens that men's inconsistency nowhere displays itself 
 in so full and glaring a manner as on the very 
 point where it is the most iniquitous and revolting. 
 The very men who had, in practice, devoted 
 themselves with admirable constancy to the cause 
 of religious liberty for the last half century, 
 and, in theory, had made that liberty the basis 
 of all Christian society, no sooner attained to 
 sovereign power, than they absolutely denied all 
 liberty to three large classes of persons, Catholics, 
 Episcopalians and Freethinkers. Against the 
 Catholics persecution knew no bounds ; their faith 
 and worship were absolutely proscribed ; the laity 
 
> 
 
 38 DISCOUKSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 were subjected to disabilities and privileged confis- 
 cations, and the priests to imprisonment, banish- 
 ment and even death. The Protestant Episcopalian 
 Church, overthrown and dispersed by the presby- 
 terian parliament, had to undergo yet harder trials 
 under the republican ; for the sectarians wanted to 
 wreak their vengeance for the past, and to free 
 themselves from fears for the future. They went 
 so far as to forbid the presence of her ministers, 
 and the use of her liturgy and prayers, even 
 in the bosom of private families. As to the 
 Freethinkers, less rare at that time than is usu- 
 ally supposed, if one were found who, from im- 
 prudence or from hatred of hypocrisy, openly 
 declared his opinions, he was arrested, imprisoned, 
 excluded from parliament, and deprived of every 
 public employment, however humble. The Presby- 
 terians, as enemies of the Episcopalians, enjoyed 
 a certain degree of toleration ; but it was limited, 
 precarious, and often troubled by the suspicion or 
 the violence of the sectaries, to whom their church 
 government and their monarchical sentiments were 
 equally offensive. Vainly did a few more generous 
 spirits in the Republican . Parliament make some 
 attempts to soften these rigours ; they soon felt, 
 and resigned themselves to their own impotence. 
 Religious liberty existed only for the victorious 
 republican sects, who forgot or tolerated their own 
 religious differences in favour of a common poli- 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 39 
 
 tical cause, which they knew was exposed to con- 
 tinual peril. 
 
 To maintain a political tyranny so vast and 
 inexorable, judicial tyranny was indispensable; and 
 the Republican Parliament exercised it without 
 scruple. The King's trial, that monstrous viola- 
 tion of all the principles and forms of justice, 
 became the model of state trials generally. To 
 curb the seditious spirit of the Levellers, martial 
 law was sufficient ; but when a royalist insurrection 
 broke out, or a royalist plot was discovered, a high 
 court of justice, appointed by the Parliament itself, 
 was immediately constituted, and was in fact a 
 special commission, exempted from the rules, and 
 affording none of the guarantees of law. If the 
 Parliament feared that the proceedings would ex- 
 cite the indignation or the pity of the country, 
 the publication of them was absolutely prohibited. 
 These extraordinary tribunals were employed not 
 only against men of weight, but also to terrify ob- 
 scure masses, innocent of any crimes cognizable by 
 the ordinary courts. Before the Republic was pro- 
 claimed, some Thames boatmen had petitioned for 
 peace with the King. The Parliament sent their 
 petition, signed with their names, to the new high 
 court which it had instituted for the trial of five of 
 the principal royalist leaders ; thus using the instru- 
 ment framed for the destruction of the great, to strike 
 terror into the humble. In cases in which a resort 
 
40 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF ; 
 
 to these high courts would have caused too much 
 popular agitation or too much preparation and delay, 
 the Republican Parliament administered justice it- 
 self: by a mere vote of its own, and in order to crush 
 a stubborn foe, or to subserve the passions or cover 
 the faults of a leader, it imposed enormous fines, and 
 sentenced to the pillory or banishment. Some of 
 the political reformers, for example, whose spirit the 
 republican party had not broken, although it had 
 driven them from parliament, were arbitrarily de- 
 tained in remote prisons. Cavaliers, catholics, sol- 
 diers of fortune who had served in the royal army, 
 all, in short, who were liable to any suspicion, were 
 banished from London in a mass. And if any roy- 
 alist writer, instead of conspiring in secret, openly 
 denounced the real or supposed crimes of the re- 
 publican chiefs, he was arrested and sent to the 
 Tower, where he often remained awaiting his trial 
 till released by death. 
 
 These violent oppressions in the midst of anarchy 
 seemed more odious and intolerable coming from 
 men who had demanded so much of the King, and 
 promised so largely for themselves, in the way of 
 liberty ; from men most of whom were till then ob- 
 scure, and had risen from ranks and conditions in 
 which the people were not accustomed to look for 
 rulers. The authority which they wielded in so arbi- 
 trary a manner rested on their personal merit and 
 the military force at their command ; but the former, 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 41 
 
 unless it is transcendant, is always a disputable 
 claim to the exercise of sovereign power ; whilst the 
 latter is a title which alienates those who submit to 
 it, so long as they retain a particle of independence 
 or self-respect. 
 
 Though dizzied both by their elevation and their 
 danger, several of the republican leaders had a 
 sense of their situation, and of the public feeling 
 with regard to them ; and, at the summit of power, 
 they felt that they were isolated and generally con- 
 temned. There is no power that can give its pos- 
 sessor confidence in isolation, or indifference to con- 
 tempt. They ardently desired to gain other titles 
 to dominion than those they had acquired by civil 
 war and regicide, and to raise themselves by some 
 great national act to the height of their fortunes. 
 They meditated and prepared various reforms in the 
 laws and the administration of justice; but the most 
 important of these (of very questionable merit in 
 themselves) were vehemently opposed by the most 
 considerable men of their own party, and, instead of 
 raising the Republic in general estimation, would 
 have drawn upon it the unpopularity which at- 
 tached to sectarians and levellers. It was clear that 
 no measure of internal government w^ould give the 
 republican leaders the consideration which they 
 wanted. Thev turned their thoug-hts therefore abroad. 
 The dignity and interests of the country in its rela- 
 tions with foreign powers might be maintained with 
 
42 DISCOUKSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 little effort and no risk. The age of religious wars was 
 drawing to a close, while that of political wars had 
 not yet begun. None of the European governments, 
 however they might detest the new Republic, had 
 any intention of attacking it; on the contrary, all 
 sought its friendship, which they hoped to use 
 against their rivals. Mere neutrality secured to Eng- 
 land peace, entire independence in her internal 
 affairs, and a great weight in those of the Conti- 
 nent. But the parliamentary leaders wanted 
 more than this. Of the three powerful states 
 from which the Republic had the most to fear 
 or to hope, France and Spain were monarch- 
 ical and catholic, and were the natural, though 
 disguised adversaries of the Republic ; whilst Hol- 
 land, as protestant and republican, naturally sym- 
 pathized with England. An idea arose, and 
 rapidly produced a great excitement among the 
 daring and restless spirits of the Parliament. 
 Why should not England and Holland unite to 
 form one great republic, which would soon secure 
 throughout Europe the triumph of their common 
 policy and faith ? Here was matter to inflame 
 the most pious, and to employ the most ambi- 
 tious. What would be the gratitude of England 
 towards the men wlio should thus enhance her o-reat- 
 ness, while satisfying her conscience and lier pride ! 
 If this could be brought about, the Monarchy would 
 be forgotten, and the Republic firmly established, 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 43 
 
 and the Republican Parliament would become a se- 
 nate of kings. 
 
 The republican leaders engaged in the project 
 with enthusiasm : some using indirect influences, 
 by industriously propagating their opinions; others 
 undertaking solemn embassies, and endeavouring to 
 lay the foundation of a firm union between the coun- 
 tries. But revolutionary dreams are yet vainer as to 
 the foreign, than as to the internal affairs of a state. 
 The English Republicans were pleased to forget that, 
 as a consequence of the fusion which they contem- 
 plated, Holland would be entirely absorbed by 
 England, and that she might not be disposed 
 to consent to this arrangement. And, in fact, she 
 refused to listen to the bare insinuation of the 
 project. The Dutch Republicans, taught by a cen- 
 tury of laboriously earned successes, were too proud 
 to sacrifice their country, and too wise to bind its 
 destinies, to this Utopian scheme of an infant and 
 yet tottering Republic. On the other hand, the 
 cause of the English royalists was favoured, not 
 only by the House of Orange, but by a large por- 
 tion of the Dutch people, whose feeling of justice 
 was outraged by the murder of Charles I., and 
 whose good sense Avas shocked by the wild visions 
 of the English sectaries; the just pride of Holland 
 instantly dissipated the dream to which the ambi- 
 tious pride of the English Parliament had given 
 birth. But such attempts, even when abortive, 
 
44 ' DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 are not made with impunity. From the distrust 
 and jealousy sown between the two countries, 
 (already rivals in commercial and maritime great- 
 ness,) and of wounded self-love and bitter resent- 
 ment between their rulers, a war sj3eedily arose ; 
 so that the magnificent diplomatic visions of the 
 protestant and republican Parliament of England 
 ended in an open rupture and a violent conflict 
 with the only republican and protestant state on 
 the continent of Europe. 
 
 Thus, abroad as well as at home, the principles 
 of the English Republicans were behed, and their 
 hopes defeated, by their own policy. They had 
 promised freedom, and they had exercised tyranny. 
 They had promised the union of protestants and 
 the triumph of protestantism, and they had raised a 
 war between the countries which were the main 
 bulwarks of the protestant cause. 
 
 It was in vain that the republican government 
 had gained battles and suppressed its enemies. 
 Notwithstanding its successes, and the general sub- 
 mission of the country, the Republic did not take 
 root in the soil, and its leaders daily lost ground in 
 the respect and consideration of the people. 
 
 Oliver Cromwell, the man who had been the 
 principal author of the King's death and the esta- 
 blishment of the Republic, had a presentiment of this 
 result, and now prepared to take advantage of it. 
 No sooner was this change consummated than a 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 45 
 
 mighty but natural metamorphosis took place in 
 Cromwell. Till then, goaded by fanaticism and 
 ambition, he had bent his whole powers to the 
 destruction of the enemies of his faith and the 
 obstacles to his fortune. But now that the work 
 of revolution was accomplished, he saw that the 
 next necessary step was to re-construct the govern- 
 ment. Providence, which rarely endows one man 
 with powers so different, had marked out Cromwell 
 for this double work. The revolutionist disappeared 
 and gave place to the dictator. 
 
 While Cromwell's great and vigorous mind per- 
 ceived what the new state of things imperiously 
 demanded, he saw no less clearly that the govern- 
 ment which his colleagues were attempting to 
 establish would not satisfy the exigencies of the 
 times. Neither the institutions nor the men were 
 equal to the occasion. The institutions, from their 
 total want of unity, stability, and of any principle 
 of life and growth, tended to foster intestine war 
 and create perpetual uncertainty at. the seat of 
 power ; whilst the conduct of the men was deter- 
 mined by narrow or chimerical views, and by petty 
 'and blind passions. It was easy to perceive that such 
 institutions and such leaders would perpetuate the 
 struggle between the government and the countr3^ 
 From the time when the Parliament and its chiefs 
 were exalted into sovereigns, Cromwell's good sense 
 had weighed them and found them wanting. He 
 
46 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 saw that no strong and regular government could 
 spring from such a source. 
 
 From that moment his chief care was to disso- 
 ciate himself from the policy and the destiny of 
 these men or these institutions ; to keep aloof from 
 their faults and their reverses, and, while he served 
 the Parliament, to separate himself from it. 
 
 But to separate himself was not enough; it was 
 necessary that he should grow in strength and re- 
 nown, while others were working their own ruin. 
 Cromwell foresaw the downfall of the Parliament 
 and its leaders, and he determined not only not to 
 share tlieir fall, but to rise upon their ruins. 
 
 Men whose greatness lies in action do not lay far- 
 reaching and elaborate plans of conduct. They are 
 prompted by instinct and ambition : they look at 
 the facts wliich every day brings forth, and every 
 event modifies, as they really are; they see the 
 course which these facts point out, and the chances 
 which it offers ; they enter upon it with spirit, and 
 advance boldly as far as it will lead them. Crom- 
 well went onwards to the dictatorship without any 
 distinct perception of the end to which he was 
 going, or the perils and sacrifices of the way; but 
 he never hesitated or halted in his course. 
 
 The Parliament unconsciously seconded his views ; 
 it oftercd him exactly the position, isolated and 
 distinct from the reigning power, of which he was 
 in quest. Cromwell's presence in London was so 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 47 
 
 inconvenient and disquieting to the leaders, that 
 they asked him to take the command of the army 
 equipped for the reduction of Ireland, which had 
 risen for Charles Stuart, or rather, against the Par- 
 liament. Cromwell not only waited to be en- 
 treated, but made large demands in favour of his 
 numerous friends, to whom he was a zealous patron ; 
 and stipulated, on his own account, for a well-pro- 
 vided army, high dignity, unlimited powers, and 
 all the other means of assured success. They were 
 so eager to be rid of him that they gave him all he 
 demanded. His departure was solemn and magnifi- 
 cent. Sermons were preached, predicting or pray- 
 ing for his success ; Cromwell himself spoke and 
 prayed in public, and quoted passages from the 
 Bible of an encouraging nature, which he applied 
 to the war he was about to undertake. He marched 
 out of London surrounded by a numerous guard 
 of officers splendidl}'^ equipped. At Bristol, where 
 he took ship, the people from the neighbouring 
 country flocked in crowds to see him. At the 
 moment of withdrawing himself from the eyes of the 
 English people, he neglected nothing that could 
 excite their expectations, which everything con- 
 spired to raise. 
 
 It was England that he hoped to gain by the 
 conquest of Ireland. There he would have to deal 
 with a hostile race and faith, the one despised, the 
 other detested, by the English people. He made 
 
48 DISCOUlîSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 unrelenting war upon them. He massacred, plun- 
 dered, and drove out the Irish ; shrinking as. 
 little from cruelty in the field as he had done 
 from mendacity in the parliament ; covering every 
 crime with the plea of necessity ; and prone to 
 believe in it whenever it could shorten the road to 
 success. 
 
 His victories and his renown soon began to 
 awaken the anxiety of Parliament. Cromwell was 
 the subject of all conversations; the people talked 
 of him with admiration, and men of sagacity endea- 
 voured to divine his conduct and his destiny. At 
 the moment of his setting out to join the army in 
 Ireland, a rumour had got abroad, and had caused 
 a o-eneral agitation in Scotland, that his destination 
 was not Dublin, but Edinburgh. Others said that 
 on his return from Ireland he intended to cross to 
 France, but nobody could tell on what pretext, or 
 with what design. Pamplilets entitled " The Cha- 
 racter of Kino" Cromwell" were seized. He had 
 reached that point in the ascent to greatness at 
 which a man's most insignificant actions, or the 
 most frivolous circumstances regarding him, excite 
 intense curiosity in the public and solicitude in his 
 rivals. The leaders of the Parliament thouglit 
 they might take advantage of his going into winter- 
 quarters at Dublin to recall him to London. Crom- 
 well did not obey ; he did not even reply ; but 
 abruptly renewing the campaign, pursued his work 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 49 
 
 of destruction in Ireland, and did not return to 
 England till fresh and graver perils threatened the 
 Republic, and opened new prospects of independence 
 and greatness to himself. 
 
 Scotland having recalled Charles Stuart, the Re- 
 public and the Monarchy were about to meet face 
 to face, and the Republic stood in need of a tried 
 champion to oppose to the King. The Parliament 
 wished to send two, Fairfax and Cromwell ; but Fair- 
 fax having refused, it appointed Cromwell to the 
 sole command; with infinite regret, but constrained, 
 for the safety of the Republic, to give him another 
 kingdom to conquer. 
 
