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MILTON.

In every venerable precedent, tey pass by catholics from the crown, because they thought
what is essential, and take only what is acci- them likely to be tyrants. The ground on
dental: they keep out of sight what is benefi- which they, in their famous resolution, de-
cial, and hold up to public imitation all that is clared the throne vacant, was this, "that
defective. If, in any part of any great exam-James had broken the fundamental laws of the
ple, there be any thing unsound, these flesh-flies kingdom." Every man, therefore, who ap
detect it with an unerring instinct, and dart proves of the Revolution of 1688, must hold
upon it with a ravenous delight. They cannot that the breach of fundamental laws on the part of
always prevent the advocates of a good mea-the sovereign justifies resistance. The question
mental laws of England?
sure from compassing their end; but they feel, then is this: Had Charles I. broken the funda-
with their prototype, that

"Their labours must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil."

No person can answer in the negative, unless he refuses credit, not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his To the blessings which England has de- opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest rived from the Revolution these people are royalists, and to the confessions of the king utterly insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, himself. If there be any historian of any party the solemn recognition of popular rights, who has related the events of that reign, the liberty, security, toleration, all go for nothing conduct of Charles, from his accession to the with them. One sect there was, which, from meeting of the Long Parliament, had been a unfortunate temporary causes, it was thought continued course of oppression and treachery. necessary to keep under close restraint. One Let those who applaud the Revolution and conpart of the empire there was so unhappily cir-demn the rebellion, mention one act of James cumstanced, that at that time its misery was II., to which a parallel is not to be found in the necessary to our happiness, and its slavery to history of his father. Let them lay their finour freedom! These are the parts of the Re-gers on a single article in the Declaration of volution which the politicians of whom we speak love to contemplate, and which seem to them, not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate the good which it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of Spain, or of South America. They stand forth, zealots for the doctrine of Divine Right, which has now come back to us, like a thief from transportation, under the alias of Legitimacy. But mention the miseries of Ireland! Then William is a hero. Then Somers and Shrewsbury are great

men.

Then the Revolution is a glorious era! The very same persons, who, in this country, never omit an opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite slander respecting the whigs of that period, have no sooner crossed St. George's channel, than they begin to fill their bumpers to the glorious and immortal memory. They may truly boast that they look not at men but measures. So that evil be done, they care not who does it-the arbitrary Charles or the liberal William, Ferdinand the catholic or Frederick the protestant! On such occasions their deadliest opponents may reckon upon their candid construction. The bold assertions of these people have of late impressed a large portion of the public with an opinion that James II. was expelled simply because he was a catholic, and that the Revolution was essentially a protestant revolution.

But this certainly was not the case. Nor can any person, who has acquired more knowledge of the history of those times than is to be found in Goldsmith's Abridgment, believe that, it James had held his own religious opinions without wishing to make proselytes; or if, wishing even to make proselytes, he had contented himself with exerting only his cons. tional influence for that purpose, the Prince of Orange would ever have been invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew their own meaning. And, if we may believe them, their was primarily not to popery, but to hostility They did not drive out a tyrant betyranny. he was a catholic; but they excluded cause

Right, presented by the two Houses to William
and Mary, which Charles is not acknowledged
to have violated. He had, according to the
testimony of his own friends, usurped the
functions of the legislature, raised taxes without
Not a single session of
the consent of parliament, and quartered
troops on the people in the most illegal and
vexatious manner.
parliament had passed without some unconsti-
tional attack on the freedom of debate. The
right of petition was grossly violated. Arbi-
If these things do not
trary judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwar-
ranted imprisonments, were grievances of daily
and hourly occurrence.
justify resistance, the Revolution was treason;
But, it is said, why not adopt milder mea
if they do, the Great Rebellion was laudable.
sures? Why, after the king had consented to
so many reforms, and renounced so many op-
pressive prerogatives, did the parliament con-
tinue to rise in their demands, at the risk of
provoking a civil war? The ship-money had
been given up. The star-chamber had been
abolished. Provision had been made for the
frequent convocation and secure deliberation
of parliaments. Why not pursue an end con-
fessedly good, by peaceable and regular means?
We recur again to the analogy of the Revolu-
Why was he not retained upon conditions?
tion. Why was James driven from the throne?
He too had offered to call a free parliament,
and to submit to its decision all the matters in
dispute. Yet we praise our forefathers, who
preferred a revolution, a disputed succession,
a dynasty of strangers, twenty years of foreign
and intestine war, a standing army, and a na-
tional debt, to the rule, however restricted, of a
tried and proved tyrant. The Long Parlia
ment acted on the same principle, and is enti
tled to the same praise. They could not trus
the king. He had no doubt passed salutary laws
But what assurance had they that he woul
not break them? He had renounced oppre
sive prerogatives. But where was the securi
that he would not resume them? They had

deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a man | accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in

who made and broke promises with equal facility, a man whose honour had been a hundred times pawned and never redeemed.

Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still stronger ground than the Convention of 1688. No action of James can be compared for wickedness and impudence to the conduct of Charles with respect to the Petition of Right. The lords and commons present him with a bill in which the constitutional limits of his power are marked out. He hesitates; he evades; at last he bargains to give his assent, for five subsidies. The bill receives his solemn assent. The subsidies are voted. But no sooner is the tyrant relieved, than he returns at once to all the arbitrary measures which he had bound himself to abandon, and violates all the clauses of the very act which he had been paid to pass.

the morning! It is to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the present generation.

For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the common phrase—a good man, but a bad king. We can as easily conceive a good man and an unnatural father, or a good man and a treacherous friend.We cannot, in estimating the character of an individual, leave out of our consideration his conduct in the most important of all human relations. And if in that relation we find him to have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take the liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of all his temperance at table, and all his regularity at chapel.)

We cannot refrain from adding a few words respecting a topic on which the defenders of Charles are fond of dwelling. If, they say, he governed his people ill, he at least governed them after the example of his predecessors. If he violated their privileges, it was because those privileges had not been accurately defined. No act of oppression has ever been imputed to him which has not a parallel in the annals of the Tudors. This point Hume has laboured with an art which is as discreditable in an historical work as it would be admirable in a forensic address. The answer is short, clear, and decisive. Charles had assented to the Petition of Right. He had renounced the op

For more than ten years, the people had seen the rights, which were theirs by a double claim, by immemorial inheritance and by recent purchase, infringed by the perfidious king who had recognised them. At length circumstances compelled Charles to summon another parliament; another chance was given them for liberty. Were they to throw it away as they had thrown away the former? Were they again to be cozened by le Roi le veut? Were they again to advance their money on pledges, which had been forfeited over and over again? Were they to lay a second Petition of Right at the foot of the throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange for another un-pressive powers said to have been exercised meaning ceremony, and then take their departure, till, after ten years' more of fraud and oppression, their prince should again require a supply, and again repay it with a perjury? They were compelled to choose whether they would trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose wisely and nobly.

by his predecessors, and he had renounced them for money. He was not entitled to set up his antiquated claims against his own recent release.

These arguments are so obvious that it may seem superfluous to dwell upon them. But those who have observed how much the events of that time are misrepresented and misunderstood, will not blame us for stating the case simply. It is a case of which the simplest statement is the strongest.

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. He The enemies of the parliament, indeed, rarehad so many private virtues! And had James | ly choose to take issue on the great points of II. no private virtues? Was even Oliver the question. They content themselves with Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies, which half the tomb-ing their districts; soldiers revelling on the stones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A good husband! --Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood.

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath-and we are told that he kept his marriage-vow! We accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates-and the defence is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him! We censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable consideration, promised to observe them—and we are informed that he was

exposing some of the crimes and follies of which public commotions necessarily gave birth. They bewail the unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate the lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the scriptural names of the preachers. Major-generals fleec

spoils of a ruined peasantry; upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of the old gentry; boys smashing the beautiful windows of cathedrals; Quakers riding naked through the market-place; Fifth-monarchymen shouting for King Jesus; agitators lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag;-all these, they tell us, were the offspring of the Great Rebellion.

Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this matter. These charges, were they infinitely more important, would not alter our opinion of an event, which alone has made us to differ from the slaves who crouch beneath the scep

tres of Brandenburg and Braganza. Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They were the price of our liberty. Has the acquisition been worth the sacrifice? It is the nature of the devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body which he leaves. Are the miseries of continued possession less horrible than the struggles of the tremendous exorcism?

tions.

form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured her during the period of her disguise, were forever excluded from participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterwards revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her, accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them happy in love, and victorious in war. Such a spirit is Liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But wo to those who in disgust shall venture to crush her! And happy are those who, having dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory.

