the members of the two parties oppressed and were oppressed, murdered and were murdered, in their turn. No lucid interval occurred between the frantic paroxysms of two contratradictory illusions.

state or in the army, who had not, according | In a nation proud of its sturdy justice and to the best of his talents and opportunities, plain good sense, no party could be found to emulated the example. It was natural, too, take a firm middle stand between the worst of that this should be the case. The rapidity and oppositions and the worst of courts. When, violence with which change followed change on charges as wild as Mother Goose's tales, in the affairs of France towards the close of on the testimony of wretches who proclaimed the last century, had taken away the reproach themselves to be spies and traitors, and whom of inconsistency, unfixed the principles of everybody now believes to have been also public men, and produced in many minds a liars and murderers, the offal of jails and general skepticism and indifference about brothels, the leavings of the hangman's whip principles of government. and shears, Catholics guilty of nothing but No Englishman who has studied attentively their religion were led like sheep to the Prothe reign of Charles the Second, will think testant shambles, where were the royal Tory himself entitled to indulge in any feelings of gentry and the passively obedient clergy national superiority over the Dictionnaire des And where, when the time of retribution Girouettes. Shaftesbury was surely a far less came, when laws were strained and juries respectable man than Talleyrand; and it packed, to destroy the leaders of the Whigs, would be injustice even to Fouché to compare when charters were invaded, when Jeffries him with Lauderdale. Nothing, indeed, can and Kirke were making Somersetshire what more clearly show how low the standard of Lauderdale and Graham had made Scotland, political morality had fallen in this country where were the ten thousand brisk boys of than the fortunes of the men whom we have Shaftesbury, the members of ignoramus juries, named. The government wanted a ruffian to the wearers of the Polish medal? All powerful carry on the most atrocious system of misgo-to destroy others, unable to save themselves, vernment with which any nation was ever cursed to extirpate Presbyterianism by fire and sword, the drowning of women, and the frightful torture of the boot. And they found him among the chiefs of the rebellion, and the subscribers of the Covenant! The opposition To the frequent changes of the government looked for a chief to head them in the most during the twenty years which had preceded desperate attacks ever made, under the forms the revolution, this unsteadiness is in a great of the constitution, on any English administra- measure to be attributed. Other causes had tion: and they selected the minister who had also been at work. Even if the country had the deepest share in the worst parts of that been governed by the house of Cromwell, or administration; the soul of the cabal; the the remains of the Long Parliament, the excounsellor who had shut up the Exchequer, treme austerity of the Puritans would necesand urged on the Dutch war. The whole sarily have produced a revulsion. Towards political drama was of the same cast. No the close of the Protectorate, many signs indiunity of plan, no decent propriety of character cated that a time of license was at hand. But and costume, could be found in the wild and the restoration of Charles the Second rendered monstrous harlequinade. The whole was the change wonderfully rapid and violent. made up of extravagant transformations and Profligacy became a test of orthodoxy and burlesque contrasts; Atheists turned Puritans; loyalty, a qualification for rank and office. A Puritans turned Atheists; republicans defend-deep and general taint infected the morals of ing the divine right of kings; prostitute cour- the most influential classes, and spread itself tiers clamouring for the liberties of the people; through every province of letters. Poetry judges inflaming the rage of mobs; patriots inflamed the passions; philosophy undermined pocketing bribes from foreign powers; a the principles; divinity itself, inculcating an popish prince torturing Presbyterians into an abject reverence for the court, gave addiEpiscopacy in one part of the island; Pres- tional effect to its licentious example. We byterians cutting off the heads of popish no- look in vain for those qualities which give a blemen and gentlemen in the other. Public charm to the errors of high and ardent natures, opinion has its natural flux and reflux. After for the generosity, the tenderness, the chival a violent burst, there is commonly a reaction. rous delicacy, which ennoble appetites into But vicissitudes as extraordinary as those passions and impart to vice itself a portion of which marked the reign of Charles the the majesty of virtue. The excesses of the Second, can only be explained by supposing age remind us of the humours of a gang of an utter want of principle in the political footpads, revelling with their favourite beauties world. On neither side was there fidelity at a flash-house. In the fashionable libertinism enough to face a reverse. Those honourable there is a hard, cold ferocity, an impudence, a retreats from power, which, in later days, par-lowness, a dirtiness, which can be paralleled ties have often made, with loss, but still in only among the heroes and heroines of that good order, in firm union, with unbroken spirit and formidable means of annoyance, were utterly unknown. As soon as a check took place, a total rout followed; arms and colours were thrown away. The vanquished troops, like the Italian mercenaries of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, enlisted, on the very field of battle, in the service of the conquerors.

