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mus a defender of abuses, and turned the au- of their spiritual bondage was effected "by thor of Utopia into a persecutor. In both cases, plagues and by signs, by wonders and by war. the convulsion which had overthrown deeply- We cannot but remember, that, as in the case seated errors, shook all the principles on which of the French Revolution, so also in the case society rests to their very foundations. The of the Reformation, those who rose up against minds of men were unsettled. It seemed for a tyranny were themselves deeply tainted with time that all order and morality were about to the vices which tyranny engenders. We canperish with the prejudices with which they had not but remember, that libe's scarcely less been long and intimately associated. Frightful scandalous than those of Herbert, mummeries cruelties were committed. Immense masses scarcely less absurd than those of Clootz, and of property were confiscated. Every part of crimes scarcely less atrocious than those of Europe swarmed with exiles. In moody and Marat, disgrace the early history of Protestturbulent spirits, zeal soured into malignity, or antism. The Reformation is an event long foamed into madness. From the political agi- past. The volcano has spent its rage. The tation of the eighteenth century sprang the Ja- wide waste produced by its outbreak is forgotcobins. From the religious agitation of the ten. The landmarks which were swept away sixteenth century sprang the Anabaptists. The have been replaced. The ruined edifices have partisans of Robespierre robbed and murdered been repaired. The lava has covered with a in the name of fraternity and equality. The rich incrustation the fields which it once defollowers of Cnipperdoling robbed and mur- vastated; and after having turned a garden dered in the name of Christian liberty. The into a desert, has again turned the desert into feeling of patriotism was, in many parts of a still more beautiful and fruitful garden. The Europe, almost wholly extinguished. All the second great eruption is not yet over. The old maxims of foreign policy were changed. marks of its ravages are still all around us. Physical boundaries were superseded by mo- The ashes are still hot beneath our feet. In some ral boundaries. Nations made war on each directions, the deluge of fire still continues to other with new arms; with arms which no for- spread. Yet experience surely entitles us to tifications, however strong by nature or by art, believe that this explosion, like that which precould resist; with arms before which rivers ceded it, will fertilize the soil which it has departed like the Jordan, and ramparts fell down vastated. Already, in those parts which have like the walls of Jericho. Those arms were suffered most severely, rich cultivation and opinions, reasons, prejudices. The great mas- secure dwellings have begun to appear amidst ters of fleets and armies were often reduced to the waste. The more we read of the history confess, like Milton's warlike angel, how hard of past ages, the more we observe the signs of they found it these times, the more do we feel our hearts filled and swelled up with a good hope for the future destinies of the human race.

"Te exclude

Spiritual substance with corporeal bar."

Europe was divided, as Greece had been divided during the period concerning which Thucydides wrote. The conflict was not, as it is in ordinary times, between state and state, but between two omnipresent factions, each of which was in some places dominant, and in other places oppressed, but which, openly or covertly, carried on their strife in the bosom of every society. No man asked whether another belonged to the same country with himself, but whether he belonged to the same sect. Party spirit seemed to justify and consecrate acts which, in any other times, would have been considered as the foulest of treasons. The French emigrant saw nothing disgraceful in bringing Austrian and Prussian hussars to Paris. The Irish or Italian democrat saw no impropriety in serving the French Directory against his own native government. So, in the sixteenth century, the fury of theological factions often suspended all national animosities and jealousies. The Spaniards were invited into France by the League; the English were invited into France by the Huguenots.

We by no means intend to underrate or to palliate the crimes and excesses which, during the last generation, were produced by the spirit of democracy. But when we find that men zealous for the Protestant religion, constantly represent the French Revolution as radically and essentially evil on account of those crimes and excesses, we cannot but remember, that the deliverance of our ancestors from the house