 Cromwell's mode of carrying on the war, and his 
 whole conduct in Scotland, were totally difterent 
 from those which he had pursued in Ireland. He 
 was no less moderate, patient, and conciliating to 
 the ScotcJi Protestants, than he had been violent, 
 harsh, and pitiless to the Irish Catholics. The 
 royalist party was surrounded, and even divided, 
 by deep-laid dissensions : there were Presbyterians, 
 more fanatical than royalist, who served the King 
 with infinite distrust and reservations of all sorts ; 
 sectarians as ardent and as democratic as those of 
 England, full of sympathy with Cromwell and his 
 soldiers, and more disposed to second than to 
 oppose them. Cromwell humoured and took ad- 
 vantage of all these dispositions. He was eager to 
 do battle with the King's army, but full of consi- 
 
 E 
 
50 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 deration for the countr3\ He opened separate ne- 
 p-otiations with the leaders whom he knew to be 
 wavering or well inclined to himself, and entered 
 into religious correspondences, conferences, and 
 discussions with the Scotch theologians; showing 
 himself no less able than anxious to please, and 
 even when he failed to convince or seduce, leaving 
 a profound and favourable impression on his 
 hearers. By these means he advanced into Scot- 
 land, daily gaining ground by his arms and his 
 address, and detaching counties, cities, and chief- 
 tains from the royal cause. Charles found himself 
 pressed upon, surrounded, and in a short time in 
 personal danger. With the impetuosity of youth, 
 he suddenly took a daring and desperate resolution; 
 abandoning Scotland to Cromwell, he marched 
 rapidly at the head of his army to England, deter- 
 mined to try the fortunes of Royalty in the heart of 
 the Republic. 
 
 A month had not elapsed from the time when 
 Charles and his army set foot on the soil of England, 
 before Cromwell had come up with them, and had 
 beaten and dispersed tliem at Worcester, where 
 Charles had just been proclaimed King. While 
 Charles was wandering from one place of refuge to 
 another under various disguises, and seeking a boat 
 to bear him froni the shores of England, Cromwell 
 re-entered London in triumpli, surrounded by mem- 
 bers of the Parliament, the Council of State, the 
 
 J 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 51 
 
 Common Council of tlie City, and an immense 
 crowd proclaiming him their deliverer. 
 
 Jealousies and hatreds were for a moment for- 
 gotten in the joy of deliverance from great and 
 imminent danger. The Parliament heaped gifts 
 and favours upon Cromwell ; among others, a large 
 grant of lands, and the palace of Hampton Court 
 as a residence. But though the most distrustful 
 lavished marks of gratitude and deference upon 
 him, the enthusiasm of the republican part of the 
 people was more sincere and more valuable. No 
 sooner has a revolution levelled the ancient dis;- 
 nities and grandeurs of a country in the dust, than 
 its authors are eager to raise up new ones ; their 
 safety and their pride are equally concerned in 
 seeing their work illustrated by glorious symbols, 
 which they imagine will compensate society for 
 those they have destroyed. Hence the pompous 
 displays, the inordinate flatteries, the idolatry of 
 language, with which popular bodies, however de- 
 mocratic, delight to intoxicate the men who climb 
 on the ruins they have made. Sectaries and phi- 
 losophers, citizens and soldiers, parliament and 
 people, all, willingly or unwillingly, concurred in 
 enhancing Cromwell's greatness, as if they them- 
 selves were rendered greater by it. The republicans 
 of the city of London, who went out to harangue 
 him on his return, told him, with exultation, that 
 he was born " to bind kings with chains, and nobles 
 
 E 2 
 
52 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 with fetters of iron." They were too short-sighted 
 to perceive that these fetters would soon gall their 
 own hands. 
 
 Cromwell received these honours and flatteries 
 with an humility which, though the result of calcu- 
 lation, was not wholly destitute of sincerity. " To 
 God alone," he continually repeated, " belongs the 
 glory : I am only his weak and unworthy instru- 
 ment." He knew how acceptable this language 
 was to his country and his party ; and he exagge- 
 rated it by incessant and emphatic repetitions, to 
 please the men whose confidence and attachment he 
 thus raised to the highest pitch. But it was also 
 the expression of his own inmost thoughts. The 
 power and providence of God, His continual action 
 on the affairs of the world and the souls of men, 
 were not, in Cromwell's mind, cold abstractions, or 
 worn-out traditions, but deep and sincere convic- 
 tions. Thouo^h his faith neither restrained his 
 actions under the temptations of life, nor made him 
 scrupulous about the measures necessary to success, 
 it subsisted at the bottom of his heart, and inspired 
 his words when he was strongly moved by the 
 greatness of circumstances or of his own situation. 
 It costs a man little, however, to talk humbly, and 
 to call himself the instrument of God, when God 
 makes his instrument the master of nations. Nei- 
 ther Cromwell's power nor pride were any losers by 
 his humility. 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 53 
 
 His ambition not only rose with his station, but 
 soared above it. While his language was so 
 humble, sudden airs of sovereignty occasionally 
 betrayed what was passing within him. On the 
 field of Worcester, he wanted to grant knighthood 
 to two of his bravest generals, Lambert and Fleet- 
 ivood, and desisted with great ill-humour on being- 
 told that this was a royal prerogative. When he 
 made his triumphal entry into London, and was 
 greeted on all sides by popular acclamations, Hugh 
 Peters, the sectarian preacher, who knew him Aveil, 
 was so struck with his countenance as he passed, 
 that he exclaimed, " Cromwell will make himself 
 our king." He had just saved the Republic, and 
 subjugated two kingdoms, and as there was no 
 longer anything great for him to do at a distance 
 and by arms, he remained in London. Here then, 
 on the one side, was Cromwell, powerful and unem- 
 ployed, constantly receiving the visits of his officers 
 and soldiers, and becoming the depositary of all dis- 
 contents, and the centre of all hopes : on the other, 
 the mutilated Parliament, not more than sixty or 
 eighty members of which met daily ; some of them 
 earnestly and honestly intent on the business of 
 the nation, but the greater number engaged in a 
 scramble for places for themselves or their depend- 
 ants ; making their pov/er subservient to their 
 fortunes, or to their mean hatreds and vulgar quar- 
 rels ; sinking deeper and deeper in selfishness; 
 
54 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 isolated, unpopular, incapable of giving to the 
 country either repose, or liberty, or security ; yet 
 apparently resolved to retain the sovereign power, 
 as if the safety of England could require the per- 
 petuation of so miserable a government. 
 
 For a long time Cromwell hesitated. When, at 
 the moment of his triumph, he resumed his seat 
 in Parliament, he had armed himself for the con- 
 flict with two great and popular questions ; — a 
 general amnesty proclaiming the termination of 
 civil war, and an electoral law regulating the mode 
 and time of convoking a new parliament. These 
 two measures had long been proposed, but had 
 remained buried in committees, and had only been 
 brought out on critical days to gain popularity. 
 By Cromwell's influence they now underwent 
 serious discussion. The amnesty was voted with 
 difliculty, after five months' debate, and numerous 
 attempts at restrictions, especially pecuniary ones ; 
 these, however, were triumphantly defeated by 
 Cromwell, who had too much sense to indulge in 
 useless animosities, and was anxious to gain adhe- 
 rents and friends from all parties. But the decisive 
 measure, the law of election, remained in suspense. 
 Cromwell pressed for it; not however with ardour, 
 and rather in order to exhibit in a strong light the 
 selfishness of the parliamentary leaders, than to 
 bring the debate to a speedy issue. He was himself 
 greatly perplexed. What plausible arguments could 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLQTION. 55 
 
 be found to induce the Parliament to dissolve itself? 
 What would be the result of new elections? And 
 would even new elections suffice to raise the cha- 
 racter of the government and give it stability ? 
 Was the experiment of a Eepublic a successful one ? 
 Was not Monarchy more conformable with the 
 laws, the habits, the sentiments, and the permanent 
 interests of the country ? If the country wanted 
 and wished for monarchy, how was it to be restored ? 
 and in what measure ? and in whose person ? These 
 questions were asked by Cromwell, not only in 
 intimate conversation with a few leading men, 
 but in conferences to which he invited officers of 
 the army and members of the parliament. Their 
 answers afforded him little satisfaction. The officers 
 of the army persisted in their republicanism ; 
 the politicians inclined to monarchy would hear 
 of none bat the ancient one, and advised Cromwell 
 to treat with its representative and his partisans 
 for its restoration. At this he broke off the con- 
 versation, but afterwards returned to the charge, 
 supple in appearance, but at bottom inflexible in 
 his ambitious purposes ; frank even to audacity 
 when he wanted to carry men along with him ; 
 shamelessly hypocritical and deceitful when he 
 wished to conceal his intentions. One advantage 
 he never failed to gain from these intrigues ; he 
 committed the army more and more deeply to his 
 struggle with the Parliament. The army, which 
 
56 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 retained much of its original sectarian spirit, while 
 it had acquired the military spirit during its long 
 and formidable warfare, combined the passions of 
 the fanatic with the interests of the soldier. Crom- 
 well laboured incessantly to turn both against 
 the Parliament. What an iniquity it was that 
 what was due to the conquerors should be so ill 
 paid, and that men who had neither fought nor 
 suffered should reap all the fruits of victory ! What 
 an insult to God that the counsels of his saints 
 should be so little heeded ! Petitions presented by 
 the council-general of officers, in the name of the 
 whole army, haughtily demanded that their arrears 
 should be paid, that the abuses in the government 
 should be reformed, and that the hopes of God's 
 people should be fulfilled. The Parliament, thus 
 threatened, defended itself, and angrily attacked 
 in its turn. It urged the dismissal of a consider- 
 able part of the army, and put up to sale that very 
 palace of Hampton Court which it had given to 
 Cromwell as a residence. This state of things 
 subsisted for a year and a half. Both sides felt 
 that the crisis was at hand. Which would be 
 master ? The Parliament suddenly resolved to 
 urge the very dissolution that had been required of 
 it. It entered warmly into the discussion and the 
 decision of the electoral law. But the object of 
 this law was to maintain the power in the very 
 hands from which it ought to have been withdrawn. 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 57 
 
 The actual members of the Republican Parliament 
 were to be, of right, and without any re-election, 
 members of the new parliament; the elections were 
 only to fill up the vacancies in the assembly so as 
 to complete the number required by law. And 
 that the scheme might give entire security to the 
 possessors of power, the committee charged with 
 the scrutiny of the new elections, and empowered 
 to admit or reject the elected, was to consist only of 
 old members. 
 
 This was not a dissolution of a Parliament, 
 it was a renewal and perpetuation of the same. 
 Cromwell no longer hesitated. Suddenly break- 
 ing up a conference of officers assembled at his 
 house at Whitehall, he went down to the House 
 of Commons, and silently took his seat in the midst 
 of the discussion on the law of election. At the 
 moment when it was about to be put to the vote, 
 he rose with premeditated abruptness and violence, 
 and, taking advantage of the discredit into which the 
 leaders had already fallen to overwhelm them with 
 gross insults, which he knew would discredit them 
 still further, he told them that they were no longer a 
 parliament, ordered a troop of soldiers to drive them 
 out of the house as intruders too lono^ tolerated, 
 and thus put a sudden end to the Long Parhament. 
 
 Nobody resisted, not a voice was raised in its 
 defence; for though it had warm and faithful 
 friends, its party was not numerous, and it had 
 
58 DISCOUKSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 military force and public opinion against it. All 
 the other parties, wliether they approved Cromwell 
 or not, rejoiced at the expulsion of the parlia- 
 ment as an act of justice and a deliverance of the 
 nation. Intimidated or impotent, the vanquished 
 silently submitted ; and the revolutionary leaders, 
 who had carried on civil war for nine years, driven 
 three-fourths of their colleagues from their seats, 
 condemned their King to death, and tyrannically 
 changed the constitution of their country, were 
 compelled to acknowledge that the work of go- 
 verning is far greater and more difficult than they 
 had suspected it to be before they sank under it. 
 
 The Kepublic had been established in the name 
 of Libert}^, but, under the rule of the Parliament, 
 liberty had been a vain name, covering the 
 tyranny of a faction. After the expulsion of the 
 Parliament, the Republic became in its turn an 
 empty word, preserved like one of those falsehoods 
 which still serve a purpose, though they have ceased 
 to deceive ; and the despotism of one man con- 
 stituted for five years the Government of England. 
 
 Despotism, in an energetic and powerful nation, 
 which has submitted to it in a fit of perplexity or 
 lassitude, can subsist only on two conditions — order 
 and greatness. Cromwell, once master, displayed 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 59 
 
 all the resources of his genius in impressing this 
 character on his government. A stranger to the 
 rancorous passions, the narrow and invincible pre- 
 judices, which characterize the sway of factions, it 
 was his desire that all, without distinction of orio-in 
 or party. Cavaliers and Presbyterians, as well as 
 Republicans, might find protection and securitv for 
 their civil interests, provided they abstained from 
 political intrigues. The act imposing the oath of 
 fidelity on all Englishmen, under pain of legal dis- 
 abilities, was abrogated. The administration of 
 justice was once more regular and habitually im- 
 partial. Cromwell, as revolutionary general, had 
 gained intelligence and won over adherents from 
 all parties; Cromwell, Protector of the Republic, 
 endeavoured to rally round his government all the 
 higher elements of society. He had too much good 
 sense to desert the friends by whom he had risen to 
 eminence, and to throw himself on the mercy of his 
 former enemies ; but a superior instinct taught him 
 that so long as a government is not accepted and 
 sustained by those whom their position, their inte- 
 rests and their habits render the natural supporters 
 of political order, nothing can be completely orga- 
 nized or firmly established. This impetuous leader 
 of popular innovators manifested the greatest respect 
 for time-hallowed institutions. The sectaries, in 
 their aversion to human learning and aristocratic 
 or royal endowments, sought to destroy the Uriiver- 
 
60 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 sities of Oxford and Cambridge. Cromwell saved 
 them. Great by nature, and elevated by fortune, 
 he soon acquired a taste for all that was great and 
 lofty in talents and learning, present fame or 
 ancient tradition ; he delighted to surround him- 
 self with all that was eminent, and to protect it 
 against coarse and vulgar antipathy. In support 
 of this policy, in the maintenance of law and order 
 for all, in the re-establishment of authority and the 
 enforcement of respect, he employed that very army 
 with which he had overthrown so many ancient 
 dignities and powers ; though its rigorous discipline 
 and its devotedness to him were barely sufficient to 
 repress the half-extinguished passions which still 
 smouldered in its ranks. 
 
 In the foreign relations of England, Cromwell 
 took a still juster view of the interests of his 
 country and of his own position, and being less 
 trammelled by party ties, obtained a much more 
 complete success. 
 
 The first object of his policy was peace. From 
 the moment of his accession to power, he laboured 
 to re-establish or to confirm it throughout Europe ; 
 with Holland, Portugal, and Denmark. . Laying 
 aside not only those dreams of republican and 
 protestant fusion which he had formerly enter- 
 tained and fostered, but also religious and party 
 animosities, he was eager to settle differences, and to 
 close open questions ; he was sometimes captious and 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 61 
 
 haughty in asserting the dignity of a new govern- 
 ment, but always guided by good sense, never 
 making extravagant demands, nor indulging chime- 
 ricai schemes of ambition ; and requiring abroad 
 nothins: but what was essential to the streno;th and 
 security of his government at home. 
 
 Peace once secured, the next object of his policy 
 was neutrality. It was just at the crisis of the 
 struggle between the Houses of Austria and Bourbon, 
 between Spain in her decline and France in her 
 ascension. Both made eager and even disgraceful 
 efforts to secure England as an ally. Cromwell 
 listened to both, gave to both just as much hope 
 as suited his own purposes, but bound himself to 
 neither. On mature consideration, he thought that 
 from Spain there was less to hope, less to fear, and 
 more to conquer. He hoped to lay a broad founda- 
 tion for the power and commerce of England in the 
 New World. He therefore quitted his neutral posi- 
 tion, but with so much judgment and moderation, 
 that whilst, across the seas, his war with Spain was 
 followed by the conquest of Jamaica, and near home 
 his alliance with France secured to him possession 
 of Dunkirk, he never took so decided a part in the 
 contest of the two powers as to compromise the in- 
 dependence of the foreign policy of his country. 
 
 It was the constant rule of that policy, during his 
 whole government, to be neither systematic nor 
 violent, and to meddle no more in the affairs of 
 
62 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 others than his own really required. For example, 
 the Stuarts had taken refuge in France, where the 
 court showed them favour, though timidly. That 
 kingdom was then disturbed by the attempts of the 
 Fronde to stir up a civil war. The Protestants, 
 though not perhaps persecuted, were uneasy and 
 discontented. The occasion appeared excellent, 
 and the temptation was strong, for Cromwell to 
 interfere to annoy his enemies, and to protect the 
 political and religious cause to which he owed all 
 his greatness. The Prince of Conde, and the city of 
 Bordeaux, the chief and the stronghold of the insur- 
 gents, earnestly solicited him to that effect ; sending 
 embassies, and reiterating their prayers and offers to 
 obtain his support. Cromwell received their envoys, 
 entertained them with hopes, sent in his turn agents 
 to France, who were commissioned to sound the 
 dispositions and to ascertain the strength of the Pro- 
 testants and the Frondeurs, and thus gave serious 
 uneasiness to Mazarin. Finding, however, that the 
 French malcontents had no real strength, able con- 
 duct, or chance of success, he silenced all promptings 
 of ambition and passion, disregarded all the offers 
 he had received and all the hopes he had awakened, 
 and treated with Mazarin, taking advantage of the 
 fears he had inspired him with, to extort more 
 favourable terms. 
 