filthy and heartless literature which encouraged it. One nobleman of great abilities wanders about as a Merry-Andrew. Another harangues the mob stark-naked from a window. A third lays an ambush to cudgel a man who has offended him. A knot of gentlemen of high rank and influence combine to push their fortunes at court. by circulating

stories intended to ruin an innocent girl, sto- | mer Halifax, the renegade Sunderland, were ries which had no foundation, and which, if all men of the same class. they had been true, would never have passed the lips of a man of honour.* A dead child is found in the palace, the offspring of some maid of honour, by some courtier, or perhaps by Charles himself. The whole flight of panders and buffoons pounce upon it, and carry it in triumph to the royal laboratory, where his majesty, after a brutal jest, dissects it for the amusement of the assembly, and probably of its father among the rest! The favourite duchess stamps about Whitehall, cursing and swearing. The ministers employ their time at the council-board in making mouths at each other, and taking off each other's gestures for the amusement of the king. The peers at a conference begin to pommel each other, and to tear collars and periwigs. A speaker in the House of Commons gives offence to the court. He is waylaid by a gang of bullies, and his nose is cut to the bone. This ignominious dissoluteness, or rather, if we may venture to designate it by the only proper word, blackguardism of feelings and manners, could not but spread from private to public life. The cynical sneers, the epicurean sophistry, which had driven honour and virtue from one part of the character, extended their influence over every other. The second generation of the statesmen of this reign were worthy pupils of the schools in which they had been trained, of the gaming-table of Grammont, and the tiring-room of Nell. In no other age could such a trifler as Buckingham have exercised any political influence. In no other age could the path to power and glory have been thrown open to the manifold infamies of Churchill.

Where such was the political morality of the noble and the wealthy, it may easily be conceived that those professions which, even in the best times, are peculiarly liable to corrup tion, were in a frightful state. Such a bench and such a bar England has never seen. Jones, Scroggs, Jeffries, North, Wright, Sawyer, Williams, Shower, are to this day the spots and blemishes of our legal chronicles. Differ ing in constitution and in situation, whether blustering or cringing, whether persecuting Protestants or Catholics, they were equally unprincipled and inhuman. The part which the church played was not equally atrocious; but it must have been exquisitely diverting to a scoffer. Never were principles so loudly professed, and so flagrantly abandoned. The royal prerogative had been magnified to the skies in theological works; the doctrine of passive obedience had been preached from innumerable pulpits. The University of Oxford had sentenced the works of the most moderate constitutionalists to the flames. The accession of a Catholic king, the frightful cruelties committed in the West of England, never shook the steady loyalty of the clergy. But did they serve the king for naught? He laid his hand on them, and they cursed him to his face. He touched the revenue of a college and the liberty of some prelates, and the whole profession set up a yell worthy of Hugh Peters himself. Oxford sent its plate to an invader with more alacrity than she had shown when Charles the First requested it. Nothing was said about the wickedness of resistance till resistance had done its work, till the anointed vicegerent of heaven had been driven away, The history of that celebrated man shows, and it had become plain that he would never more clearly perhaps than that of any other be restored, or would be restored at least individual, the malignity and extent of the cor-under strict limitations. The clergy went ruption which had eaten into the heart of the back, it must be owned, to their old theory, as public morality. An English gentleman of soon as they found that it would do them no family attaches himself to a prince who has harm. seduced his sister, and accepts rank and wealth as the price of her shame and his own. He then repays by ingratitude the benefits which he has purchased by ignominy, betrays his patron in a manner which the best cause cannot excuse, and commits an act, not only of private treachery, but of distinct military desertion. To his conduct at the crisis of the fate of James, no service in modern times has, as far as we remember, furnished any parallel. The conduct of Ney, scandalous enough no doubt, is the very fastidiousness of honour in comparison of it. The perfidy of Arnold approaches it most nearly. In our age and country no talents, no services, no party attachments, could bear any man up under such mountains of infamy. Yet, even before Churchill had performed those great actions, which in some degree redeem his character with posterity, the load lay very lightly on him. He had others in abundance to keep him counerance. Godolphin, Oxford, Danby, the trim