The history of the Reformation in England is full of strange problems. The most prominent and extraordinary phenomenon which it presents to us, is the gigantic strength of the government contrasted with the feebleness of the religious parties. During the twelve or thirteen years which followed the death of Henry the Eighth, the religion of the state was thrice changed. Protestantism was established by Edward; the Catholic Church was restored by Mary; Protestantism was again established by Elizabeth. The faith of the nation seemed to depend on the personal inclinations of the sovereign. Nor was this all. An estab lished church was then, as a matter of course, a persecuting church. Edward persecuted Catholics. Mary persecuted Protestants. Elizabeth persecuted Catholics again. The father of those three sovereigns had enjoyed the pleasure of persecuting both sects at once; and had sent to death, on the same hurdle, the heretic whc denied the real presence, and the traitor who denied the royal supremacy. There was nothing in England like that fierce and bloody opposition, which, in France, each of the religious factions in its turn offered to the government. We had neither a Coligni nor a Mayenne; neither a Moncontour nor an Ivry. No English city braved sword and famine for the reformed doctrines with the spirit of Rochelle; nor for the Catholic doctrines with the spirit of Paris. Neither sect in England formed a league. Neither sect extorted a recantatio from the sovereign. Neither sect could obra-

from an adverse sovereign even a toleration. | liaments were as obsequious as his Parlia The English Protestants, after several years of ments, that her warrant had as much authority domination, sank down with scarcely a strug- as his lettre-de-cachet. The extravagance with gle under the tyranny of Mary. The Catholics, which her courtiers eulogized her personal and after having regained and abused their old as- mental charms, went beyond the adulation of cendency, submitted patiently to the severe Boileau and Molière. Louis would have blushed rule of Elizabeth. Neither Protestants nor to receive from those who composed the gor Catholics engaged in any great and well-orga-geous circles of Marli and Versailles, the out nized scheme of resistance. A few wild and tumultuous risings, suppressed as soon as they appeared, a few dark conspiracies, in which only a small number of desperate men engaged-such were the utmost efforts made by these two parties to assert the most sacred of human rights, attacked by the most odious tyranny.

ward marks of servitude which the haughty Britoness exacted of all who approached her. But the power of Louis rested on the support of his army. The power of Elizabeth rested solely on the support of her people. Those who say that her power was absolute do not sufficiently consider in what her power consisted. Her power consisted in the willing obedience of her subjects, in their attachment

The explanation of these circumstances which has generally been given, is very sim-to her person and to her office, in their respect ple, but by no means satisfactory. The power of the crown, it is said, was then at its height, and was, in fact, despotic. This solution, we own, seems to us to be no solution at all.

for the old line from which she sprang, in their sense of the general security which they enjoyed under her government. These were the means, and the only means, which she had at It has long been the fashion, a fashion intro- her command for carrying her decrees into duced by Mr. Hume, to describe the English execution, for resisting foreign enemies, and monarchy in the sixteenth century as an abso- for crushing domestic treason. There was not lute monarchy. And such undoubtedly it ap- a ward in the city, there was not a hundred in pears to a superficial observer. Elizabeth, it any shire in England, which could not have is true, often spoke to her Parliaments in lan- overpowered the handful of armed men who guage as haughty and imperious as that which composed her household. If a hostile sove the Great Turk would use to his divan. She reign threatened invasion, if an ambitious no punished with great severity members of the ble raised the standard of revolt, she could House of Commons, who, in her opinion, car-have recourse only to the trainbands of her ried the freedom of debate too far. She as-capital, and the array of her counties, to the sumed the power of legislating by means of citizens and yeomen of England, commanded proclamation. She imprisoned her subjects by the merchants and esquires of England. without bringing them to a legal trial. Torture was often employed, in defiance of the laws of England, for the purpose of extorting confessions from those who were shut up in her dungeons. The authority of the Star-Chamber and the Ecclesiastical Commission was at its highest point. Severe restraints were imposed on political and religious discussion. The number of presses was at one time limited. No man could print without a license; and every work had to undergo the scrutiny of the primate or the Bishop of London. Persons whose writings were displeasing to the court were cruelly mutilated ike Stubbs, or put to death, like Penry. Non formity was severely punished. The queen prescribed the exact rule of religious faith and discipline; and whoever departed from that rule, either to the right or to the left, was in danger of severe penal

ties.