 When an occasion of succouring oppressed Pro- 
 testantism, less tempting indeed, but also less likely 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 63 
 
 to involve the country in trouble, presented itself, 
 Cromwell seized it with eagerness. In order to pro- 
 tect some poor peasants driven out of their valley 
 by the Duke of Savoy, he sent declarations, em- 
 bassies, money, and threats ; called on the Court of 
 France to interfere, if it did not wish that he 
 should do so; implicated the United Provinces 
 and the Swiss Cantons in his measures; attained 
 his end solely by moral force, and thus procured a 
 signal satisfaction to the religious sentiments of tlie 
 English people, without involving them in any for- 
 midable or uncertain conflict. 
 
 Whenever English interests of real, though se- 
 condary importance, required protection or re- 
 paration, Cromwell gave them energetic support, 
 while he carefully kept them distinct from general 
 or exciting questions. He sent Admiral Blake at 
 the head of a large squadron into the Mediterra- 
 nean, with orders to present himself wherever Eng- 
 land had any claims to urge or complaints to make. 
 Blake appeared successively before Leghorn, Al- 
 giers, Tunis, and Tripoli, settling all disputes with 
 a high hand, though without inflaming them, and 
 never retiring till he had obtained, by good will or 
 by force, the redress of his country's grievances. 
 
 These various eflbrts, constantly crowned with suc- 
 cess, were not fruitless ; but, nevertheless, they did not 
 accomplish the true and ultimate purpose of the con- 
 queror. This government, which was so active with- 
 
64 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 out temerity, and so adroit in flattering the national 
 passions without servility ; which raised the dignity 
 of the country abroad without involving it in disputes, 
 and maintained order at home by means of revolu- 
 tionary soldiers, did not take root in the country. 
 Cromwell was obeyed, feared, admired ; England 
 submitted to his genius and his vigour, but did not 
 accept his rule. Consummate in the art of drawing 
 men around him, he daily detached some from the 
 old parties, and persuaded them to take active ser- 
 vice under him, or at least to desist from all hostility. 
 Good sense and weariness of civil dissensions, per- 
 sonal interest and weakness, baseness and perfidy, 
 gave to him, as largely as to any man that ever ruled 
 a people, all the support which such springs of 
 action can afibrd to power. But the old parties, 
 Cavaliers, Presbyterians, and Republicans, still sub- 
 sisted, and though kept down, were still vigorous, 
 and neither hopeless nor inactive. During the five 
 years of Cromwell's reign, fifteen conspiracies or 
 insurrections (not to speak of a number of obscure 
 attempts) of the Royalists, the Republicans, or coali- 
 tions of both parties, menaced his government. 
 He put them down with a strong hand ; but, severe 
 or clement as the necessity of the case required, 
 without cruelty and without pity. He employed by 
 turns the regular action of the laws or arbitrary 
 power, the jury or exceptional tribunals, an indefa- 
 tigable police or a devoted army, secret arrests or 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 65 
 
 public executions, banishment, imprisonment, the 
 sale of the conquered rebels as slaves in the colonies ; 
 everything, in short, that could paralyze or strike 
 terror into enemies. Nothing that was attempted 
 against him succeeded. Every plot was defeated, 
 and every rising crushed, the country taking no 
 part in them and remaining tranquil. But, though 
 witness of Cromwell's daily victories over his 
 enemies, it had no faith in the rightfulness or the 
 permanency of his power. He did not reign in 
 their minds as a legitimate and unquestioned sove- 
 reign. At the summit of his greatness, he was in 
 their estimation a resistless, but a temporary master; 
 without a present rival, but without a prospect of 
 stability. He himself felt this, and knew it better 
 than any one, for it was the character of his mind 
 to see things as they were. Never was there a 
 great spirit more ardent in hope and yet more free 
 from illusion. While engaged in the overthrow of 
 constitutional monarchy, he had learned that this 
 was the only form of government which suited 
 England, or could hope to endure. When he 
 became master of the ruined citadel of the consti- 
 tution, one thought took entire possession of his 
 mind — to reconstruct it and establish himself within 
 its ramparts. 
 
 It was the object of his incessant desire and labour 
 to get together a Parliament with which he could 
 co-operate in the work of government. He con- 
 
 F 
 
66 DISCOURSE OxN THE HISTORY OF 
 
 voked four in five years ; sometimes choosing, in 
 concert with his officers, the body which he hypo- 
 critically called by that name ; sometimes causing 
 it to be elected in the very mode which the Long- 
 Parliament was on the point of adopting when 
 he drove it out. He always treated these assem- 
 blies with great solemnity and deference at first ; 
 and though he used the most shameless artifices 
 and the most unheard-of violence to obtain a 
 majority, yet, even at the very moment of breaking 
 with them, he was careful not to lead the nation to 
 think that he intended to dispense with their con- 
 currence. 
 
 The attempt was chimerical. None of the Roy- 
 alists and very few of the Presbyterians consented 
 to sit in his Parliaments. They were composed 
 almost exclusively of the various factions of the re- 
 publican party, amongst which the greatest irritation 
 and dissension prevailed. Cromwell's partizans 
 were not men to succeed by parliamentary tactics 
 or talents for debate : his enemies, far more exer- 
 cised in that sort of warfare, displayed all its 
 resources to injure him ; he had to encounter men 
 whom he had overthrown, who were sincerely and 
 passionately opposed to his tyranny, obstinate in 
 their anarchical ideas and habits, and no less ungo- 
 vernable than incapable of governing. He himself 
 was continually furnishing them with subjects of 
 complaint, and putting arms into their hands; for, 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 67 
 
 in his ascent to absolute power, he had not learned 
 respect for rights, or patience under resistance and 
 contradiction. Taught by an instinctive sagacity 
 that, in his despotic loneliness, he was unable to 
 found au}'^ permanent institutions, or even to conso- 
 lidate his own power, he summoned a parliament, 
 hoping with its help to create a durable government. 
 But as that assembl}^ when convened, did not con- 
 tain the natural elements of a conservative party, 
 and was under the influence of men who had no 
 abihty for anything but destruction, Cromwell soon 
 found it impossible to endure either their just 
 liberty or their insane violence; and indignantly 
 broke the instrument which he always found unma- 
 nageable, though he knew it to be indispensable. 
 
 At length he thought he had succeeded in as- 
 sembling a Parliament which would understand and 
 second his designs. He lost no time in causing the 
 idea which possessed him, the restoration of the 
 English monarchy in its ancient and complete 
 form, to be laid before it. The proposal was 
 made and debated in parliament, and publicly 
 negotiated during more than two months between 
 that body and the Protector. In this affair Cromwell 
 displayed that strange mixture of impetuosity and 
 caution, profound ability and gross hypocrisy, which 
 he owed alike to nature and to art. His prudence 
 was almost equal to his ambition. He did not choose 
 to purchase his accession to royalty at the price of a 
 
 f2 
 
68 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 division in his party, already so narrow and tottering 
 .a base for a government to rest on. He wanted 
 to become King without exposing the Protector to 
 peril ; he wanted not only that the crown should 
 be offered to him, but that all the men of import- 
 ance by whom he was surrounded, sectaries or 
 politicians, officers or magistrates, should commit 
 themselves to the offer. Even before the institu- 
 tion of the Protectorate and the expulsion of the 
 Long Parliament, he had sounded them and 
 endeavoured to prepare them for this event. 
 He was now engaged in his final struggle, and 
 his efforts to work upon them were infinite and 
 unwearied. These efforts were sometimes direct, 
 sometimes circuitous ; he addressed himself by turns 
 to their interests, their affections, and their reason ; 
 he tried to make them understand that the revo- 
 lution which thev had effected, and their own 
 situation as well as his, would remain weak and 
 precarious, so long as they should not have esta- 
 blished themselves jointly in that frame of govern- 
 ment on which all tlie laws of the country were 
 founded, and to which all the habits of obedience 
 and respect of the English people were attached. He 
 convinced the reason or carried away the feelings of 
 so many men, even among the officers of the army 
 who were the longest recalcitrant, that he believed, 
 and was justified in believing, himself sure of success. 
 The i)roposition was carried through Parliament, 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 69 
 
 and the Crown officially ofiered to him. He 
 adjourned his answer, in the hope of conquering 
 the last remaining attempts at opposition. It was 
 in the circle which immediately surrounded him, 
 and especially among the generals most intimately 
 attached to his person, that he met with resistance. 
 It was insurmountable, being founded on sincere 
 republican enthusiasm, on a feeling of shame at 
 an act which would belie the whole tenor of their 
 lives, and on the resentment of humiliated rivalry. 
 Cromwell, flattering himself that these were but 
 the humours of a few individuals, determined to 
 take no heed of their opposition, and to place upon 
 his head the crown which appeared within his 
 grasp. At that very moment, however, he learned 
 that a petition, drawn up by one of his chaplains 
 and signed by a great number of officers, was 
 solemnly presented, in the name of the army, to 
 Parliament, calling upon it to remain faithful to the 
 good old cause, and proclaiming the most decided 
 hostility to the re-establishment of the monarchy. 
 Cromwell immediately summoned the Parliament 
 to Whitehall ; and, expressing astonishment that 
 they should affect to protest against his answer 
 before it was given, formally refused the title of 
 King. 
 
 He was a man of too clear and perspicacious a 
 mind not to perceive the weakness and insecurity 
 inherent in his position, and he strove to place it 
 
70 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 on a foundation fortified by law and consecrated by 
 time ; but in vain. It was not the will of God 
 that the man who had caused the death of his 
 king and trodden under foot the liberties of his 
 country, sliould reap the honour and the profit of 
 restoring the Monarchy and the Parliament. In his 
 struggles with the diflSculties of his situation, Crom- 
 well was successful against anarchy, but he con- 
 stantly relapsed into despotism. He had rendered 
 the civil administration of the country impartial ; 
 yet, urged by the necessity of finding resources for 
 his government, he subjected the royalist party to 
 the most iniquitous exactions, and the whole country 
 to a military tyranny by which alone those exac- 
 tions could be enforced. He boasted of having 
 restored the regularity and the imposing splendour 
 of the administration of justice; yet, when illus- 
 trious advocates defended the objects of his prosecu- 
 tions, or when upright judges refused to condemn 
 them contrary to law, he ill-treated, dismissed, and 
 imprisoned those honourable men with a violence 
 worthy of the worst times. To re-establish the 
 legal monarchy, without renouncing revolutionary 
 violence, was to attempt an impossibility. Crom- 
 well already enjoyed a rare privilege ; he had 
 emerged from the chaos of revolution to the dicta- 
 torship ; but the far higher honour of transforming 
 the dictatorshij) iuto a government of law and liberty 
 was denied him. 
 
 J 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 7I 
 
 In this perilous trial he displayed a prudence 
 which saved him. He persisted till the last 
 moment, but he saw when persistance would be 
 useless and dangerous, and he stopped. England, 
 which had seen him draw back, and the Repub- 
 licans, who had reduced him to that necessity, 
 still wanted and still feared him. His position, 
 therefore, remained intact, and he was not the 
 less powerful as Protector because he had failed 
 to make himself King. He did not abandon his 
 design. He even took measures for convoking 
 a new Parliament; doubtless promising himself 
 that, as he had formerly subjugated the Parliament 
 by means of the army, he should at some future 
 time subjugate the army by means of the Parlia- 
 ment. But already the hand which was to crush 
 his own iron nature lay heavy upon him. For 
 some time past his health had been failing, and his 
 illness was now aggravated by domestic sorrows, 
 especially by the loss of his favourite daughter. 
 He declined rapidly, but he struggled against 
 death. The numerous trials he had triumph- 
 antly passed through, the great things he had 
 done and had still to do, the urgent need of his 
 presence, the force of his will — all contributed to 
 persuade him that he had not attained the term of 
 his life. He said among his most intimate friends, 
 " I am sure I shall not die to-day — I know that God 
 will not have me die yet." But God had formed 
 
72 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 Cromwell to be a striking example to the world 
 of what a great man can do — and of what he cannot 
 do. His destiny was accomplished. By the sole 
 might of his genius he had made himself master of 
 his country, and of the revolution which he had 
 let loose upon his country ; he remained to his 
 latest hour in full possession of his greatness ; and 
 he died, consuming his genius and his power in 
 an ineffectual effort to restore what he had destroyed 
 — a Parliament and a King. 
 
 In the anarchy into which England was thrown 
 by his death, she enjoyed one of those rare felicities 
 of which it is difficult to decide whether they are 
 the immediate gift of Heaven, or are in part 
 attributable to human wisdom. The termination 
 of that anarchy was not factitious, incomplete, or 
 precipitate. All the ambitions, pretensions, and 
 other elements of political strife or chaos which 
 Cromwell had kept down, started into fresh acti- 
 vity, and renewed their warfare on that scene which 
 he had filled alone. His son Richard was pro- 
 claimed Protector without obstacle, and was even 
 recognized without hesitation by foreign powers. 
 But hardly had he attempted to govern, when he 
 was pressed upon by a crowd of advisers, who were 
 soon to become his enemies and his rivals : — by a 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 73 
 
 new and more popular council of the army under 
 lilie title of a Council-general of Officers ; by the new 
 Parliament, which he himself hastened to convoke; 
 by the old Long- Parliament (or, as the people 
 called it, the Rump), which asserted its exclusive 
 claim to the legislative power, on the plea that it 
 -had been authorized by the King (whom it had put 
 to death) to subsist till it should be dissolved by its 
 >.own act ; and lastly, by the same Long Parliament, 
 recruited with the members whom, before the King's 
 death, it had driven from its body, and who now 
 forcibly resumed the seats from which they had 
 been forcibly expelled. These various phantoms of 
 power aspired to fill the place of the master spirit 
 by whom they had all been driven from the scene. 
 During more than twenty months they appeared, 
 vanished, and reappeared, in a hopeless confusion of 
 coalitions and conflicts ; while not one of them, for 
 a single day, acquired the consistency and force of 
 government. 
 
 During this interregnum of twenty months, and 
 in the midst of this ridiculous outbreak of chi- 
 merical pretensions, the only competitor who did 
 not appear was he upon whom the thoughts, hopes, 
 and fears of all England were fixed — the only one 
 whose claims were serious. Two or three insigni- 
 ficant movements, which did not go beyond a de- 
 mand for the convocation of a free Parliament, 
 and in which the name of Charles Stuart was not 
 
74 DISCOUKSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 even mentioned, were attempted in his favour, but 
 were repressed instantly and without a struggle. 
 
 It was the memory of Cromwell which even now 
 held the royalist party in a state of fear and in- 
 action. He had so often frustrated their hopes, and 
 had crushed their plots and their risings with so 
 rude a hand, that they had lost all confidence in the 
 success of their projects. Moreover, their long- 
 reverses had taught them good sense. They had 
 learned not to take their wishes for the measure of 
 their powers ; and to understand that, if Charles 
 Stuart was to regain the crown, it could only be 
 by the general will and act of England, not by an 
 insurrection of Cavaliers. 
 
 Richard Cromwell really wished to put an 
 end to the country's agitations and his own 
 by treating immediately with the King. He was 
 not deficient in sense or honesty, but he had 
 neither ambition nor greatness of mind. His 
 father's career and destiny, of which he had been a 
 sharer, had excited in him a feeling of fatigue 
 rather than of confidence. He did not believe in 
 the recurrence of a similar success in his own case, 
 nor did he feel himself capable of bearing a similar 
 burthen. But neither was he a man to take a 
 final and unalterable resolution in so weighty a 
 matter. He was undecided and weak, overwhelmed 
 with debts, and looking out on every side for the 
 issue of what was pending. He continued the sport 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. /5 
 
 of a fortune the vanity of which he felt, and the 
 instrument of men inferior to himself in under- 
 standing. 
 