The manner in which Hamilton relates the circumstances of the atrocious plot against poor Ann Hyde is, f possible, more disgraceful to the court, of which he may be considered as a specimen, than the plot itself.

To the general haseness and profligacy of the times, Clarendon is principally indebted for his high reputation. He was, in every respect, a man unfit for his age, at once too good for it and too bad for it. He seemed to be one of the statesmen of Elizabeth, transplanted at once to a state of society widely different from that in which the abilities of such statesmen had been serviceable. In the sixteenth century, the royal prerogative had scarcely been called in question. A minister who held it high was in no danger, so long as he used it well. The attachment to the crown, that extreme jealousy of popular encroachments, that love, half religious, half political, for the church, which, from the beginning of the Long Parliament, showed itself in Clarendon, and which his sufferings, his long resi dence in France, and his high station in the government, served to strengthen, would, a hundred years earlier, have secured to him the favour of his sovereign without rendering him odious to the people. His probity, his correctness in private life, his decency of deportment, and his general ability, would not have misbe come a colleague of Walsingham and Bur

leigh. But in the times on which he was cast, or rather pirates. The strongest aversion his errors and his virtues were alike out of which he can feel to any foreign power is the place. He imprisoned men without trial. He ardour of friendship, compared with the loathwas accused of raising unlawful contributions ing which he entertains towards those domeson the people for the support of the army. The tic foes with whom he is cooped up in a narrow abolition of the Triennial Act was one of his space, with whom he lives in a constant interfavourite objects. He seems to have meditated change of petty injuries and insults, and from the revival of the Star-Chamber and the High whom, in the day of their success, he has to Commission Court. His zeal for the preroga- expect severities far beyond any that a contive made him unpopular; but it could not queror from a distant country would inflict. secure to him the favour of a master far more Thus, in Greece, it was a point of honour for a desirous of ease and pleasure than of power. man to leave his country and cleave to his Charles would rather have lived in exile and party. No aristocratical citizen of Samos or privacy, with abundance of money, a crowd Corcyra would have hesitated to call in the aid of mimics to amuse him, and a score of mis- of Lacedæmon. The multitude, on the contresses, than have purchased the absolute trary, looked to Athens. In the Italian states dominion of the world by the privations and of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, from exertions to which Clarendon was constantly the same cause, no man was so much a Flourging him. A councillor who was always rentine or a Pisan, as a Ghibeline or a Guelf. bringing him papers and giving him advice, It may be doubted whether there was a single and who stoutly refused to compliment Lady individual who would have scrupled to raise Castlemaine and to carry messages to Miss his party from a state of depression, by openStewart, soon became more hateful to himing the gates of his native city to a French or than ever Cromwell had been. Thus consi- an Arragonese force. The Reformation, didered by the people as an oppressor, by the viding almost every European country into court as a censor, the minister fell from his two parts, produced similar effects. The Cahigh office, with a ruin more violent and tholic was too strong for the Englishman: the destructive than could ever have been his fate, Huguenot for the Frenchman. The Protestant if he had either respected the principles of the statesmen of Scotland and France accordingly constitution, or flattered the vices of the king. called in the aid of Elizabeth; and the Papists Mr. Hallam has formed, we think, a most of the League brought a Spanish army into the correct estimate of the character and adminis- very heart of France. The commotions to tration of Clarendon. But he scarcely makes which the French Revolution gave rise have sufficient allowance for the wear and tear been followed by the same consequences. The which honesty almost necessarily sustains in republicans in every part of Europe were the friction of political life, and which, in eager to see the armies of the National Contimes so rough as those through which Claren- vention and the Directory appear among them; don passed, must be very considerable. When and exulted in defeats which distressed and these are fairly estimated, we think that his humbled those whom they considered as their integrity may be allowed to pass muster. A worst enemies, their own rulers. The princes highminded man he certainly was not, either and nobles of France, on the other hand, did in public or in private affairs. His own ac- their utmost to bring foreign invaders to Paris. count of his conduct in the affair of his daugh- A very short time has elapsed since the Apos ter is the most extraordinary passage in auto-tolical party in Spain invoked, too successbiography. We except nothing even in the fully, the support of strangers. Confessions of Rousseau. Several writers have taken a perverted and absurd pride in representing themselves as detestable; but no other ever laboured hard to make himself despicable and ridiculous. In one important particular, Clarendon showed as little regard to the honour of his country as he had shown to that of his family. He accepted a subsidy from France for the relief of Portugal. But this method of obtaining money was afterwards practised to a much greater extent, and for objects much less respectable, both by the Court and by the Opposition.