Such was this government. Yet we know that it was loved by the great body of those who lived under it. We know that, during the fierce contests of the sixteenth century, both the hostile parties spoke of the time of Elizabeth as of a golden age. The great queen has now been lying two hundred and thirty years in Henry the Seventh's chapel. Yet her memory is still dear to the hearts of a free people.

The truth seems to be, that the government of the Tudors was, with a few occasional deviations, a popular government under the forms of despotism. At first sight, it may seem that the prerogatives of Elizabeth were not less ample than those of Louis the Fourteenth, that her Par

Thus, when intelligence arrived of the vast preparations which Philip was making for the subjugation of the realm, the first person to whom the government thought of applying for assistance was the Lord Mayor of London. They sent to ask him what force the city would engage to furnish for the defence of the king dom against the Spaniards. The mayor and common council, in return, desired to know what force the queen's highness desired them to furnish. The answer was-fifteen ships and five thousand men. The Londoners deliberated on the matter, and two days after "humbly entreated the council, in sign of their perfect love and loyalty to prince and country, to accept ten thousand men, and thirty ships amply furnished."

People who could give such signs as these of their loyalty were by no means to be misgoverned with impunity. The English in the sixteenth century were, beyond all doubt, a free people. They had not, indeed, the outward show of freedom; but they had the reality. They had not a good constitution, but they had that without which the best constitution is as useless as the king's proclamation against vice and immorality, that which, without any con stitution, keeps rulers in awe-force, and the spirit to use it. Parliaments, it is true, were rarely held; and were not very respectfully treated. The Great Charter was often violated. But the people had a security against gross and systematic misgovernment, far stronger than all the parchment that was ever marked with the sign manual, and than all the wax that was ever pressed by the great seat.

It is a common error in politics to confound | governs in conformity with certain rules es means with ends. Constitutions, charters, pe- tablished for the public benefit; and the sanc titions of right, declarations of right, repre- tion of those rules is, that every Afghan ap sentative assemblies, electoral colleges, are not proves them, and that every Afghan is a sol good government; nor do they, even when dier. most elaborately constructed, necessarily produce good government. Laws exist in vain for those who have not the courage and the means to defend them. Electors meet in vain where want renders them the slaves of the landlord; or where superstition renders them the slaves of the priest. Representative assemblies sit in vain unless they have at their command, in the last resort, the physical power which is necessary to make their deliberations free, and their votes effectual.

The monarchy of England in the sixteenth century was a monarchy of this kind. It is called an absolute monarchy, because little respect was paid by the Tudors to those institutions which we have been accustomed to consider as the sole checks on the power of the sovereign. A modern Englishman can hardly understand how the people can have had any real security for good government un der kings who levied benevolences and chid the House of Commons as they would have chid a pack of dogs. People do not sufficiently consider that, though the legal checks were feeble, the natural checks were strong. There was one great and effectual limitation on the royal authority-the knowledge that if the pa tience of the nation were severely tried, the nation would put forth its strength, and that its strength would be found irresisuble. If a large body of Englishmen became thoroughly discontented, instead of presenting requisitions, holding large meetings, passing resolutions, signing petitions, forming associations and unions, they rose up; they took their halberds and their bows; and if the sovereign was not sufficiently popular to find among his subjects other halberds and other bows to oppose to the rebels, nothing remained for him but a repetition of the horrible scenes of Berkeley and Pomfret. He had no regular army which could by its superior arms and its superior skill overawe or vanquish the sturdy commons of his realm, abounding in the native hardihood of Englishmen, and trained in the simple discipline of the militia.