 Some solution of the present state of things was 
 absolutely necessary. All the men of mark or 
 influence who had brought about the revolution, 
 or whom the revolution had raised into notice, 
 had been repeatedly put to the proof. Though 
 their attem]3ts to govern the country had not 
 been thwarted or obstructed by any external obstacle 
 or national resistance, none of them had succeeded. 
 They had destroyed each other. They had all ex- 
 hausted in these fruitless conflicts whatever repu- 
 tation or whatever strength they might otherwise 
 have preserved. Their nullity was completely laid 
 bare. Nevertheless, England was still at their 
 mercy. The nation had lost, in these long and 
 melancholy alternations of anarchy and despotism, 
 the habit of ruling, and the courage to rule, its own 
 destinies. Cromwell's army was still in existence, 
 incapable of forming a government, but overturning 
 every one that did not please it. It was a stranger 
 to political parties, a soldier highly respected by the 
 army, a faithful servant of the Parliament and 
 Cromwell, and of even Kichard Cromwell at his 
 accession, who perceived that there was but one con- 
 clusion of this anarchy possible, and endeavoured 
 to lead his wearied country to that goal without con- 
 flict and without convulsion. There was nothing 
 
y6 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 great in the character of Monk, but good sense and 
 courage. He had no thirst for glory, no desire for 
 power, no lofty principles or designs, either for his 
 country or himself; but he had a profound aversion to 
 disorder, and to those iniquitous excesses which po- 
 pular parties clothe with fair promises. He was at- 
 tached to his duties as a soldier and an Englishman, 
 not ostentatiously, but with firmness and modest3^ 
 He was no charlatan and no declaimer ; he was 
 discreet even to taciturnity, and absolutely indiffer- 
 ent to truth or falsehood. He dissembled with im- 
 perturbable coolness and patience to bring about 
 the result which seemed to him necessary to the 
 welfare of England — the peaceable restoration of 
 the only government which could be stable and 
 regular. All the rest was, in his eyes, nothing 
 more than a chaos of doubtful questions and party 
 quarrels. He succeeded. All the fractions of the 
 great monarchical party suspended their ancient 
 animosities, their blind impatience and their con- 
 flicting claims, and united to support him. The 
 Restoration came to pass like a natural and inevit- 
 able event, without costing either victors or van- 
 quished a drop of blood ; and Charles the Second, 
 re-entering London in the midst of immense ac- 
 clamations, could sa}' with truth, " It is certainly 
 mv fault that I did not come back before, for I have 
 seen nobody to-day who did not protest that he had 
 always wished for my return." 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. "J"^ 
 
 Never was government, old, new, or restored, 
 placed in circumstances more favourable to regu- 
 larity, strength, and stability. 
 
 Charles II. ascended the throne of his fathers 
 without foreign aid, without intestine strife, and 
 without even an effort of his own, by the mere 
 spontaneous act of the English nation, which, freed 
 from long oppression and anarchy and from revolu- 
 tionary fluctuations, now looked to him alone for 
 the restoration of law and order, and the establish- 
 ment of a permanent and tranquil state of things. 
 
 The revival of the monarchy naturally followed 
 upon the complete exhaustion and total ruin of 
 its enemies and rivals. The Republic and the 
 Protectorate had appeared and re-appeared under 
 every form and in every combination which tliey 
 could assume. All the men or the institutions 
 which the revolution had brought to light were 
 worn out and utterly discredited. The field of 
 battle was deserted, and even the phantoms of the 
 revolutionary combatants and pretenders had 
 vanished. 
 
 Nor did royalty revive alone ; for while the King 
 reascended his throne, the great landholders, the 
 country gentlemen, and all the eminent citizens 
 who had supported the royalist cause, resumed 
 their former places in the government of the country. 
 
78 DISCOUIÎSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 The Republicans and the Protector had completely 
 excluded them from all share in the business of the 
 country, and their return to public life filled a great 
 chasm in the social structure. It is the common 
 error of the authors of revolutions to imagine that 
 they can replace all that they destroy, and that 
 they are competent to furnish resources for all the 
 wants of the state. The English republicans had 
 abolished the House of Lords, and driven the roy- 
 alist party from the political stage ; but they had 
 not supplied their place as supports to authority 
 against the assaults of anarchy, or as defenders of 
 the liberties of the nation against the encroachments 
 of despotism. The restoration not only re-established 
 hereditary monarchy, but reinstated landed property, 
 family traditions, and the most ancient and noble 
 portion of the territorial aristocracy of the country, 
 in their former rank and influence. The supreme 
 power thus recovered its natural allies, together with 
 its principle of stability ; and political society, which 
 had for eleven years been mutilated and unsteady, 
 regained possession of every source of strength and 
 re-established itself on all its durable foundations. 
 
 The restoration of the political government was 
 accompanied by that of the religious establishment. 
 The Episcopal Church arose with the Monarchy 
 from her long subjection. The Church of England 
 was called into existence by the voice, and fostered 
 under the wing, of the temporal power; and it 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 79 
 
 is not to be denied that this, Avhen compared 
 with the purely spiritual origin and the steadfast 
 independence of the Roman Catholic Church, 
 has been a great source of weakness to lier. But 
 England has derived one great advantage from 
 this defect in her Church ; it put an end to all 
 struggles between the ecclesiastical and civil 
 government. Intimately united to the throne, 
 whence she derived her strength and authority, 
 the Church of England has been constantly 
 and loyally devoted to it ; and in spite of the 
 stains on her origin and the weaknesses of her 
 conduct, she has not been wanting in fervour of 
 faith or purity of life, nor in courage and capacity 
 in the accomplishment of her mission. She has 
 had her heroes and her martyrs, unshaken on the 
 scaffold or at the stake, though often weak and ob- 
 sequious to royalty. At her restoration, in 1660, 
 she had, for fifteen years, undergone every kind 
 of persecution from the revolutionary party ; spolia- 
 tion, suppression of her worship, insult, imprison- 
 ment, poverty. She had borne them all with 
 dignity and constancy. She arose from her abase- 
 ment the object of ardent devotion to the royalist 
 party, and of general respect to the people. She 
 brought to the service of the restored monarchy 
 tried fidelity and an authority heightened by her 
 sufferings. 
 
 The dispositions of the English people coincided 
 
80 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY 
 
 with those of their church. The sects which she 
 had long oppressed, and which had oppressed her 
 in their turn, had indeed not ceased to be her bitter 
 enemies ; and the odious or ridiculous excesses of 
 fanaticism and hypocrisy, instead of giving place to 
 a wise and sincere piety, were soon followed by an 
 inevitable reaction of impiety, frivohty, and cynical 
 licentiousness. This, however, did not penetrate 
 below the surface of society. While the court, and 
 the classes most exposed to the infection of its 
 influence, set an example of scandalous vice and 
 impiety, the country was still peopled with sincere 
 and fervent Christians ; some of these had always 
 been attached to the Church of England, or were re- 
 conciled to her by the evils and disorders which 
 had succeeded her fall; others belonged to the 
 dissenting sects, which the church began to per- 
 secute anew, with cruelty sufficient to inflame 
 their zeal, but nut to put an end to their existence. 
 The mutual hatred and strife of the church and 
 the dissenters had in some respects a salutary influ- 
 ence on both. They observed each other's conduct 
 with vigilant jealousy; they mutually enforced a 
 strict observance of the laws of God and a constant 
 solicitude for the eternal interests of man, and their 
 very diflerences kept alive the fervour and activity 
 of their faith. 
 
 Tiius, in the mass of the population, there was 
 no want of moral foundations on which to build the 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 81 
 
 restored monarchy; whilst in the classes natu- 
 rally attached to power by taste and habit the 
 throne found the political props necessary to its 
 stability. 
 
 The only two formidable enemies which could 
 counteract these propitious circumstances, and en- 
 danger the safety of the restored monarchy, were, 
 the spirit of revolution and the spirit of reaction. 
 
 The revolutionary spirit, however thoroughly sub- 
 dued, long survives its defeat, and even the expe- 
 rience of its impotence. Of the two revolutionary 
 powers which had ruled England, the Republic and 
 the Protector, the latter had completely disap- 
 peared ; so completely, that his sons were allowed 
 to die in peaceful oblivion in their own countr3\ 
 Though the republican party still subsisted, it 
 attempted nothing (and, indeed, hoped nothing) 
 for its own cause ; but it ardently joined in all the 
 animosities and plots against the monarch}^ ; con- 
 stantly seeking and as constantly finding rebels and 
 martyrs in the persecuted sects, especially in those of 
 Scotland. Even the parties who formed the con- 
 stitutional opposition, and who cheriehed no repub- 
 lican regrets or desires, were still much influenced 
 b}'' revolutionary ideas and habits. The minds and 
 hearts of the most enlightened among them were 
 imbued with theories, and easily stirred by passions, 
 incompatible with the patient struggles and neces- 
 sary compromises of constitutional monarchy. The 
 
 G 
 
82 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 most moderate weighed the chances, and approached 
 the verge of fresh revolutions, with a facility utterly 
 repugnant to any stable and legal order of things. 
 The revolutionary poison, deadened but not expelled, 
 still circulated in the veins of a large portion of the 
 English nation, and kept it in a state of political 
 fever which threw innumerable obstacles and perils 
 in the way of power. 
 
 The reactionary spirit, the disease of conquering 
 parties, incessantly exasperated the spirit of revo- 
 lution. Not that we ought to listen to all the 
 reproaches to this effect which history lavishes upon 
 the Cavaliers and the Church of Eng-land. When 
 revolutions which have long reigned unchecked are 
 at length arrested in their course, their partisans 
 demand, with singular arrogance, that the results of 
 their past iniquities should remain untouched, and 
 that nothing should be done or desired beyond the 
 repression of their future attempts at mischief; 
 every endeavour to repair the evil which they have 
 inflicted, they call reaction. Among the measures 
 adopted under the reign of Charles II. to redress 
 the wrongs which the royalists, whether lay or 
 ecclesiastical, had suffered during the revolution, 
 many were only a natural and just restitution of 
 violated rights. But both the rational policy of 
 governments, and the well-understood interests of 
 the injured parties themselves, prescribe limits to 
 such acts of reparation. Injustice is not to be re- 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 83 
 
 paired by injustice, nor can revolutions be brought 
 to a close by acts of provocation and vengeance. 
 Reparation, when it appears vindictive, ceases to 
 be regarded as just, and becomes a source of serious 
 danger to the cause which it pretends to serve. 
 The relicrious reaction under Charles II. was stained 
 by these deplorable excesses : it was not the mere 
 redress of the grievances and wrongs of the 
 Church of England ; it was a vindictive persecution 
 of dissenters and a breach of faith towards the 
 more moderate among them, to whom the king, 
 at the moment of his return, had solemnly pro- 
 mised liberty of conscience. Charles made seve- 
 ral attempts to keep his word, and to secure some 
 toleration to the dissenters. Persecution was repug- 
 nant to his good sense, to the mildness of his tem- 
 per, to his indifference in matters of religion, and to 
 his secret leaning to the catholics. But his feeble 
 and lukewarm velleities of justice soon gave way 
 before the obstinacy of ecclesiastical hatred and the 
 violence of popular passions ; and the royalist party, 
 in parhament and out of it, joined warmly in the 
 work of persecution. The la}' reaction which fol- 
 lowed on the events of 1660 was brief and limited; 
 but the religious reaction, though restrained for 
 a moment, soon broke out with violence, became 
 fiercer the longer it lasted, and was the source of 
 most of the dangers, errors and crimes into w'liich 
 Charles and his government fell. 
 
 g2 
 
84 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 But these faults, however lamentable, did not in 
 effect involve the monarchy in serious danger or 
 threaten the safety of English societ}^ The body 
 of tlie nation was no longer possessed by the spirit 
 of revolution, nor was it governed by the spirit 
 of reaction. From the time of the great revolu- 
 tionary crisis which lasted from 1640 to 1660, the 
 English people had the good fortune to profit by 
 experience, and the good sense not to give them- 
 selves up to extreme parties. In the midst of the 
 most ardent political struggles, and of the violences 
 into which they alternately urged and followed their 
 leaders, they never failed, in critical and decisive 
 circumstances, to remain or to fall back within the 
 bounds of that steady good sense which consists in a 
 clear recognition of the things which it is essential 
 to preserve, and an unshaken adherence to them ; in 
 enduring the inconveniences attached to these essen- 
 tials, and renouncing whatever wishes or projects 
 might endanger them. It is from the reign of 
 Charles II. that this good sense, which is the poli- 
 tical intelligence of a free people, has presided over 
 the destinies of England. The revolution through 
 which the English nation had just passed had ter- 
 minated in three great results. They were as yet 
 confused and incomplete, but they were irrevocable : 
 and they were the only results essential to the 
 wishes and the welfare of the people. 
 
 In the first place, the king could never again 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 85 
 
 separate himself from the parliament. The cause of 
 monarchy was gained, but that of absolute monarchy 
 was lost for ever. Theologians and philosophers, 
 like Filmer or Hobbes, might preach the dogma or 
 maintain the principle of absolute power, and tlieir 
 ideas might excite the indignation or the favour of 
 speculative thinkers or vehement partisans. In the 
 opinion of the nation, however, the question was 
 practically decided : royalists and revolutionists 
 regarded the close union and the mutual control 
 of the crown and parliament as the right of the 
 country, and as necessary to its interests. 
 
 In the second place, the House of Commons was 
 in effect the preponderant branch of the parliament. 
 Its direct or formal sovereignt}' was a revolution- 
 ary principle wliich was now generally decried and 
 execrated ; and the Crown and the House of Lords 
 liad recovered their rights and their dignity. But 
 their overthrow had been so violent and complete, 
 that, even after the fall of their enemies, they were 
 unable to re-establish themselves in their ancient 
 ascendancy ; and neither the faults nor the reverses 
 of the House of Commons could obliterate the effect 
 of its terrible victories. The royalist party were now 
 masters in that assembly, and, in its relations to the 
 crown and the administration of the country, inhe- 
 rited the conquests of the Long Parliament. The 
 confusion was inevitably long and often violent 
 before the different parties (Tory or Whig, govern- 
 
gg DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 ment or opposition) learned to use these conquests 
 with sense and moderation ; to understand their 
 import and their limits ; and to maintain that 
 elaborate liarmony among the great powers of the 
 state which is at once the merit and the difficulty 
 of constitutional government. But through all the 
 experiments of this apprenticeship, and in spite of 
 some appearances of an opposite tendency, the pre- 
 ponderant influence of the House of Commons over 
 the afl'airs of the country was, from the reign of 
 Charles IL, daily more obvious and decisive. 
 
 These two political facts were accompanied by 
 one of still higher importance, relating to the re- 
 ligious condition of the country : the complete and 
 definitive ascendancy of Protestantism in England 
 was the other great result of the Revolution. 
 Never, certainly, had a fiercer disunion prevailed 
 among the English Protestants; and Bossuet might 
 well exult in the contemplation of their divisions 
 and quarrels. But a common faith and a common 
 passion pervaded all these divergent sects : in the 
 midst of their own combats, they joined with equal 
 ardour in the common war against Catholicism ; 
 and liberty of conscience, though incessantly vio- 
 lated and oppressed by them and among them, was, 
 as against the Church of Rome, equally dear to 
 each and the inalienable acquisition of all. 
 
 These were, indeed, the onl}^ objects wliich the 
 great body of the English people had really at 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. §7 
 
 heart, or earnestly demanded of that ancient mo- 
 narchy whose return they hailed with transport ; 
 they were resolved to overlook or to endure the 
 faults of a government which, whilst securing to 
 them these three great and indispensable results of 
 the revolution they had just passed through, pre- 
 served them from fresh convulsions. But this was 
 precisely what neither Charles II. nor James II. 
 was able or willing to accomplish. 
 