If it were possible that a people, brought up under an intolerant and arbitrary system, could subvert that system without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be removed. We should, in that case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least produces no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character of a people. We deplore the outrages which accompany revoluBut the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was neressary. The violence of those outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people: and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live. Thus it was in our civil war. The rulers in the church and state reaped only that which they had sown. They had prohibited free discussion-may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which they had done their best to keep the people unacquainted with their duties and their rights. The retribution was just and natural. If they suffered from popular ignorance, it was because they had themselves taken away the key of knowledge. If they were assailed with blind fury, it was because they had exacted an equally blind submission.

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces-and that cure is freedom! When a prisoner leaves his cell, he cannot bear the light of day;—he is unable to discriminate colours, or recognise faces. But the remedy is not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty

have become half blind in the house of bondage But let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of opinion subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to conflict, and begin to coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos.

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fi to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim! If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.

It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them at first. Till men have been for some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are always sober. In climates where wine is a rarity, intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to Therefore it is that we decidedly approve indulge without restraint in such a rare and of the conduct of Milton and the other wise expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but in- and good men who, in spite of much that was toxication. Soon, however, plenty teaches dis- ridiculous and hateful in the conduct of their cretion; and after wine has been for a few associates, stood firmly by the cause of public months their daily fare, they become more liberty. We are not aware that the poet has temperate than they had ever been in their been charged with personal participation in own country. In the same manner the final any of the blamable excesses of that time. and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, The favourite topic of his enemies is the line moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects of conduct which he pursued with regard to are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, the execution of the king. Of that celebrated scepticism on points the most clear, dogma- proceeding we by no means approve. Still tism on points the most mysterious. It is just we must say, in justice to the many eminent at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit persons who concurred in it, and in justice it. They pull down the scaffolding from the more particularly to the eminent person who half-finished edifice; they point to the flying defended it, that nothing can be more absurd dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, than the imputations which, for the last hun the frightful irregularity of the whole appear-dred and sixty years, it has been the fashion to ance; and then ask in scorn where the promised splendour and comfort are to be found? If such miserable sophisms were to prevail, there would never be a good house or a good government in the world.

Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appear at certain seasons in the

cast upon the regicides. We have throughou: abstained from appealing to first principles→ we will not appeal to them now. We recur again to the parallel case of the Revolution. What essential distinction can be drawn be

tween the execution of the father an! thr

* Orlando Furioso, Canto 43.

B

deposition of the son? maxim is there, which and not to the latter?

What constitutional had not been done, while the people dis applies to the former approved of it. But, for the sake of public The king can do no liberty, we should also have wished the people wrong. If so, James was as innocent as to approve of it when it was done. If any Charles could have been. The minister only thing more were wanting to the justification ought to be responsible for the acts of the of Milton, the book of Salmasius would furnish sovereign. If so, why not impeach Jeffries | it. That miserable performance is now with and retain James? The person of a king is justice considered only as a beacon to wordsacred. Was the person of James considered catchers who wish to become statesmen. The sacred at the Boyne? To discharge cannon celebrity of the man who refuted it, the "Encæ against an army in which a king is known to magni dextra," gives it all its fame with the be posted, is to approach pretty near to regi- present generation. In that age the state of cide. Charles too, it should always be re- things was different. It was not then fully membered, was put to death by men who had understood how vast an interval separates the been exasperated by the hostilities of several mere classical scholar from the political philoyears, and who had never been bound to him sopher. Nor can it be doubted, that a treatise by any other tie than that which was common which, bearing the name of so eminent a to them with all their fellow-citizens. Those critic, attacked the fundamental principles of who drove James from his throne, who seduced all free governments, must, if suffered to rehis army, who alienated his friends, who first main unanswered, have produced a most perimprisoned him in his palace, and then turned nicious effect on the public mind. him out of it, who broke in upon his very slumbers by imperious messages, who pursued him with fire and sword from one part of the empire to another, who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, and attainted his innocent heir, were his nephew and his two daughters! When we reflect on all these things, we are at a loss to conceive how the same persons who, on the fifth of November, thank God for wonderfully conducting his servant King William, and for making all opposition fall before him until he became our King and Governor, can, on the thirtieth of January, contrive to be afraid that the blood of the Royal Martyr may be visited on themselves and their children.