These pecuniary transactions are commonly considered as the most disgraceful part of the history of those times; and they were no doubt highly reprehensible. Yet, in justice to the Whigs, and to Charles himself, we must admit that they were not so shameful or atrocious as at the present day they appear. The effect of violent animosities between parties has always been an indifference to the general welfare and honour of the state. A politician, where factions run high, is interested, not for the whole people, but for his own section of it. The rest are, in his view, strangers, enemies,

The great contest, which raged in England during the seventeenth century and the earlier part of the eighteenth, extinguished, not indeed in the body of the people, but in those classes which were most actively engaged in politics, almost all national feelings. Charles the Se cond and many of his courtiers had passed a large part of their lives in banishment, serv. ing in foreign armies, living on the bounty of foreign treasuries, soliciting foreign aid to re-establish monarchy in their native country. The oppressed Cavaliers in England constantly looked to France and Spain for deliverance and revenge. Clarendon censures the Continental governments with great bitterness for not interfering in our internal dissensions. During the protectorate, not only the royalists, but the disaffected of all parties, appear to have been desirous of assistance from abroad. It is not strange, therefore, that amidst the fu rious contests which followed the Restoration, the violence of party feeling should produce effects, which would probably have attended it even in an age less distinguished by laxity of principle and indelicacy of sentiment. It was not till a natural death had terminated the