 In regard to politics, Charles II. had too much 
 good sense and too much indifference to use any 
 earnest endeavours to obtain absolute power. He 
 cared for nothing but his pleasure, loved power 
 only as a means of enjoyment, and willingly 
 consented to concessions and compromises in order 
 to ward off the risk of extreme struggles, or spare 
 himself the annoyance of them. But in his 
 inmost heart absolute monarchy was the only 
 form of government which suited his taste or com- 
 manded his respect. He had not only witnessed 
 the defects and excesses incident to the institu- 
 tions of his own country, but had suffered under 
 them. On the other hand, he had been a near 
 spectator of the splendid court and the strong go- 
 vernment of Louis XIV., and these were the objects 
 of his admiration and his confidence. Hence arose 
 the facility with which he fell into a venal depend- 
 ence on the French monarch. He regarded him 
 as the head of the great family of kings, and he did 
 
88 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 not feel all the shame by wliich he ought to have 
 been overwhelmed, when he sold him the policy 
 and the liberties of his country. 
 
 In religion, Charles was at once sceptical and 
 catliolic; believing in nothing, and as corrupt in 
 mind as in manners. But he thought tliat if, after 
 all, there were any truth in religion, it was in that 
 form of it taught by the Catholic Church, which 
 afforded the surest refuge for kings against the 
 perils of power, and, for the mass of mankind, 
 against those of eternity. 
 
 Thus, thougli his conduct was not that of an 
 absolute and catholic king, Cliarles was in his heart 
 an absolutist and a catholic ; his sympathies were 
 with the sovereigns of the continent, and not with 
 the faith and the policy of his own nation. 
 
 James II. was a catholic and an absolutist at 
 heart, and his conduct was consistent with his con- 
 viction. He was also blindly enterprising, and 
 persisted in his enterprises with all the obstinacy 
 of a narrow and sterile mind, and ihe liardness of 
 a cold and arid heart. 
 
 Such were the two jjrinces whom the Restora- 
 tion placed successively on the throne of England, 
 in the midst of a nation which, though returning 
 with joy to the ancient form of government and 
 execrating the revolution, instinctively determined 
 to hold fast by the important results it had i^aiiied. 
 
 The iiistory of England, during the whole course 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 89 
 
 i 
 
 of the Restoration, is nothing else than the history 
 of the profound discord which, though slowly 
 revealed, broke forth at length between these two 
 kings and their subjects; and of the persevering efforts 
 of the English people to escape from the second 
 revolution to which that discord naturally tended. 
 
 For England was during that period essentially 
 conservative. She was a&'itated bv the intn'o-ues, 
 the plots, and the insurrections excited by the vio- 
 lence of faction or the selfishness of ambition, and 
 was more than once hurried away by the efforts of 
 malcontents or the passions of the people into dis- 
 turbances which seemed to threaten revolution. 
 But far from seconding the men who sought to 
 overthrow the monarchy of the Stuarts^, she stopped 
 and recoiled as soon as she saw that she was tend- 
 ing to that point. During the reign of Charles II. 
 conspirators and insurgents were small fractions of 
 the nation, and were disowned and deserted by 
 it even when it seemed to favour them. As the 
 faults of the restored monarch became more fre- 
 quent and unpardonable, and his tendencies and 
 designs more evident, the public discontent grew 
 stronger, and the chances of a rupture between 
 the sovereign and the country more imminent. 
 But the country, far from availing itself eagerly 
 of these chances, strove to evade them. To 
 maintain the House of Stuart on the throne 
 without surrendering irs laws or its faith, the Eng- 
 
90 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 lish nation made every sacrifice and every effort 
 that the most patient and persevering conservatism 
 could require. 
 
 All the phases through which the English Go- 
 vernment passed during that period, with the con- 
 duct and destiny of all the parties and ministries 
 who then wielded power, were but different forms 
 and striking proofs of this great truth. 
 
 It was natural that the ancient royalist party, the 
 faithful adherents and counsellors of Charles I. in 
 misfortune, and of Charles II. in exile, should be the 
 first possessors of power. Their leader was Claren- 
 don, a man of firm, upright, and penetrating mind ; 
 a sincere friend of legal and moral order ; a cou- 
 rageous defender of the constitution of his country, 
 and a devoted adherent of her church ; full of 
 respect for her rights, whether written or traditional, 
 popular or monarchical. But he carried his hatred 
 of the revolution to such a pitch, that he regarded 
 everything new with suspicion and antipathy. As 
 prime minister, he was haughty rather than high- 
 minded ; he was deficient in largeness of thought 
 and in warmth and generosity of heart; he w^as osten- 
 tatious in the display of his greatness, and pedanti- 
 cally rigid in the use of his power. Towards the 
 king, who regarded him with great confidence, and 
 with an esteem mingled with some degree of attach- 
 ment, he was by turns austere and humble ; passing 
 from remonstrance to complaisance, speaking the 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 9 1 
 
 truth with the courage and firmness of an honest 
 man, but alarmed at having spoken it, and seeking 
 support against the court, yet not choosing to receive 
 it from the Parliament. He tried to compel the 
 Crown to respect the ancient laws of the country, 
 and to keep the Commons within the humble limits 
 which the older constitution had assigned to them ; 
 and he flattered himself that tlie royal prerogative 
 mio'ht be restrained within the bounds of leoalitv, 
 without rendering it responsible to Parliament. 
 He failed in this chimerical attempt to found a go- 
 vernment neither arbitrary nor limited in a country 
 just emerging from a popular revolution ; and he 
 fell, after seven years of ascendancy, hated by the 
 Commons for his monarchical arrogance, by the 
 dissenters for his high church intolerance, and by 
 the court for his contemptuous austerity. He was 
 pursued by the blind anger of the people, who re- 
 proached him with every public evil, as well as with 
 every abuse of power; and was shamefully abandoned 
 by the king, who now regarded him only as an 
 inconvenient censor, and a minister dangerous to 
 his own popularity. ' 
 
 Clarendon's fall has been attributed to the defects 
 of his character, and to some mistakes or failures in 
 his policy abroad and at home. Those who judge 
 thus underrate the mao;nitude of the causes which 
 determine the fate of eminent statesmen. Pro- 
 vidence, which imposes so rude a task upon them, 
 
92 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 does not regard a few weaknesses, failures, or errors 
 with such inexorable rigour as to visit them with 
 a total overthrow. Other great ministers, such as 
 Richelieu, Mazarin, or Walpole, had as great defects 
 as Clarendon, and committed faults at least as serious 
 as his. But they understood the times in which 
 they lived ; the views and objects of their policy 
 were in harmony with the wants, the condition, 
 and the general tendency of the public mind. 
 Clarendon, on the contrary, mistook the character 
 of his age ; he misconstrued the import of the 
 great events which he had witnessed. He con- 
 sidered what had passed from 1640 to 1660 as a 
 revolt, the suppression of which had left the govern- 
 ment nothing to do but to re-establish law and 
 order ; he did not perceive that it was a revolution 
 which had not only hurried the English people into 
 fatal disorders, but had stamped a new political 
 character on the country and imposed new rules of 
 conduct on the restored monarch}^ Amongst the 
 great results which this revolution had bequeathed 
 to England, Clarendon accepted with sincerity the 
 indispensable concurrence of Parliament in the 
 government of the country, and with joy, the 
 triumph of Protestantism. But he obstinately re- 
 jected and opposed the growing influence of the 
 Plouse of Commons, and could not employ or even 
 understand the means by which it might be made 
 to ensure the safety, and add to the strenirth. 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 93 
 
 of the monarchy. This was one of those radical 
 mistakes for which the rarest talents or even virtues 
 cannot atone, and which render faults or reverses, 
 otherwise unimportant, fatal to public men. 
 
 The honest counsellors of the late kino- were 
 succeeded by the profligates of the new court. At 
 their head were Buckingham and Shaftesbury ; 
 the one licentious, witty, light, and presumptuous, 
 the other ambitious, crafty, and bold ; both equally 
 corrupt, and equally versed in the arts of corruption ; 
 both ready to go over from the court to the populace, 
 or from the government to a faction, whenever the 
 apostacy would advance their fortune or gratify their 
 vanity. They undertook to satisfy the Parliament, 
 the dissenters, and all the popular feelings which the 
 rigid and isolated policy of Clarendon had irritated. 
 But the art of governing does not consist solely in 
 anxiety to please or readiness to yield. The rash and 
 immoral successors of Clarendon did not suspect the 
 embarrassments and perils which they were about 
 to bring upon the government and on themselves, 
 by leaning on the House of Commons for their chief 
 support. A popular assembly can only become 
 the habitual instrument of a strong and regular 
 government when it is itself strongly and regularly 
 organized and governed ; and this can only be the 
 case when it is divided into great parties, united by 
 common interests and principles, and proceeding in 
 a consistent and disciplined manner, under acknow- 
 
94 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 leclged leaders, towards determinate ends. Now, 
 such j3arties can only be formed and held together 
 among men united by firm and enduring convictions. 
 Faith in principles and fidelity to persons are the 
 indispensable virtues and the vital conditions of great 
 political parties; as great political parties are, in their 
 turn, a condition of free government. Nothing of the 
 kind existed, or was in process of formation, under 
 Charles II., when the ministry, called the Cabal, 
 attempted to govern in concert with the House of 
 Commons and in obedience to its wishes. After so 
 many convulsions and delusions, men (especially 
 those in the regions nearest to power) were a prey 
 to doubt and distrust, to a constant restlessness, and 
 to a selfishness at one time impudently rapacious, 
 at another, prudent even to pusiilanimit}^ The 
 House of Commons was filled with the wrecks 
 of revolutionary parties, but tiiere were no political 
 parties able or worth}^ to sustain a government. 
 Men like Buckingham and Shaftesbury were 
 equally unable and unworthy to form such parties : 
 they knew only how to gain over partisans for 
 themselves from every camp and by every means. 
 Their policy was shamelessly inconsistent and con- 
 tradictory. They formed an intimate union be- 
 tween England and Holland, or abandoned Hol- 
 land to Louis XIV^, according as they happened 
 to need the favour of the zealous English protestants 
 or of the most powerful of foreign princes. They 
 
 1 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 95 
 
 granted toleration to dissenters from an apparent 
 respect for the rights of conscience, but, in reahty, 
 from complaisance to the king, who wished to pro- 
 tect the catholics; then, under the pressure of the 
 irritated House of Commons, they solicited the king- 
 to sanction the most rigorous measures against both 
 catholics and dissenters. Their policy, whether 
 domestic or foreign, was a series of tentatives and 
 contradictions ; their most equitable measures were 
 only means of corruption and deception, insolently 
 adopted and abandoned by turns, and as devoid of 
 consistency as of truth. 
 
 The public, whether in or out of parliament, was 
 sometimes the dupe of these stratagems. Nothing 
 can equal the eagerness with which the many 
 believe whatever flatters their passions, and the 
 readiness with which they excuse every vice in the 
 men who subserve them. The profligates of the 
 Cabal sometimes enjoyed a momentary favour; but 
 it was withdrawn almost as soon as given. Their 
 licentious lives, the audacious immorality of their 
 maxims, the versatility of their conduct, and the 
 hollowness of their promises, shocked the conscience 
 of the country, which, in the midst of all its errors, 
 had still a solid groundwork of piety and virtue. 
 It would most assuredly not have stopped short at 
 indignation, had it known that its King, with the 
 connivance of his principal counsellors, had con- 
 cluded secret treaties with Louis XIV., by which he 
 
96 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 engaged to declare himself catholic as soon as he 
 could do so with any degree of safety ; and had 
 sold, meanwhile, for a few millions, tlie political 
 independence and the free institutions of his coun- 
 tr3^ England long remained ignorant of these 
 shameful acts ; but where a profound distrust pre- 
 vails, the people, however ignorant, sometimes catch 
 strange glimpses of truth from their presentiments. 
 Though not aware of the degree to which the King's 
 ministers had betrayed and degraded their country, 
 the House of Commons not only withheld its confi- 
 dence from them, but at length violently attacked 
 them ; and they fell under the blows of a power, 
 which, by using it as their instrument, they had 
 themselves augmented, and without having made 
 the smallest progress in organizing political parties 
 in the parliament, or in regulating its action on 
 the government. 
 
 Their successor Sir Thomas Osborne, afterwards 
 Earl of Danby, had much more political wisdom, 
 and exercised a greater influence on the develo})- 
 ment of the parliamentary system in England. 
 Though he came into public life under the auspices 
 of the Cabal, and early took part in some of their 
 bad practices, he differed from them on one essen- 
 tial point — he belonged to the country and not to 
 the court. As he was himself a Yorkshire gentle- 
 man, the country gentlemen of England constituted 
 his party, and the House of Commons was his 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 97 
 
 political sphere. Being an ardent supporter of 
 the cause and prerogative of the Crown, but en- 
 tirely opposed to its severance from the Parliament, 
 his great object was to form a permanent and 
 compact party in the House of Commons. In 
 furtherance of this he resorted to every variety of 
 means ; gaining over the minds of some by argu- 
 ments, and the votes of others by money. He 
 endeavoured to establish that intimate commu- 
 nity of interests between the administration and its 
 adlierents, which, by uniting all the various ele- 
 ments of a party in one set of opinions and one 
 line of policy, gives a strength and efficacy to 
 government which nothing else can confer. 
 
 Danby understood and shared the national feel- 
 ing of England, both as to religion and foreign 
 policy. He was anxious for the security of Protest- 
 antism and the good understanding of the English 
 government with the states devoted to that cause. 
 He persuaded Charles II. to conclude a peace, and 
 afterwards an alliance, with Holland, and to give 
 his niece Mary in marriage to Prince William of 
 Orange. While thus securing abroad a saviour 
 of the faith and the liberties of his country, he 
 laid at home the foundations of that great party 
 attached to the Crown and the Church which 
 has ever since given such strength to the English 
 monarchy and so powerfully conduced to its sta- 
 bility. 
 
 H 
 
98 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 Whilst the Tory party owed its organization to 
 Danby's good sense and ability, his faults, by a for- 
 tunate coincidence of opposite results, occasioned 
 the vigorous and salutary development of Whig 
 principles. It is the glory of this party to have owed 
 its origin and the first display of its greatness to its 
 defence of the political liberty and morality of the 
 country. It rose into being under the auspices of 
 generous sentiments and noble principles ; and 
 it began to assume its peculiar physiognomy and 
 its imposing character, in its struggles with Danby 
 and his army of Cavaliers, transformed into Tories. 
 These struggles were still confused and disorderly ; 
 but it was easy to distinguish in them two great 
 parliamentary parties, aspiring to govern the country 
 upon political principles which, though not radi- 
 cally opposed, were marked by real and important 
 differences. 
 
 The conflict, which lasted some years, eiKled in 
 the fall of Danby and the dissolution of the Long 
 Royalist Parliament, which for eighteen years had 
 upheld the royal cause with a singular mixture of 
 devotedness, servility and independence. It was suc- 
 ceeded by a Whig ministry, composed of the leaders 
 of that party, Temple, Russell, Essex, Hollis, Caven- 
 dish, and Powlet ; and with the aid of a few moderate 
 waverers, such as Halifax and Sunderland, and of 
 Shaftesbury, the daring renegade from the court 
 (but now the favourite of the people), this ministry 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 99 
 
 undertook the task of reforming and conducting the 
 government. 
 
 It was a momentous crisis. For the first time, 
 a parliamentary opposition, in spite of the resistance 
 of the crown, was raised to power by public opinion 
 and by the majority in the House of Commons. 
 Would they be able to retain it? Would they be 
 able to satisfy the real wishes of the country, with- 
 out shaking the foundations of the monarchy, 
 alarmed at their accession to power ? 
 
 The Whigs did not succeed in solving this pro- 
 blem. 
 
 From want of experience^ or from the influence of 
 the false political theories which they had inherited 
 from the revolutionary Long Parliament, their no- 
 tions of their own organization and the conditions of 
 constitutional government were confused, unprac- 
 tical, wavering, and contradictory. Their prejudices 
 were at once monarchical and republican. They 
 tried to constitute the cabinet on a wide basis, and 
 to render it a sort of intermediate body capable of 
 checking the crown by means of the parliament, 
 and the parliament by means of the crown : — a pro- 
 ject so ill conceived that its immediate failure was 
 inevitable. They carried the spirit of opposition 
 into the exercise of power; and while servants of 
 the throne, they were more anxious to restrain 
 than to support its authority. 
 