We do not, we repeat, approve of the execution of Charles; not because the constitution exempts the king from responsibility, for we know that all such maxims, however excellent, have their exceptions; nor because we feel any peculiar interest in his character, for we think that his sentence describes him with perfect justice as a "tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy;" but because we are convinced that the measure was most injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed was a captive and a hostage. His heir, to whom the allegiance of every royalist was instantly transferred, was at large. The Presbyterians could never have been perfectly reconciled to the father. They had no such rooted enmity to the son. The great body of the people, also, contemplated that proceeding with feelings which, however unreasonable, no government could safely venture to outrage.

But, though we think the conduct of the regicides blamable, that of Milton appears to us in a very different light. The deed was done. It could not be undone. The evil was incurred; and the object was to render it as small as possible. We censure the chiefs of the army for not yielding to the popular opinion but we cannot censure Milton for wishing to change that opinion. The very feeling, which would have restrained us from committing the act, would have led us, after it had been committed, to defend it against the ravings of servility and superstition. For the Jake of public liberty, we wish that the thing

We wish to add a few words relative to
another subject on which the enemies of
Milton delight to dwell-his conduct during
the administration of the Protector. That an
enthusiastic votary of liberty should accept
office under a military usurper, seems, no
doubt, at first sight, extraordinary. But all the
circumstances in which the country was then
placed were extraordinary. The ambition of
Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems
to have coveted despotic power. He at first
fought sincerely and manfully for the parlia
ment, and never deserted it, till it had deserted
its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it was
not till he found that the few members, who
remained after so many deaths, secessions,
and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate
to themselves a power which they held only
in trust, and to inflict upon England the
curse of a Venetian oligarchy.
But even
when thus placed by violence at the head
of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power.
He gave the country a constitution far more
perfect than any which had at that time been
known in the world. He reformed the repre-
sentative system in a manner which has ex-
torted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For
himself, he demanded indeed the first place in
the commonwealth; but with powers scarcely
so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an
American president. He gave the parliament
a voice in the appointment of ministers, and
left to it the whole legislative authority-not
even reserving to himself a veto on its enact-
ments. And he did not require that the chief
magistracy should be hereditary in his family.
Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the
time, and the opportunities which he had of
aggrandizing himself, be fairly considered, he
will not lose by comparison with Washington
or Bolivar. Had his moderation been met by
corresponding moderation, there is no reason
to think that he would have overstepped the
line which he had traced for himself. But
when he found that his parliaments questioned
the authority under which they met, and that he
was in danger of being deprived of the restrict-
ed power which was absolutely necessary to his
personal safety, then, it must be acknowledged.
he adopted a more arbitrary policy.

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vernment, which had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed of God and man, was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a by-word and a shaking of the head to the nations.

Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were at first honest, though we believe that he was driven from the noble course which he had marked out for himself by the almost irresistible force of circumstances, though we admire, in common with all men of all parties, the ability and energy-Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated of his splendid administration, we are not pleading for arbitrary and lawless power, even in his hands. We know that a good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot. But we suspect, that, at the time of which we speak, the violence of religious and political enmities rendered a stable and happy settlement next to impossible. The choice lay, not between Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton chose well, no man can doubt, who fairly compares the events of the protectorate with those of the thirty years which succeeded it-the darkest and most disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable system. Never before had religious liberty and the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. Never had the national honour been better upheld abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at home. And it was rarely that any opposition, which stopped short of open rebellion, provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper. The institutions which he had established, as set down in the Instrument of Government, and the Humble Petition and Advice, were excellent. His practice, it is true, too often departed from the theory of these institutions. But, had he lived a few years longer, it is probable that his institutions would have survived him, and that his arbitrary practice would have died with him. His power had not been consecrated by any ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his great perso. l qualities. Little, therefore, was to be dreadem a second Protector, unless he were also ond Oliver Cromwell. The events which allowed his decease are the most complete vindication of those who exerted themselves to uphold his authority. For his death dissolved the whole frame of society. The army rose against the Parliament, the different corps of the army against each other. Sect raved against sect. Party plotted against party. The Presbyterians, in their eagerness to be revenged on the Independents, sacrificed their own liberty, and deserted all their old principles. Without casting one glance on the past, or requiring one stipulation for the future, they threw down their freedom at the feet of the most frivolous and heartless of tyrants.

Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush--the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and Darrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sunk into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insults and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a go

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

We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. ostentatious simplicity of their dress, theit sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff pos ture, their long graces, their Hebrew names the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amuse

The

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