The Irish are better represented in Parliament than the Scotch, who indeed are not represented at all. But are the Irish better governed than the Scotch? Surely not. This circumstance has of late been used as an argument against reform. It proves nothing against reform. It proves only this; that laws have no magical, no supernatural virtue; that laws do not act like Aladdin's lamp or Prince Ahmed's apple; that priestcraft, that ignorance, that the rage of contending factions may make good institutions useless; that intelligence, sobriety, industry, moral freedom, firm union, may supply in a great measure the defects of the worst representative system. A people whose education and habits are such, that, in every quarter of the world, they rise above the mass of those with whom they mix, as surely as oil rises to the top of water; a people of such temper and self-government, that the wildest popular excesses recorded in their history partake of the gravity of judicial proceedings, and of the solemnity of religious rites; a people whose national pride and mutual attachment have passed into a proverb; a people whose high and fierce spirit, so forcibly described in the haughty motto which encircles their thistle, preserved their independence, during a struggle of centuries, from the encroachments of wealthier and more power-ruled despotically, by means of a great standful neighbours,-such a people cannot be long oppressed. Any government, however constituted, must respect their wishes, and tremble at their discontents. It is indeed most desirable that such a people should exercise a direct influence on the conduct of affairs, and should make their wishes known through constitutional organs. But some influence, direct or indirect, they will assuredly possess. Some organ, constitutional or unconstitutional, they will assuredly find. They will be better governed under a good constitution than under a bad constitution. But they will be better governed under the worst constitution than some other nations under the best. In any general classification of constitutions, the constitution of Scotland must be reckoned as one of the worst, perhaps as the worst in Christian Euupe. Yet the Scotch are not ill governed. And the reason is simply that they will not bear to be ill governed.

In some of the Orienta! monarchies, in Afghanistan, for example, though there exists nothing which a European publicist would all a constitution, the sovereign generally

It has been said that the Tudors were as ab solute as the Caesars. Never was parallel so unfortunate. The government of the Tudors was the direct opposite to the government of Augustus and his successors. The Caesars

ing army, under the decent forms of a republican constitution. They called themselves citizens. They mixed unceremoniously with other citizens. In theory they were only the elective magistrates of a free commonwealth. Instead of arrogating to themselves despotic power, they acknowledged obedience to the senate. They were merely the lieutenants of that ve nerable body. They mixed in debate. They even appeared as advocates before the courts of law. Yet they could safely indulge in the wildest freaks of cruelty and rapacity while their legions remained faithful. Our Tudors, on the other hand, under the titles and forms of monarchical supremacy, were essentially popular magistrates. They had no means of protecting themselves against the public hatred; and they were therefore compelled to court the public favour. To enjoy all the state and all the personal indulgences of absolute power, to be adored with Oriental prostrations, to dispose at will of the liberty and even of the life of ministers and courtiers-this the nation granted to the Tudors. But the condition on which they were suffered to be the tyrants of

queen found that it would be madness to at tempt the restoration of the abbey lands. She found that her subjects would never suffer her to make her hereditary kingdom a fief of Castile. On these points she encountered a steady

Whitehali was, that they should be the mild and paternal sovereigns of England. They were under the same restraints with regard to their people under which a military despot is placed with regard to his army. They would have found it as dangerous to grind their sub-resistance, and was compelled to give way. If jects with cruel taxation as Nero would have found it to leave his prætorians unpaid. Those who immediately surrounded the royal person, and engaged in the hazardous game of ambition, were exposed to the most fearful dangers. Buckingham, Cromwell, Surrey, Sudley, Somerset, Suffolk, Norfolk, Percy, Essex, perished on the scaffold. But in general the country gentleman hunted and the merchant traded in peace. Even Henry, as cruel as Domitian but far more politic, contrived, while reeking with the blood of the Lamiæ, to be the favourite with the cobblers.

she was able to establish the Catholic worship and to persecute those who would not conform to it, it was evidently because the people cared far less for the Protestant religion than for the rights of property and for the independence of the English crown. In plain words, they did not think the difference between the hostile sects worth a struggle. There was undoubted. ly a zealous Protestant party and a zealous Catholic party. But both these parties were, we believe, very small. We doubt whether both together made up, at the time of Mary's death, the twentieth part of the nation. The remaining nineteen-twentieths halted between the two opinions, and were not disposed to risk a revolution in the government for the purpose of giving to either of the exueme factions an advantage over the other.