 They lived amongst the remnants of the anarchi- 
 
 H 2 
 
iOO DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 cal factions wliich had survived tlie revolution, 
 and incessantly kept up a covert war against the 
 monarchy. Revolutionary habits and passions had 
 not totally disappeared with the republic. The 
 republican party, though nearly annihilated in the 
 higher classes, and too weak, even in the lower, to 
 have any chance of success, still possessed unwearied 
 agitators and implacable conspirators, ready to put 
 their skill and their lives at the service of any one 
 who would afford them a hope of gratifying their 
 turbulent and vindictive passions. The Whigs, if 
 they did not connive at these men, were in constant 
 contact with them, and hoped to secure their 
 services as partizans; but these professional revo- 
 lutionists flattered themselves, on the other hand, 
 that they should be able to convert their leaders 
 into instruments. They continually compromised 
 the ministers both with the kins; and the countrv, 
 which was loyal in spite of its discontent, and 
 decidedly averse to nev\' revolutions. 
 
 To set against these faults in their conduct or 
 these difficulties of tlieir situation, the Whigs had 
 one resource of which they made an ample and 
 deplorable use — concessions to the passions of the 
 multitude. England was at that time possessed 
 by a general and ungovernable terror and hatred 
 of popery. Suspecting on good ground that they 
 Avere betrayed on this point by their king, the 
 English people were hurried beyond all bounds 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 1 () I 
 
 of reason, justice, or humanity. The political and 
 judicial persecution of the Catholics was, during 
 three years, the joint crime of a people furious in 
 their faith, and a king cowardly in his infidelity. 
 The Whio's as well as the Tories shared in this 
 frenzy or yielded to it. It was moreover their ill 
 luck to attain to power just as the first access of 
 national fury against the Catholics began to sub- 
 side, and to give place to some reaction in favour of 
 justice and good sense. This reaction was therefore 
 more injurious to them than to their rivals; and 
 they had to sustain all the weight of the concealed 
 anger of the king, who delighted to revenge him- 
 self on them for the iniquities which he had not had 
 the courage to prevent. 
 
 Nor was their situation as to the foreign affairs of 
 the country less complicated and insecure. Whilst 
 they protested against the king's servile intimacy 
 with the court of France, several of their leaders 
 received favours or pensions from Louis XIV. Some 
 accepted them from corruption (for there were profli- 
 gates in the popular party as well as in that of the 
 court) ; others, though men of the highest patriotism 
 and honour, from the chimerical hope of employing 
 the means of influence which they received from a 
 foreign sovereign in securing the liberties of their 
 own country. To seek abroad means of secretly act- 
 ing on the internal affairs of a countr}^ is a danger- 
 ous experiment ; the ablest politicians run a great 
 
102 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 risk of serving the designs of the foreigner rather 
 than their own. The advantages which Louis XIV. 
 derived from his connexion with certain Whig; 
 leaders were much greater than those which 
 accrued to them from the secret support they 
 received from him in effecting the overthrow of 
 Danby and the dissolution of the Cavalier Long- 
 Parliament. 
 
 It was in the midst of these complicated em- 
 barrassments and perils that the Whigs conceived 
 the design of changing the order of succession to the 
 throne, and of setting aside the lawful heir by Act of 
 Parliament. This was to make a revolution as yet 
 uncalled for by any existing and patent necessity ; to 
 anticipate remote contingencies, and to act upon con- 
 jectures, which, however well founded, were uncer- 
 tain. The Whigs doubtless thought that in such a 
 matter it was wiser to prevent than to wait; and 
 that it was better to accomplish at once by means of 
 lawful deliberation, what must be effected later by 
 force, and perhaps at the cost of a civil war. This 
 was a very superficial view of the subject, and 
 evinced little knowledge of human nature or the 
 great conditions of social order. 7^o deliberate on a 
 revolution is more profoundly mischievous than to 
 take a ])art in it ; and the political structure of society 
 is more shaken by attacks on its fundamental laws 
 in the name of reason, than by violations of them 
 under the pressure of necessity. 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 103 
 
 The Whigs required parliament to abolish, at 
 its mere pleasure, and before James II. had begun to 
 reign, the hereditary right of that prince to the 
 crown ; that is to say, they required it to alter the 
 foundations of the monarchy, and to substitute its own 
 will for a principle established by the constitution. 
 The political tact of the nation warned it that 
 this would be to destroy the monarchy ; the mo- 
 narchical spirit rapidly revived, and divisions broke 
 out in the cabinet itself. The Whigs lost all their 
 allies among the moderate Tories, and found them- 
 selves reduced to the mere strength of their own 
 party. They were also met by an obstacle they 
 had little foreseen — the conscience of Charles II. 
 Selfish as he was, he did not think himself justified 
 in disposing of his brother's rights, and he defended 
 them at all risks. To the honour of the English 
 nation, popular passions yielded to the respect for 
 constituted authorities ; the Bill of Exclusion, after 
 passing the House of Commons, was thrown 
 out by the Lords, and no attempt was made to 
 push the thing further or to accomplish the same 
 end by other means. But the question, though 
 postponed, was far from being set at rest. The 
 House of Commons which had voted the exclusion 
 of James II. being dissolved, the bill was proposed 
 and carried anew in that which succeeded it. Of 
 the two great parties which had gradually arisen 
 in the course of the reign, the Whigs were re- 
 
104 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 solved to get rid of the future king, and the Tories 
 to maintain the monarchy intact. Charles II. had 
 also formed his determination ; he dissolved the 
 House of Commons, dismissed the Whigs, made up 
 a ministry consisting exclusively of Tories, and go- 
 verned for four years without a Parliament. During 
 these four gloomy years, England constantly heard 
 the approaching tempest muttering around her. 
 The Whigs, once more in opposition, conspired for 
 different objects and in different degrees. Some en- 
 deavoured to recover power by legal means; others, to 
 force the king, even by insurrection and civil war, if 
 needful, to yield to what they regarded as the right 
 and the will of the nation. Some of the lower and 
 more desperate hangers-on of the party were pre- 
 pared to get rid of the King and his brother, whom 
 they looked upon as the sole obstacles to tlie success 
 of their cause, by assassination. These plots, some- 
 times exaggerated, sometimes misrepresented by 
 an imperfect publicity or by judicial trials con- 
 ducted with subtle wickedness, threw the country 
 into troubles and distractions of opposite kinds. The 
 conservative party was indignant, and was alarmed 
 for the safety of the throne and the established order 
 of things; the popular party was more and more 
 exasperated at finding all its efforts vain, and its 
 noblest leaders led to the scaffold. The destruc- 
 tive hostility to the monarchy provoked a monar- 
 chical reaction equally intense. The charters of 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 105 
 
 the principal corporations, the last rampart of 
 the popular party, were attacked and abolished by 
 form of law. The conspirators, discouraged by 
 their failures and alarmed at their peril, left the 
 country, and went over to Holland to conjure the 
 Prince of Orange to save the Protestant faith and the 
 liberties of England. The two great political results 
 of the recent revolution to which England clung with 
 tenacious attachment, namely, the influence of the 
 parliament on the King's government, and the pre- 
 ponderance of the House of Commons in the par- 
 liament, were not only suspended, but endangered. 
 The great religious result, the ascendancy of Pro- 
 testantism, still remained intact ; it was the Church 
 of England herself who invariably supported the 
 crown and anathematized every attempt at resist- 
 ance. The high Tories, with Rochester at their 
 head, daily rallied more closely round James ; over- 
 looking his attachment to the catholic church in 
 their regard for his character of heir lo the monarchy. 
 But there was a third party, composed of moderate 
 Tories and led by Halifax, who opposed violent 
 measures, demanded the convocation of a parliament, 
 and predicted extreme peril in the event of the 
 government persisting in its refusal. Charles 
 hesitated and procrastinated : promising to the high 
 Tories an unshaken perseverance in maintaining 
 his brother's rights ; to the moderate party, respect 
 for the constitution of tlie country ; and to tlie 
 
106 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 Church, the firm maintenance of the protestant 
 establishment. Perplexed and fatigued, he em- 
 ployed all the address and prudence of which 
 he was master, in eluding the necessity of choosing 
 to which of these promises to adhere. He died 
 before events compelled him to decide ; but, having 
 reached the term of his worldlv career and 
 the verge of eternity, the anxiety of the dying- 
 man overcame the precautions of the king ; he 
 rejected all the offers and entreaties of the Anglican 
 bishops, sent for a Benedictine monk who was con- 
 cealed in his palace, and died in the bosom of the 
 Catholic Church — thus in his last moments con- 
 firming his brother in a faith, without the consola- 
 tions of which Charles found it impossible to die. 
 
 During a reign of four years zeal for this faith 
 had exclusive possession of James the Second's 
 mind. His efforts to obtain absolute power were 
 not the result of a strong character and despotic 
 temper, nor of an ardent ambition ; they were 
 dictated by a dogged and intractable fanaticism. 
 The infallibility and superiority to all control, 
 which are the fundamental principles of the con- 
 stitution of the Church of Rome, he regarded 
 as maxims of government, no less than articles 
 of faith. In his narrow and rigid mind, spiritual 
 order was blindly confounded with temporal ; and 
 he thought himself entitled to exact from his sub- 
 jects that absolute submission in tlic State which 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 107 
 
 he deemed it his own duty to yield in the 
 Church. 
 
 From his infancy he had suffered oppression for 
 his faith, and had seen those who shared it subjectecl 
 to cruel persecutions. On his accession to the throne, 
 he regarded the deliverance of the Catholic Church 
 in England as his peculiar duty and mission, and 
 he was incapable of understanding any other way 
 of effecting her deliverance than by restoring her 
 ascendancy. 
 
 Such is the lamentable concatenation of human 
 errors and crimes ! They provoke and produce 
 each other in endless series. Instead of recognizing 
 and respecting their reciprocal rights, protestants 
 and catholics could only alternately persecute and 
 enslave each otiier. 
 
 Either in the sincere hope of succeeding, or in 
 the desire of guarding himself from all future re- 
 proach, James began by trying to govern accord- 
 ing to the constitution. The day on which he 
 ascended the throne, he promised to maintain the 
 established laws of the Church as well as of the 
 State ; and this promise he solemnly repeated to the 
 parliament which he shortly after convoked. 
 
 Some important though isolated acts, however, 
 soon belied these professions. He continued to levy 
 taxes which had not been voted by Parliament ; 
 and whilst he redoubled his severity against the 
 dissenters, with a view to conciliate the Church of 
 
108 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 England, he began to suspend the execution of the 
 laws against the catholics, and to make serious 
 inroads on the political and religious constitution of 
 the state. 
 
 His language was still more alarming than his 
 acts. While professing the legality of his intentions, 
 he continually betrayed a sense of his right to absolute 
 power, and his resolution to enforce it if the country 
 did not gratefully acknowledge his moderation. 
 
 Kings and their subjects are equally fond of 
 displaying to each other the sword of Damocles 
 suspended over their heads; the former, in the 
 name of divine right ; the latter, in that of the 
 sovereignty of the people. The menace is as in- 
 sane as it is insolent, since it inevitably enfeebles 
 the powers of the government, or endangers the 
 liberties of the country. The true wisdom and 
 policy of both kings and their subjects are the 
 same ; to claim nothing beyond their lawful rights, 
 and to bury in silence the mysteries and the 
 menaces of arbitrary power on the one hand, and 
 of revolution on the other. 
 
 James's promises and first acts of constitutional 
 government were received by the country with 
 favour and almost with enthusiasm. The more 
 lively are men's fears, the more eager are their 
 hopes. The Tories had a decided majority in the 
 Parliament. The Church of England strove to 
 hold the King to the engagements he had formed 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 109 
 
 with her, by increased demonstrations of loyalty 
 and devotedness to his person. The dissenters 
 thought they had some chances of toleration and 
 liberty. Good dispositions and evil ones, motives 
 honourable and shameful, conspired to secure to 
 the King the patient, nay almost the servile, sub- 
 mission of the country. At court and in the par- 
 liament, the greater number of the leading men 
 were so sceptical and corrupt, that they were ready 
 to make indefinite sacrifices of their opinions and 
 their honour. In the nation, a feeling of lassitude, 
 which was still profound, concurred with the mo- 
 narchical spirit and religious discipline to repress 
 any explosion of discontent or alarm. James was 
 no longer young; his two daughters, sole heirs 
 to the throne, were firmly attached to the pro- 
 testant faith; it was better to endure for a time 
 evils and perils, the term of which was certain, than 
 to incur the risks of new revolutions. 
 
 The more violent factions, the conspirators by pro- 
 fession, the men of desperate ambition, and the exiles 
 who had taken refuge in Holland, did not show the 
 same patience and resignation. In spite of the 
 advice of the Prince of Orange, who restrained 
 while he protected them, they attempted two simul- 
 taneous insurrections ; the one in England, under 
 the Duke of Monmouth, the other in Scotland, 
 under the Duke of Argyle. These risings produced 
 a o-reat amtation in the nation ; but though a 
 
1 1 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 strong" sympathy with the insurgents spread rapidly 
 amongst the lower classes, it did not break out in ac- 
 tive demonstrations. While the Tories vigorously 
 aided the King to suppress the rebellion, the Whigs 
 gave it no support. Both these attempts failed, 
 and both their leaders expiated them on the scaffold. 
 Though their fate excited the public commiseration, 
 neither their personal qualities nor their views 
 awakened any strong national sentiment. But an 
 appearance of success is fatal to a weak prince 
 engaged in a struggle with his people. James, 
 triumphant over his enemies and obeyed by his 
 subjects, gave himself up to the vices of his nature. 
 He delighted in the rigid and even cruel exercise of 
 his power, and he found in Jeftreys an undaunted 
 and shameless minister of his vengeance. The in- 
 human proceedings against the partisans of Argyle 
 and Monmouth, though clothed with the forms of 
 justice, evinced an equal contempt for the gua- 
 rantees of law and the feelings of humanity; and 
 they excited in the public, whether high or low, 
 whether favourable or hostile to the insurrection, 
 the deepest indignation and disgust. James now 
 gave a free course to his designs. He assailed 
 the Church of England in its vital privileges, 
 and the most faithful of his protestant servants in 
 the inmost recesses of their consciences. The uni- 
 versities of Oxford and Cambridge received orders 
 to place Catholics at the head of Protestant esta- 
 
THE ENGLISH llEVOLUTION. 1 1 1 
 
 blishments. The king declared with his own lips 
 to Rochester, that if he did not turn catholic he 
 would be deprived of all his employments. ]\Iea- 
 sures so evidently illegal and extreme found oppo- 
 nents even among the Catholics. These were divided 
 into two parties, the one prudent, the other violent, 
 who carried on a constant struggle for influence 
 over the king. The former pointed out to him the 
 dangers into which he was rushing, the latter, the 
 great object on which his hopes were fixed; thus 
 restraining or stimulating his fanaticism by turns. 
 Nothing, therefore, was wanting that could en- 
 lighten or guide James ; neither the loyalty and the 
 long patience of the Protestants, nor the modera- 
 tion and the wise counsels of the more moderate 
 Catholics. But his blind and sincere obstinacy was 
 proof against all representations. He officially 
 raised Father Petre, a Jesuit, to a place in his Privy 
 Council; and he ordered the clergy of the Esta- 
 blished Church to read from every pulpit in the 
 kingdom, the declaration by which he abolished, in 
 virtue of his sole power, the acts of Parliament 
 against Dissenters and Catholics. The Archbishop 
 of Canterbury and six bishops having refused to 
 execute this order, and having presented a remon- 
 strance to the king, he caused them to be arrested, 
 taken to the Tower, and tried before the Court of 
 King's Bench as authors of a seditious libel. 
 
 Just at this time, a son, whose birth, being con- 
 
1 12 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 trary to the expectations of all England, was. re- 
 garded with groundless but natural suspicion, was 
 born to James. The dominant faction loudly pro- 
 claimed their joy at this event ; and betrayed their 
 hope of training tlie son in their own principles, and 
 of governing him as they had governed his father. 
 There was now no apparent end of the despotism 
 which had hitherto been tolerated in consideration 
 of its short duration. 
 
