CONTEST BETWEEN LOYALTY AND REVOLUTION.

XI.

22.

7

remonstrance on the state of the kingdom, an uncom- CHAP. promising manifesto against the arbitrary measures of Charles, was democratic in its tendency; because it 1641. proposed no specific reform, but was rather a general and exciting appeal to popular opinion. The English mind was already as restless as the waves of the ocean by which the island is environed; the remonstrance was designed to increase that restlessness; in a house of more than five hundred members, it was adopted by the meagre majority of eleven. "Had it not been Nov. carried," said Cromwell to Falkland, "I should have sold all I possess, and left the kingdom; many honest men were of the same resolution." From the contest for "English liberties" men advanced to the discussion of natural rights; with the expansion of their views, their purposes ceased to be definite; and already reform was changing into a revolution. They were prepared to strip the church of its power, and royalty of its prescriptive sanctity; and it was observable, that religious faith was on the side of innovation, while incredulity abounded among the supporters of the divine right.

Jan.

4.

The policy of the king preserved its character of variableness. He had yielded where he should have been firm; and he now invited a revolution by the violence of his counsels. Moderation and sincerity would have restored his influence. But when, attended 1642. by armed men, he repaired in person to the house of commons, with the intent of seizing six of the leaders of the patriot party, whose execution was to soothe his fears, and tranquillize his hatred, the extreme procedure, so bloody in its purpose, and so illegal in its course, could only rouse the nation to anger against its sovereign, justify for the time every diminution of his

8

XI.

PROGRESS OF REVOLUTION.

CHAP. prerogative, and, by inspiring settled distrust, animate the leaders of the popular party to a gloomy inflexi1642. bility. There was no room to hope for peace. The monarch was faithless, and the people knew no remedy. A change of dynasty was not then proposed; and England languished of a disease for which no cure had been discovered. It was evident that force must decide the struggle. The parliament demanded the control of the national militia with the possession of the fortified towns. But would the Cavaliers consent to surrender all military power to plebeian statesmen ? Would the nobility endure that men should exercise dominion over the king, whose predecessors their ancestors had hardly been permitted to serve? Charles, who had had neither firmness to maintain his just authority, nor sincerity to effect a safe reconciliation, no alternative remained, but resistance or the surrender of all power; and, unfurling the royal stand24. ard, he began a civil war.

Aug.

To

The contest was between a permanent parliament and an arbitrary king. The people had no mode of intervention except by serving in the armies; they could not come forward as mediators or as masters. The parliament was become a body, of which the duration depended on its own will; unchecked by a supreme executive, or by an independent coördinate branch of legislation; and, therefore, of necessity, a multitudinous despot, unbalanced and irresponsible; levying taxes, enlisting soldiers, commanding the navy and the army, enacting laws, and changing at its will the forms of the English constitution. The issue was certain. Every representative body is swayed by the interests of its constituents, the interests of its own assembly, and the personal interests of its respective

DESPOTIC POWER OF THE PARLIAMENT.

XI.

9

members; and never was the successive predominance CHAP. of each of these sets of motives more clear than in the Long Parliament. Its first acts were mainly for its constituents, whose rights it vindicated, and whose liberties it increased; its corporate ambition next prevailed, and it set itself against the throne and the peerage, both of which it was hurried forward to subvert; individual selfishness at last had its triumph, and there were not wanting men who sought lucrative jobs, and grasped at disproportioned emoluments. Nothing could check the progress of degeneracy and corruption; the example, the ability, and the conscientious purity of Henry Vane were unavailing. Had the life of Hampden been spared, he could not have changed the course of events, for he could not have changed the laws of nature, and the principles of human action.

The majority in parliament was become the despot of England; and after one hundred and eighteen 1644. royalist members, obeying the summons of the king, had repaired to Oxford, the cause of royalty was powerless in the legislature. The party of the Church of England was prostrate; but religious and political parties were identified; and the new division conformed itself to the rising religious sects. Now that the friends of the Church had withdrawn, the commons were at once divided into two imposing parties-the Presbyterians and the Independents; the friends of a political revolution which should yet establish a nobility and a limited monarchy; and the friends of an entire revolution on the principle of equality.

The majority was with the Presbyterians, who were elated with the sure hope of a triumph. They represented a powerful portion of the aristocracy of Eng

10

PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS.

CHAP. land; they had, besides a majority in the commons, XI. the exclusive possession of the house of lords; they

held the command of the army; they had numerous and active adherents among the clergy; the English people favored them; Scotland, which had been so efficient in all that had thus far been done, was entirely devoted to their interests; and they hoped for a compromise with their sovereign. They envied the success of tyranny more than they abhorred its principles: monarchy, with Presbyterianism as the religion of state, was their purpose; and they were at all times prepared to make peace with the king, if he would but consent to that revolution in the Church which would secure their political ascendency.

And what counterpoise could be offered by the Independents? How could they hope for superior influence, when it could be gained only by rising above the commons, the peers, the commanders of the army, all Scotland, and the mass of the English people? They had no omen of success but the tendency of revolutions, the enthusiasm of new opinions, the inclination of the human mind to push principles to their remoter consequences. An amalgamation with the Presbyterians would have implied subjection; power could be gained only by that progress in innovations which would drive the Presbyterians into opposition. The Independents, sharing in the agitation of the public mind, made the new ideas the support of their zeal, and the basis of their party. They gradually became the advocates of religious liberty and the power of the people. Their eyes were turned towards democratic institutions; and the glorious vision of emancipating the commons of England from feudal oppression, from intellectual servitude, and from a long aristocracy of superstition, inflamed

PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS.

XI.

11

them with an enthusiasm which would not be rebuked CHAP. by the inconsistency of their schemes with the opinions, habits, and institutions of the nation.

The Presbyterian nobility, who had struggled for their privileges against royal power, were unwilling that innovation should go so far as to impair their rank or diminish their grandeur; the Independents, as new men, who had their fortunes to make, were prepared not only to subvert the throne, but to contend for equality against privilege. "The Presbyterian earl of Manchester," said Cromwell, "shall be content with being no more than plain Montague." The men who broke away from the forms of society, and venerated nothing but truth; others who, in the folly of their pride, claimed for their opinions the sanctity and the rights of truth; they who sighed for a more equal diffusion of social benefits; the friends of entire liberty of conscience; the friends of a reform in the law, and a diminution of the profits of the lawyers; the men, like Milton and Sidney, whose imagination delighted in pictures of Roman liberty, of Spartan virtue; the less educated, who indulged in visions of a restoration of that happy Anglo-Saxon system, which had been invented in the woods in days of Anglo-Saxon simplicity; the republicans, the levellers, the fanatics,—all ranged themselves on the side of the rising party.

The true representative of the better principles of the Independents was Henry Vane; but the acknowledged leader of the party was Oliver Cromwell. Was he sincere? Or was he wholly a hypocrite? It is difficult to disbelieve that his mind was honestly imbued with the extreme principles of Puritan reforms; but the man whose ruling motive is ambition, soon