paralytic old age of the Jacobite party, that the tal laws of the country, who had attacked the evil was completely at an end. The Whigs rights of its greatest corporations, who had looked to Holland; the High Tories to France. begun to persecute the established religion of The former concluded the Barrier Treaty; the state, who had never respected the law. some of the latter entreated the court of Ver- either in his superstition or in his revenge, sailles to send an expedition to England. could not be pulled down without the aid of a Many men who, however erroneous their poli- foreign army, is a circumstance not very tical notions might be, were unquestionably grateful to our national pride. Yet this is the honourable in private life, accepted money least degrading part of the story. The shamewithout scruple from the foreign powers fa- less insincerity, the warm assurances of genevourable to the Pretender. ral support which James received down to the moment of general desertion, indicate a meanness of spirit and a looseness of morality most disgraceful to the age. That the enterprise succeeded, at least that it succeeded without bloodshed or commotion, was principally owing to an act of ungrateful perfidy, such as no soldier had ever before committed, and to those monstrous fictions respecting the birth of the Prince of Wales, which persons of the highest rank were not ashamed to circulate. In all the proceedings of the Convention, in the conference particularly, we see that littleness of mind which is the chief characteristic of the times. The resolutions on which the two Houses at last agreed were as bad as any resolutions for so excellent a purpose could be. Their feeble and contradictory language was evidently intended to save the credit of the Tories, who were ashamed to name what they were not ashamed to do. Through the whole transaction, no commanding talents were displayed by any Englishman; no extraordinary risks were run; no sacrifices were made, except the sacrifice which Churchill made of honour, and Anne of natural affection.

Never was there less of national feeling among the higher orders, than during the reign of Charles the Second. That prince, on the one side, thought it better to be the deputy of an absolute king, than the king of a free people. Algernon Sydney, on the other hand, would gladly have aided France in all her ambitious schemes, and have seen England reduced to the condition of a province, in the wild hope that a foreign despot would assist him to establish his darling republic. The king took the money of France to assist him in the enterprise which he meditated against the liberty of his subjects, with as little scruple as Frederic of Prussia or Alexander of Russia accepted our subsidies in time of war. The leaders of the Opposition no more thought themselves disgraced by the presents of Louis, than a gentleman of our own time thinks himself disgraced by the liberality of a powerful and wealthy member of his party who pays his election bill. The money which the king received from France had been largely employed to corrupt members of Parliament. The enemies of the court might think it fair, or even absolutely necessary, to encounter bribery with bribery. Thus they took the French gratuities, the needy among them for their own use, the rich probably for the general purposes of the party, without any scruple. If we compare their conduct, not with that of English statesmen in our own time, but with that of persons in those foreign countries which are now situated as England then was, we shall probably see reason to abate something of the severity of censure with which it has been the fashion to visit those proceedings. Yet, when every allowance is made, the transaction is sufficiently offensive. It is satisfactory to find that Lord Russel stands free from any imputation of personal participation in the spoil. An age, so miserably poor in all the moral qualities which render public characters respectable, can ill spare the credit which it derives from a man, not indeed conspicuous for talents or knowledge, but honest even in his errors, respectable in every relation of life, rationally pious, steadily and placidly brave.

The great improvement which took place in our breed of public men is principally to be ascribed to the Revolution. Yet that memorable event, in a great measure, took its character from the very vices which it was the means of reforming. It was, assuredly, a hapry revolution, and a useful revolution; but it was not, what it has often been called, a glorious revolution. William, and William alone, derived glory from it. The transaction was, in almost every part, discreditable to England. That a tyrant, whe had violated the fundamen

It was in some sense fortunate, as we have already said, for the Church of England, that the Reformation in this country was effected by men who cared little about religion. And, in the same manner, it was fortunate for our civil government that the Revolution was in a great measure effected by men who cared little about their political principles. At such a crisis, splendid talents and strong passions might have done more harm than good. There was far greater reason to fear that too much would be attempted, and that violent move ments would produce an equally violent reac tion, than that too little would be done in the way of change. But narrowness of intellect and flexibility of principles, though they may be serviceable, can never be respectable.

If in the Revolution itself there was little that can properly be called glorious, there was still less in the events which followed. In a church which had as one man declared the doctrine of resistance unchristian, only four hundred persons refused to take the oath of allegiance to a government founded on resistance! In the preceding generation, both the Episcopal and the Presbyterian clergy, rather than concede points of conscience not more important, had resigned their livings by thousands.

The churchmen, at the time of the Revolu tion, justified their conduct by all those profligate sophisms which are called jesuitical, and which are commonly reckoned among the peculiar sins of Popery; but which in fact are everywhere the anodynes employed by minds