 Still there was no violent outbreak, and the 
 country remained motionless ; but its leading men 
 changed their resolutions. The Church of England, 
 goaded to extremity, entered on a S3^stem of positive 
 resistance ; the political parties, Whigs and Tories, 
 concurred in a more decisive step. The Whigs had 
 been taught by experience that they alone could 
 neither rally the nation nor establish a government. 
 Their conspiracies had been as unsuccessful as their 
 cabinets. They had now the rare wisdom to per- 
 ceive that they w^ere of themselves insufficient to 
 accomplish their own designs, and that an intimate 
 union with their former adversaries was the only 
 means of securing their success. The Tories, on the 
 other hand, saw that every principle has its limits, 
 every engagement and every duty its conditions. 
 For forty years they had upheld the maxims 
 of non-resistance to the Crown, and observed 
 a punctilious fidelity to their kings. Placed in 
 new circumstances, and subjected to a new trial, 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 1 1 3 
 
 they felt that their country too had a claim on 
 their fidelity ; and that they were not bound by 
 consistency to make a servile surrender of their 
 liberties and faith to a prince inaccessible to 
 reason. The most eminent men of both parties, 
 Russell, Sidney, and Cavendish for the Whigs, 
 Danby, Shrewsbury, and Lumley for the Tories, 
 laid aside their divisions and determined to act in 
 concert. Halifax, i;he leader of the intermediate 
 party, when sounded by them, declined all active 
 participation in their design, but did not dissuade 
 them from it. 
 
 On the 30th June, 1688, at the very moment 
 when the solemn acquittal of the Seven Bishops 
 filled London with enthusiastic acclamations. Ad- 
 miral Herbert, disguised as a common sailor, set 
 out for Holland, bearing to the Prince of Orange a 
 formal invitation to come to the succour of the faith 
 and laws of England, and a solemn engagement 
 to support him at all risks and by every means in 
 their power. These documents were signed by the 
 six leaders of the two great political parties, and 
 by Compton, Bishop of London. 
 
 William only awaited this step. " Now or never," 
 said he to his confidant, Dykevelt, when he heard 
 of the trial of the Seven Bishops, and of their 
 inflexible resistance. As soon as he received the 
 message, he announced his intention with a bold 
 and dexterous mixture of frankness and reserve, and 
 
1 14 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 publicly prepared to execute it. He did not go, he 
 said, to conquer a kingdom, or to usurp a throne ; 
 he went at the request of the English people 
 themselves, to interpose between their king and his 
 subjects, and to protect the laws of England and 
 the Protestant religion from the dangers that threat- 
 ened them. He discussed the expediency of the 
 undertaking with the States General of Holland, 
 and asked their opinion and assistance. He in- 
 formed not only the Protestant princes, who sym- 
 pathized with him as the champion of their 
 common faith, but the Emperor of Germany and 
 the King of Spain, who regarded him as the de- 
 fender of the European balance of power. Never 
 was enterprise of the kind thus avowed, debated, 
 explained, and justified beforehand. The whole of 
 Europe knew it, and understood what was impend- 
 ing. Personal ambition and treasonable conspiracy 
 disappeared in the political greatness of the cause 
 and the event. Less than four months after the 
 arrival of the joint message from the Whigs and 
 Tories, William embarked for England at the head 
 of a squadron and an army : bearing with him 
 the secret good wishes of most of the sovereigns 
 of Europe, Protestant or Catholic, and even of 
 Pope Innocent XL, who had conceived a lively 
 resentment at the haughty demeanour of Louis 
 XIV., and a profound contempt for the insane 
 temerity of James II. 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. \ 15 
 
 James alone neither imderstood nor believed 
 what was passing*. In vain did he receive from 
 Louis XIV. accurate intelligence, and the offer of 
 ejSicient help ; in vain did his own agents at the 
 Hague and at Paris send him accounts of the 
 preparations and the progress of the enterprise. 
 He rejected all proposals, and shut his eyes to all 
 information. He had still so much of English and 
 kingly pride left as to be unwilling to be publicly 
 defended by the soldiers of a foreign king, whose 
 subsidies he had secretly accepted without blush- 
 ing. His seeming temerity was the offspring 
 of secret fear, and the feeling of his own im- 
 potence made him turn away from the aspect or 
 the thought of danger. His presentiments did not 
 deceive him. More than six weeks elapsed be- 
 tween William's landing on the coast of England 
 and his triumphal entry into London. He advanced 
 slowly through the country, awaiting those who 
 would resist, or those who might join him : but no 
 resistance was offered ; not an effort was made, not 
 a drop of blood was shed, in defence of James. 
 No less abject in the presence of danger than he 
 had been obstinate in refusing to foresee it, he 
 tried to regain by weakness what he had lost by 
 temerity ; he retracted all he had done, granted all 
 he had refused ; he restored to the cities their char- 
 ters, to the universities their privileges, and to the 
 bishops his favour. He dismissed Father Petre 
 
 I 2 
 
1 16 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 from his council, and attempted to negotiate with 
 William. His meanness was as unavailing as his 
 temerity had been impotent. Shut up in his palace, 
 he dailv learned some fresh defection of his oene- 
 rals or counsellors. His daughter, the Princess 
 Anne, escaped to the head-quarters of the Prince of 
 Orange. Whitehall had become a solitude, and 
 was likely soon to become a prison. James fled in 
 his turn, but was recognized and brought back 
 to London by the mob. After a few more days 
 passed in useless perplexities, he escaped again, and 
 for ever. On the 18th December, 1688, he had 
 hardly quitted London three hours, when six regi- 
 ments of cavalry, English and Dutch, entered the 
 capital, with colours flying, in the name of the 
 Prince of Orange. William himself, shunning as 
 much by taste as by prudence all appearance of 
 triumph, arrived in the evening of the samxC day at 
 St. James's Palace ; and five weeks afterwards, on 
 the 22nd of January, 1689, a parliament, extraordi- 
 narily convoked under the name of a Convention, 
 met at Westminster to sanction and settle the new 
 order of things. 
 
 In this assembly, the differences which had been 
 suppressed during the common danger, broke forth 
 anew. The monarchical scruples of the Tories, and 
 the innovating notions of the Whigs, once more mani- 
 fested themselves in all their force. It was said by 
 the more timid of the former, that the wisest course 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 1 17 
 
 would be to recall King James, after compelling 
 him to grant fresh guarantees. The more vehe- 
 ment of the Whigs spoke of founding a republic 
 governed by a council of state, of which the 
 Prince of Orange should be President. Between 
 these extremes floated the moderate opinions, which 
 also were divided and unsettled. Many of the 
 Whigs, who, though they had no intention of over~ 
 throwing the monarchy, were still deeply imbued 
 with the maxims of the Long Parliament, wished 
 to depose King James, and to defer offering 
 the crown to William till republican institutions 
 should have been organized under monarchical 
 forms. The Tories, who were warmly attached to 
 the Church of England, demanded that James 
 should be declared incapable of reigning, but that 
 the foundations of the monarchy should be left un- 
 touched, and the government placed in the hands 
 of a regency. Otliers, more bold, agreed with the 
 Whigs that James, by his conduct and his flight, 
 had abdicated ; but, under the influence of scruples 
 suggested by their monarchical principles, they 
 maintained that the throne, which could not be 
 vacant for a single moment, descended, by this mere 
 act, to his eldest daughter, the Princess Mary, 
 and that nothing remained to be done but to pro- 
 claim her Queen. These various schemes, as soon 
 as they were promulgated, were explained, dis- 
 cussed, and criticised with ardour by the people 
 
118 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 as well as in the two Houses ; the public miud 
 became heated, and parties arrayed themselves 
 against each other ; the ambitious unfurled the 
 banner under which they hoped to rise to fortune 
 and distinction ; divisions broke out between 
 the Lords and the Commons; and the Revolu- 
 tion, though hardly accomplished, was already in 
 jeopardy. 
 
 But the same rare political good sense which had 
 united the leaders of parties in a common resistance, 
 guided them through the difficulties incident to a 
 new government. They dismissed all absolute 
 theories and all questions of no practical utility ; 
 they reduced the acts and the terms by which 
 the new power was to be settled, to what was 
 strictly necessary to give it a solid foundation ; 
 and they were only anxious to bring affairs as 
 speedily as possible to a conclusion which might 
 satisfy the higher and middling classes of the 
 country. William, at first by his reserve and 
 afterwards by his firmness, efficiently seconded the 
 wisdom of the party leaders. He left a perfect 
 latitude to every system and every project ; betraying 
 neither his wishes nor aversions, and keeping himself 
 aloof from all debates. But when he felt the crisis 
 approaching, he assembled the most considerable 
 men of the two Houses, and declared to them in 
 simple and brief language, which admitted of no 
 reply, that though he was full of respect for the 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. HQ 
 
 rights and liberties of the Parliament, he, too, had 
 liberties and rights, and would never accept a 
 mutilated power nor a throne on which his wife 
 would be placed above him. This step was de- 
 cisive : the two Houses came to an agreement ; a 
 declaration was adopted, proclaiming the vacancy 
 of the throne, the fundamental rights of the English 
 people, and the elevation of William and Mary, 
 Prince and Princess of Orange, to the throne of 
 England. On the 13th of February, 1689, the 
 official proclamation of the Act of Parliament was 
 hailed with acclamations in all the principal parts 
 of London. 
 
 Nor was this rare combination of prudence, 
 union, and power, more than the exigencies of the 
 case demanded ; for such is the inherent vice of all 
 revolutions, that even the most lawful, the most 
 necessary, and the most generally approved, causes 
 a profound disturbance in the community which it 
 saves from worse evils, and yields results which are 
 long insecure and precarious. 
 
 Hardly more than two or three years had passed 
 when William, the deliverer of England, was already 
 unpopular. His simple but haughty deportment, 
 his cold taciturnity, his distaste for the man- 
 ners of the English aristocracy (which he took 
 no pains to conceal), the exclusive intimacy and 
 lavish favours which he bestowed on a few old 
 friends who had accompanied him from Holland, 
 
120 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 all conspired to make him a stranger, and not an 
 agreeable one, in the midst of his new people. In 
 all that regarded civil and religious liberty he was 
 far more enlightened than the English, and was 
 not at all inclined to be made the instrument of 
 episcopal intolerance or of rival aristocratic 
 parties. He had little respect for the exigencies 
 of constitutional government, and, indeed, did not 
 understand the working of parliamentary parties, 
 which at that time were confused and ill-organized ; 
 he was shocked at their selfishness and jealous of 
 their power, and sometimes defended his own with 
 more vigour than discernment. The general policy of 
 Europe was the great, and almost sole object of his 
 thoughts and government. He had aspired to the 
 throne of England mainly that he might have all 
 her strength at his disposal in his struggle against 
 the domination of Louis XIV. ; and the protestant 
 passions of the English people powerfully seconded 
 his designs. But William involved England in the 
 affairs and wars of the continent more than was 
 agreeable to the habits, tastes, or interests of her 
 people. She was weary of being engaged in efforts 
 and dangers for distant objects by the prince 
 whom she had invited to free her from intestine 
 dangers ; and he, in his turn, was indignant at 
 finding in the people and the parties whom he 
 liad delivered on their own soil, so little ardour and 
 devotedncss for the great cause to whicli their 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 121 
 
 safety and their freedom were, in his eyes, so mani- 
 festly attached. From these causes arose those 
 misunderstandings, heart-burnings and conflicts be- 
 tween the King and the country which disturbed 
 and shook the new government. William was con- 
 scious of his strength, and used it haughtily; he 
 even went so far as to say that he would abdicate 
 and return to Holland, if he were not better under- 
 stood and more vigorously supported. When the 
 danger became urgent, the Parliament, the political 
 parties throughout the country, the church, and the 
 people felt how necessary William was to them, 
 and made the liveliest demonstrations of attach- 
 ment to him. But their mutual disgusts soon re- 
 curred ; the parties returned to their rivalries ; the 
 people to their prejudices and their ignorance; the 
 king to his European policy, his war expenditure, 
 and his captious tenacity of power. The hopes of 
 the Jacobites revived : though beaten in Ireland and 
 Scotland, and discovered and condemned in Eng- 
 land, they laid fresh plots and renewed their at- 
 tempts to excite a civil war. Even in William's 
 privy council, James had correspondents who thus 
 endeavoured to secure themselves against possible 
 contingencies. Notwithstanding the easy success of 
 the revolution, the firm character of the king, and the 
 sincere consent of the country, the government esta- 
 blished in 1688 was, during the whole course of this 
 reign, continually assailed and continually tottering. 
 
122 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 Similar evils subsisted in the reign of Queen 
 Anne. The Whigs and Tories, more and moi*e 
 widely severed, carried on a furious contest for 
 power. In the European struggle for the Spanish 
 succession, the two parties were at first united in 
 pursuing King William's policy of intervention and 
 continental war : but the Whigs, led partly by a spirit 
 of routine and partly by the intoxication of success, 
 wished to carry this policy far beyond the limits of 
 moderation orexpediency ; whilst the Tories espoused 
 the cause of peace, which was ardently desired 
 by the people and favoured by the Queen. By the 
 treaty of Utrecht they put an end to the uneasy and 
 precarious situation of Europe. But the Tories being 
 nearly connected with the Jacobites, and the Queen, 
 in spite of her fidelity to protestantism, beginning 
 to feel a revival of attachment to her famil}^ domes- 
 tic intrigues were mingled with foreign complica- 
 tions, and the banished Stuarts had some reason to 
 imagine that they had yet a chance of recovering the 
 throne. The settlement of 1688 appeared to be once 
 more called in question; but the death of Queen 
 Anne and the peaceful accession of the House of 
 Hanover established it on a solid basis. Under the 
 reigns of George I. and George H. the public mind 
 took another direction ; foreign politics ceased to 
 occupy it ; the internal administration of the 
 country, the maintenance of peace, questions of 
 finance, colonics, and commerce, and the dcvelo])- 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 123 
 
 meiit and the contests of parliamentary government, 
 became the predominant and absorbing interests 
 of the government and the country. The revoUi- 
 tionary and dynastic questions were not, however, 
 wholly extinct : the English nation had no affection 
 for German princes, who did not speak their lan- 
 guage and did not like their habits ; who eagerly 
 seized on any pretext to quit the country and to 
 visit their small hereditary state ; and who con- 
 tinually involved them in continental squabbles 
 to which the English attached no importance and 
 no interest. The domestic quarrels and the 
 coarse licentiousness of the royal family offended 
 the country. The vacillating rule, the selfish 
 rivalries, the exaggerations and the intrigues of 
 the parliamentary parties shocked its integrity and 
 its good sense. In Scotland, Ireland, and even in 
 England, Jacobite insurrections were pertinaciously 
 renewed ; but though they always found enthusiastic 
 adhei'ents, they were always repressed, and ceased to 
 excite in the country any vehement fear or antipathy. 
 These continual attacks on the established order of 
 things naturally produced a general indifference and 
 inertness, a disaffection to authority, and a dispo- 
 sition to criticise its conduct ; the public seemed to 
 fall away from a power for which it no longer cared. 
 Fifty-seven years after the burst of national enthu- 
 siasm which had placed William III. on the throne, 
 the grandson of James II., at the head of a body of 
 
124 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 Scotch Highlanders, penetrated unresisted into the 
 very heart of England ; and people began to ask 
 whether he would not enter London in a few days, 
 as easily as William had done when he drove out 
 this same Pretender's grandfather. 
 
 But the fate of England and its government 
 were not left to be determined by a fit of popular 
 ill humour, the defeat of a few regiments of soldiers, 
 or the daring enterprise of a few factious men. 
 The same social force which, in 1688, had accom- 
 plished the Revolution, defended and saved, in 1745, 
 the government which it had founded. As soon 
 as the danger became evident, the enemies of that 
 government were encountered by the strong organi- 
 zation of aristocratic parties, and by the good sense of 
 a people politically disciplined and deeply imbued 
 with the Christian faith. The Whig leaders and 
 many of the Tories considered their honour and 
 their political fortune bound up with this cause. 
 The parties were faithful to their leaders. The 
 middle classes and the public at large forgot 
 their discontents and disgusts, and the small hold 
 of the government on their personal sympathy, 
 and thought only of the welfare of the coun- 
 try and their own true interests. The church 
 and the dissenters were animated by a common 
 loyalty. Opposed by this intelligent union of the 
 aristocracy with the people, and of the political with 
 the religious spirit, the triumph of the Jacobites 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 125 
 
 was as short-lived as it had been sudden. The 
 greatest peril which the newly-constituted mo- 
 narchy of England ever incurred was also the 
 last. From that time some secret plot, some at- 
 tempt no sooner conceived than frustrated, has 
 occasionally shown that it still had enemies. It 
 was not till after seventy years of laborious and 
 painful trials that the government established in 
 1688 overcame the vices inherent in every revo- 
 lution and acquired undisputed sway in England. 
 In 1760, when George III. ascended the throne, it 
 was firmly consolidated. By what means and at 
 what cost this great work had been completed, 
 appears from the preceding relation. 
 