The Tudors committed very tyrannical acts. But in their ordinary dealings with the people they were not, and could not safely be tyrants. Some excesses were easily pardoned. For the nation was proud of the high and fiery blood of its magnificent princes; and saw, in many We possess no data which will enable us te proceedings which a lawyer would even then compare with exactness the force of the twe have condemned, the outbreak of the same sects. Mr. Butler asserts that, even at the ac noble spirit which so manfully hurled foul cession of James the First, a majority of the scorn at Parma and at Spain. But to this en-population of England were Catholics. This durance there was a limit. If the government is pure assertion, and is not only unsupporte ventured to adopt measures which the great by evidence, but, we think, completely dis body of the people really felt to be oppressive, proved by the strongest evidence. Dr. Lingar it was soon compelled to change its course. is of opinion that the Catholics were one-hal When Henry the Eighth attempted to raise a of the nation in the middle of the reign of Eliza. forced loan of unusual amount by proceedings beth. Richton says, that when Elizabeth came of unusual rigour, the opposition which he en- to the throne, the Catholics were two-thirds countered was such as appalled even his stub- of the nation, and the Protestants only one born and imperious spirit. The people, we are third. The most judicious and impartial of told, said that if they were to be taxed thus, | English historians, Mr. Hallam, is, on the con"then were it worse than the taxes of France, trary, of opinion that two-thirds were Protestand England should be bond, and not free." ants, and only one-third Catholics. To us, wa The county of Suffolk rose in arms. The king must confess, it seems altogether inconceivabl2 prudently yielded to an opposition which, if he that, if the Protestants were really two to one, had persisted, would in all probability have they should have borne the government of taken the form of a general rebellion. To- Mary; or that, if the Catholics were really twɔ wards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, the to one, they should have borne the government people felt themselves aggrieved by the mono- of Elizabeth. It is absolutely incredible that polies. The queen, proud and courageous as a sovereign who has no standing army, and she was, shrunk from a contest with the na- whose power rests solely on the loyalty of his tion, and, with admirable sagacity, conceded subjects, can continue for years to persecute all that her subjects had demanded, while it a religion to which the majority of his subjects was yet in her power to concede with dignity are sincerely attached. In fact, the Protestand grace. ants did rise up against one sister, and the Catholics against the other. Those risings clearly showed how small and feeble both the parties were. Both in the one case and in the other the nation ranged itself on the side of the government, and the insurgents were speedily put down and punished. The Kentish gentlemen who took up arms for the reformed doctrines against Mary, and the Great Northern Earls who displayed the banner of the Five Wounds against Elizabeth, were alike considered by the great body of their countrymen as wicked disturbers of the public peace.

It cannot be supposed that a people who had in their own hands the means of checking their princes, would suffer any prince to impose upon them a religion generally detested. It is absurd to suppose that, if the nation had been decidedly attached to the Protestant faith, Mary could have re-established the Papal supremacy. It is equally absurd to suppose that, if the nation had been zealous for the ancient religion, Elizabeth could have restored the Protestant Church. The truth is, that the people were not disposed to engage in a struggle either for the new or for the old doctrines. Abundance of spirit was shown when it seemed likely that Mary would resume her father's grants of church property, or that she would sacrifice the interests of England to the husband whom she regarded with unmerited tenderness. That

The account which Cardinal Bentivoglio gave of the state of religion in England well deserves consideration. The zealous Catho lics he reckoned at one-thirtieth part of the nation. The people who would witnout the least scruple become Catholics if the Cath:ic

religion were established he estimated at fourfifths of the nation. We believe this account to have been very near the truth. We believe that the people whose minds were made up on either side, who were inclined to make any sacrifice or run any risk for either religion, were very few. Each side had a few enterprising champions and a few stout-hearted martyrs; but the nation, undetermined in its opinions and feelings, resigned itself implicitly to the guidance of the government, and lent to the sovereign for the time being an equally ready aid against either of the extreme parties. We are very far from saying that the English of that generation were irreligious. They held firmly those doctrines which are common to the Catholic and to the Protestant theology. But they had no fixed opinion as to the matters in dispute between the churches. They were in a situation resembling that of those Borderers whom Sir Walter Scott has described with so much spirit;

"Who sought the beeves that made their broth In England and in Scotland both;"

And who

"Nine times outlawed had been

By England's king and Scotland's queen."
They were sometimes Protestants, sometimes
Catholics; sometimes half Protestants, half
Catholics.

common people entertained the strongest pre judices against his order, and that a clergy. man had no chance of fair play before a lay tribunal. The London juries, he said, enter. tained such a spite to the Church, that they would find Abel guilty of the murder of Cain. This was said a few months before the time when Martin Luther began to preach at Wit temberg against indulgences.