 A people who can understand and act upon the 
 counsels which God has given it in the past events 
 of its history, is safe in the most dangerous crises of 
 its fate. England had learned from her former 
 trials, that a revolution is an immense and incalcu- 
 lable disorder, which entails on society great evils, 
 great perils, and great crimes ; a disorder which 
 a rational people may be compelled to undergo, 
 but which they will dread and repel until it is 
 forced upon them by an imperious necessity. In 
 her new trials, England did not forget this lesson. 
 She endured much, she struggled long, to avoid 
 
126 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 another revolution ; nor did she resign herself to it 
 till she saw no other way of saving her rights, her 
 honour, and her faith. It is the glory of the Revo- 
 lution of 1688 and the main cause of its success, 
 that it was an act of mere defence and of neces- 
 sary defence. 
 
 Whilst this revolution was defensive in principle, 
 it aimed at precise and limited objects. In great 
 political and social convulsions, a fever of boundless 
 and impious ambition sometimes seizes upon so- 
 ciety ; men think themselves entitlecl to lay hands 
 upon everything, and to remodel the world at their 
 will. These vague and presumptuous schemes of 
 human creatures treating the great and complex 
 system in which their place is marked out as if it 
 were a chaos, and striving to exalt themselves into 
 creators, are as impotent as they are insane ; the 
 utmost that they can do is, to throw all that they 
 touch into the confusion of their own delirious 
 dreams. England did not fall into this wild error. 
 Instead of aspiring to alter the foundations of society 
 and the destinies of mankind, she asserted and main- 
 tained her religion and her positive laws and rights ; 
 and did not carry her claims or even her desires 
 beyond the limits which they prescribed. With a sin- 
 gular mixture of magnanimity and discretion, she 
 accomplished a revolution which gave to the country 
 a new head and new guarantees, but which stopped 
 short with the attainment of those objects. 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 127 
 
 This great change was not brought about by 
 popular risings ; but by political parties organized 
 long before the revolution, with a view to the 
 settlement of a regular government, and not in a 
 revolutionary spirit. Neither the Tory party, nor 
 that of the Whigs (spite of the revolutionary ele- 
 ments which mingled in it), had been formed for 
 the purpose of overthrowing established institutions. 
 They were parties occupied with constitutional 
 politics, not with conspiracy and revolt. Although 
 they were led by imperious circumstances to change 
 the government of their country, the design was 
 foreign to their character and principles ; and they 
 returned with little effort to those habits of order 
 and obedience which they had abandoned for a 
 moment, not from taste or levity, but from necessity. 
 
 Nor was the merit or the burthen of the revolu- 
 tion limited to either of the great parties which had 
 so long been opposed in opinion. They brought it 
 about in concert and by mutual concessions. It was 
 imposed on both by a common necessity, and was 
 not, to either, a victory or a defeat. Though 
 watching its approach with widely different senti- 
 ments, both saw it to be inevitable, and shared in 
 its accomplishment. 
 
 It has often been said in France, and even in 
 England, that the Revolution of 1688 was exclu- 
 sively aristocratic ; that it was planned and achieved 
 by the higher classes for their own advantage, and 
 
128 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 was not accomplished by the impulse or for the 
 good of the people. 
 
 This is a remarkable example, among many 
 others, of the confusion of ideas and the ignorance 
 of facts which so often characterize the judgments 
 passed on great events. 
 
 The two political clianges effected by the Revo- 
 lution of 1688 are the most popular to be found 
 in history ; it proclaimed and guaranteed, on the 
 one hand, the essential rights common to all 
 citizens, and on the other, the active and effectual 
 participation of the country in its own government. 
 A people so ignorant of its highest interests, as not 
 to know that this is all which it needs, or ought to 
 demand, will never be able to found a government 
 or to maintain its liberties. 
 
 Considered from a moral point of view, the 
 Revolution of 1688 had a still more popular 
 character ; since it was made in the name and by 
 the force of the religious convictions of the nation, 
 and was designed principally to give them security 
 and ascendancy. In no country, and at no time, 
 were the form and destiny of the government more 
 powerfully influenced by the prevalent faith of the 
 governed. 
 
 The Revolution of 1688 was popular in its prin- 
 ciples and results, and was aristocratic only in the 
 mode of its execution ; the men of weight and mark 
 in the country by whom it was conceived, pre- 
 
THE ENGLISH KEVOLUTION. 129 
 
 pared, and carried through, being the faithful repre- 
 sentatives of the general interests and sentiments. 
 It is the rare felicity of England, that powerful and 
 intimate ties were early formed, and have been 
 perpetuated, among the different classes of society. 
 The aristocracy and the people living amicably, 
 and deriving prosperity from their union, have 
 sustained and controlled each other. The natural 
 leaders of the country have not held themselves 
 aloof from the people, and the people have never 
 wanted leaders. It was more especially in 1688 
 that England experienced the benefit of this happy 
 peculiarity in her social order. To save her faith, 
 her laws and her liberties, she was reduced to the 
 fearful necessity of a revolution ; but she accom- 
 plished it by the hands of men disciplined in 
 habits of order and experienced in government, 
 and not by those of revolutionists. The very 
 men who were the authors of the change, contained 
 it within just limits, and established and consoli- 
 dated the institutions to which it gave birth. The 
 cause of the English people triumphed by the 
 hands of the English aristocracy : this indeed was 
 the great characteristic of the Revolution, and the 
 pledge of its enduring success. 
 
 K 
 
130 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 George III. had been seated on the throne six- 
 teen years, when, at fourteen hundred leagues from 
 his capital, more than two millions of his subjects 
 broke the ties which bound them to his throne, de- 
 clared their independence, and undertook the foun- 
 dation of a Republic. England was compelled, after 
 a contest of seven years, to recognise the inde- 
 pendence of the United States of America, and to 
 treat with them upon equal terms. Sixty-seven 
 years have since elapsed ; and, without any violent 
 effort or extraordinary event, these United States, 
 by the mere development of their institutions and 
 of the prosperity which is the natural attendant on 
 peace, have taken an honourable place among great 
 nations. Never was an ascent to greatness at once 
 so rapid, so little costly at its origin, or so little 
 troubled in its progress. 
 
 It is not merely to the absence of any powerful 
 rival, or to the boundless space open to their popu- 
 lation, that the United States of America have owed 
 this singular good fortune. Their rapid and tran- 
 quil rise is not the mere result of such happy 
 accidents as these, but is in a great degree a con- 
 sequence of moral causes. 
 
 They rose to the position of an independent 
 state under the banner of law and justice. Their 
 revolution, like that of England, was strictly de- 
 fensive. The guarantees which they claimed and 
 the principles which they asserted were inscribed 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 131 
 
 in their charters. They were the same which the 
 English parliament, with far greater violence and 
 disorder than were now occasioned by the resist- 
 ance of the colonies, had triumphantly claimed and 
 asserted in the mother-country. 
 
 The great and perilous enterprise in which they 
 engaged was not strictly a revolution. Before they 
 could conquer their independence, they had to go 
 through a war with a formidable enemy, and to con- 
 struct a central government of their own, in the 
 place of the distant power whose yoke they were 
 endeavouring to throw off: but in respect of their 
 local political institutions and their private law, they 
 had no revolution to make. Each of the colonies 
 was already in the enjoyment of free institutions as 
 to its internal affairs ; and when it became an in- 
 dependent state, little change was necessary or 
 desirable in the principles and structure of its 
 existing government. Attachment to ancient laws 
 and manners, and affectionate reverence for the 
 past, were the general sentiments of the people. 
 The colonial administration of a distant monarchy, 
 was easily transformed into a republican admin- 
 istration under a federation of states. 
 
 Of all forms or modes of government, the repub- 
 lican is unquestionably that to which the general 
 and spontaneous assent of the country is the most 
 indispensable. An absolute monarchy founded by 
 violence, is conceivable ; and indeed such have ex- 
 
 k2 
 
132 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 isted. But a popular government forced upon a 
 people in despite of its sentiments and wishes, is 
 an absurdity at which common sense and justice 
 revolt. In their transition to the republican form 
 of government the Anolo- American colonies had 
 no such difficulty to surmount ; it was the full 
 and free choice of the people ; and in adopting it, 
 they did but accomplish the national wish, and 
 develope, instead of overturning, their existing in- 
 stitutions. 
 
 Nor was the perturbation in the social order 
 greater than that in the political. There was no 
 conflict between different classes, nor any violent 
 transfer of influence from one order of men to 
 another. Though the crown of England had still 
 partisans in the colonies, their attachment to it 
 had no connexion with their position in the social 
 scale. The wealthy and important families were in 
 general the most firmly resolved on the conquest 
 of their independence and the foundation of a new 
 system ; and it was under their direction that the 
 people acted, and that those objects were accom- 
 plished. 
 
 The opinions and feelings of men in regard to 
 religion and morals underwent as slight a revolu- 
 tion as their social condition. The philosophical 
 ideas and the moral and religious scepticism pre- 
 valent in the eighteenth century, had obtained some 
 circukitiou in the United States ; but even the 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 133 
 
 minds which they had infected were not thoroughly 
 imbued by them ; their fundamental principles 
 and ultimate consequences were not understood or 
 accepted : the moral gravity and the practical good 
 sense of the old Puritans survived in most of the 
 American admirers of the new French philosophy. 
 The mass of the population remained as warmly 
 attached to its religious creed as to its political 
 liberties. Whilst rebelling against the King and 
 the Parliament of England, they were submissive 
 to the will of God and the precepts of the Gospel ; 
 and whilst struggling for emancipation, they were 
 governed by the faith which inspired tlieir fore- 
 fathers, when they sought the New World and 
 founded the communities which were now rising: 
 into independent states. 
 
 The ideas and passions of the modern partisans 
 of democracy, which now convulse and disorganize 
 society, have an extensive and powerful sway in 
 the United States, and there, as elsewhere, are 
 pregnant with contagious errors and destructive 
 vices. Hitherto they have been controlled and 
 purified by Christianity, and by the sound political 
 traditions, and strong habits of spontaneous obe- 
 dience to law, which, in the midst of nearly unli- 
 mited freedom, govern the population. In spite of 
 the anarchical principles which are boldly piH3- 
 claimed on this vast theatre, principles of order and 
 conservation maintain their o-round, and exerci.se 
 
134 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 a powerful influence over society and individuals ; 
 their presence and their power are felt, even by 
 the party which emphatically styles itself demo- 
 cratic ; insensibly moderating its actions, and often 
 saving it from its own intemperance. To these 
 tutelary principles which presided over its origin, 
 the American revolution owed its success. May 
 Heaven grant that in the midst of the formidable 
 conflict which they have now to sustain, they may 
 continue to guide this powerful people, and to 
 warn them in time of the precipices which lie so 
 near their path ! 
 
 Three illustrious men, Cromwell, William III., 
 and Washington, are the prominent and character- 
 istic figures in the history of the critical events 
 which determined the fate of two mighty nations. 
 For extent and force of natural talents, Cromwell 
 perhaps is the most remarkable of the three. His 
 mind was wonderfully inventive, supple, prompt, 
 firm, and perspicacious, and he possessed a vigour 
 of character which no obstacle could daunt, and no 
 conflict weary. He pursued his designs with an 
 ardour as exhaustless as his patience, through the 
 slowest and most tortuous, or the most abrupt and 
 daring ways. He excelled equally in winning and 
 in ruling men by personal and familiar inter- 
 course; he displayed equal ability in leading 
 an army or a party. He had the instinct of 
 popularity and the gift of authority, and he let 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 135 
 
 loose factions with as much audacity as he subdued 
 them. But, born in the midst of a revolution, 
 and raised to sovereign power by a succession of 
 violent convulsions, his genius, from first to last, 
 was essentially revolutionary ; and even when 
 taught by experience the necessity of order and 
 government, he was incapable of either respecting 
 or practising the immutable moral laws which are 
 the only basis of government. Owing to the faults 
 of his nature, or the instability of his position, he 
 wanted regularity and calmness in the exercise of 
 power; had instant recourse to extreme measures, 
 like a man pursued by the dread of mortal dangers, 
 and, by the violence of his remedies, perpetuated or 
 even aggravated the evils which he sought to cure. 
 The establishment of a government is a work Avhich 
 requires a more regular course, and one more con- 
 formable to the eternal laws of moral order. Crom- 
 well was able to subjugate the revolution which he 
 had so largely contributed to make, but not to 
 build up a government in the place of that which 
 he had subverted. 
 
 Though less powerful than Cromwell by nature, 
 Wifiiam III. and Washington succeeded in the 
 undertaking in which he had failed ; they fixed 
 the destiny and consolidated the institutions of 
 their respective countries. Even in the midst of 
 revolution they never adopted a revolutionary 
 policy. Power gained by anarchical violence 
 
136 DISCOURSE ON THE HISTORY OF 
 
 generally entails on its possessor the necessity of 
 using despotic violence in its defence. But these 
 two great men were naturally placed, or placed 
 themselves, in the regular ways and under the 
 permanent conditions of government. 
 
 William was an ambitious prince. It is puerile 
 to believe that, up to the moment of the appeal 
 sent to him from London in 1688, he had been 
 insensible to the desire of mounting the throne of 
 England, or ignorant of the schemes which had 
 long been laid for raising him to it. William 
 followed the progress of these schemes step by 
 step; though he took no part in the means, he 
 did not reject the end ; and, without directly 
 encouraging, he protected its authors. His am- 
 bition was ennobled by the greatness and justice 
 of the cause to which it was attached ; the 
 cause of religious liberty and of the balance of power 
 in Europe. Never did man make a vast political 
 design more exclusively the thought and purpose 
 of his life than William did. The work which he 
 accomplished on the field or in the cabinet was his 
 passion ; his own aggrandizement was but the 
 means to that end. Whatever were his views on 
 the crown of England, he never attempted to 
 realize them by violence and disorder. To his well- 
 regulated and lofty mind the inherent vice and de- 
 grading consequences of such means were obvious 
 and revolting. But when the career was opened to 
 
THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 137 
 
 liirn by England herself, he did not sufi'er liimself 
 to be deterred from entering on it by the scruples 
 of a private man ; he wished his cause to prevail, 
 and he wislied to reap the honour of tiie triumph. 
 Rare and glorious mixture of worldly ability and 
 christian faith, of personal ambition and devotion 
 to public ends ! 
 
 Washington had no ambition ; his country 
 wanted him to serve lier, and he accepted great- 
 ness from a sense of duty rather than from taste ; 
 sometimes even with a painful effort. The trials 
 of his public life were bitter to a man who preferred 
 the independence of a private condition and tran- 
 quillity of mind to the exercise of power. But he 
 undertook, without hesitation, the task which his 
 country imposed on him, and, in fulfilling it, he 
 made no concessions that could lighten its burthen 
 either to the country or to himself. He was born 
 to govern, though he had no delight in governing ; 
 and, with a firmness as unshaken as it was simple, 
 and a sacrifice of popularity the more meritorious 
 as it was not compensated by the pleasures of domi- 
 nation, he told the American people what he be- 
 lieved to be true, and persisted in doing what he 
 thought to be wise. Though the servant of an 
 infant republic, in which the democratic spirit 
 prevailed, he won the confidence of the people by 
 maintaining their interests in opposition to their 
 inclinations. The policy which he pursued while 
 
138 DISCOURSE ON THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. 
 
 laying the foundations of a new government, was 
 SO moderate yet so rigorous, so prudent yet so inde- 
 pendent, that it seemed to belong to the head of an 
 aristocratic Senate ruling over an ancient State. 
 The success with which it was crowned does equal 
 honour to Washington and to his country. 
 
 Whether we consider the general destiny of na- 
 tions, or the lives of the great men whom they 
 have produced ; whether we are treating of a mo- 
 narchy or a republic, an aristocratic or a democratic 
 society, the same light breaks upon us from the 
 facts presented by history : we see that the ultimate 
 success or failure of governments is determined, in 
 the last result, by the same laws ; and that the 
 policy which preserves a state from violent revolu- 
 tions, is also the only policy which can bring a 
 revolution to a successful close. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AKD SOUS, STAMFORD STREET. 
 
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