As the Reformation did not find the English bigoted Papists, so neither was it conducted in such a manner as to make them zealous Pro testants. It was not under the direction of men like that fiery Saxon, who swore that he would go to Worms, though he had to face as many devils as there were tiles on the houses, or like that brave Switzer, who was struck down while praying in front of the ranks of Zurich. No preacher of religion had the same power here which Calvin had at Geneva, and Knox in Scotland. The government put itself early at the head of the movement, and thus acquired power to regulate, and occasionally to arrest, the movement.

To many persons it appears extraordinary that Henry the Eighth should have been able to maintain himself so long in an intermediate position between the Catholic and Protestant parties. Most extraordinary, it would indeed be, if we were to suppose that the nation con. sisted of none but decided Catholics and deThe English had not, for ages, been bigoted cided Protestants. The fact is, that the great Papists. In the fourteenth century, the first, mass of the people were neither Catholic nor and perhaps the greatest of the reformers, John Protestant; but was, like its sovereign, midWickliffe, had stirred the public mind to its in- way between the two sects. Henry, in tha: most depths. During the same century, a very part of his conduct which has been repre scandalous schism in the Catholic church had sented as most capricious and inconsistent, diminished, in many parts of Europe, the re- was probably following a policy far more verence in which the Roman pontiffs were pleasing to the majority of his subjects, than held. It is clear that a hundred years before a policy like that of Edward or a policy like the time of Luther, a great party in this king- that of Mary would have been. Down even dom was eager for a change, at least as exten- to the very close of the reign of Elizabeth, the sive as that which was subsequently effected people were in a state somewhat resembling by Henry the Eighth. The House of Com- that in which, as Machiavelli says, the inhamons, in the reign of Henry the Fourth, pro- bitants of the Roman empire were, during the posed a confiscation of ecclesiastical property, transition from Heathenism to Christianity; more sweeping and violent even than that "sendo la maggior parte di loro incerti a quale which took place under the administration of Dio dovessero ricorrere." They were geneThomas Cromwell; and, though defeated in rally, we think, favourable to the royal suprethis attempt, they succeeded in depriving the macy. They disliked the policy of the court clerical order of some of its most oppressive of Rome. Their spirit rose against the interprivileges. The splendid conquests of Henry ference of a foreign priest with their national the Fifth turned the attention of the nation concerns. The bull which pronounced sen from domestic reform. The Council of Con- tence of deposition against Elizabeth, the plots stance removed some of the grossest of those which were formed against her life, the usurpascandals which had deprived the Church of tion of her titles by the Queen of Scotland, the the public respect. The authority of that hostility of Philip, excited their strongest invenerable synod propped up the sinking au- dignation. The cruelties of Bonner were rethority of the Popedom. A considerable reac-membered with disgust. Some parts of the tion took place. It cannot, however, be doubted, new system, the use of the English language, that there was still much concealed Lollardism for example, in public worship, and the com in England; or that many who did not absolutely dissent from any doctrine held by the Church of Rome, were jealous of the wealth and power enjoyed by her ministers. At the very beginning of the reign of Henry the Eighth. a struggle took place between the elergy and the courts of law, in which the courts of law remained victorious. One of the vishops on that occasion declared, that the

munion in both kinds, were undoubtedly popular. On the other hand, the early lessons of the nurse and the priest were not forgotten. The ancient ceremonies were long remember. ed with affectionate reverence. A large portion of the ancient theology lingered to the last in the minds which had been imbued with it in childhood.

The best proof that the religion of the people

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