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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 honor 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, or rather pirates. The strongest aversion
which he can feel to any foreign power is the ardor of friendship, when compared
with the loathing which he entertains towards those domestic foes with whom he
is cooped up in a narrow space, with whom he lives in a constant interchange of
petty injuries and insults, and from whom, in the day of their success, he has
to expect severities far beyond any that a conqueror from a distant country
would inflict. Thus, in Greece, it was a point of honor for a man to cleave to
his party against his country. No aristocratical citizen of Samos or Corcyra
would have hesitated to call in the aid of Lacedaemon. The multitude, on the
contrary, looked everywhere to Athens. In the Italian states of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, from the same cause, no man was so much a Pisan or a
Florentine as a Ghibeline or a Guelf. It may be doubted whether there was a
single individual who would have scrupled to raise his party from a state of
depression, by opening the gates of his native city to a French or an Arragonese
force. The Reformation, dividing almost every European country into two parts,
produced similar effects. The Catholic was too strong for the Englishman, the
Huguenot for the Frenchman. The Protestant statesmen of Scotland and France
called in the aid of Elizabeth; and the Papists of the League brought a Spanish
army into the very heart of France. The commotions to which the French
Revolution gave rise were followed by the same consequences. The Republicans in
every part of Europe were eager to see the armies of the National Convention and
the Directory appear among them, and exalted in defeats which distressed and
humbled those whom they considered as their worst enemies, their own rulers. The
princes and nobles of France, on the other hand, did their utmost to bring
foreign invaders to Paris. A very short time has elapsed since the Apostolical
party in Spain invoked, too successfully, the support of strangers.
The great contest which raged in England during the seventeenth century
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 Second and many of his courtiers had passed a large part of their lives in
banishment, living on the bounty of foreign treasuries, soliciting foreign aid
to re-establish monarchy in their native country. The King's own brother had
fought in Flanders, under the banners of Spain, against the English armies. The
oppressed Cavaliers in England constantly looked to the Louvre and the Escurial
for deliverance and revenge. Clarendon censures the continental governments with
great bitterness for not interfering in our internal dissensions. It is not
strange, therefore, that, amidst the furious 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 evil was
completely at an end. The Whigs long looked to Holland, the High Tories to
France. The former concluded the Barrier Treaty; the latter entreated the Court
of Versailles to send an expedition to England. Many men, who, however erroneous
their political notions might be, were unquestionably honorable in private life,
accepted money without scruple from the foreign powers favorable to the
Pretender.
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 Lewis, than a gentleman of our own time thinks himself disgraced by
the liberality of powerful and wealthy members of his party who pay 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 Russell 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 happy 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 who had violated the fundamental laws of the country,
who had attacked the rights of its greatest corporations, who had begun to
persecute the established religion of the state, who had never respected the law
either in his superstition or in his revenge, could not be pulled down without
the aid of a foreign army, is a circumstance not very grateful to our national
pride. Yet this is the least degrading part of the story. The shameless
insincerity of the great and noble, the warm assurances of general 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 for the deliverance of the
nation, except the sacrifice which Churchill made of honor, and Anne of natural
affection.
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 movements
would produce an equally violent reaction, than that too little would be done in
the way of change. But narrowness of intellect, and flexibility of principle,
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 Revolution, 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 rather subtle than strong, to quiet those
internal twinges which they cannot but feel and which they will not obey. As the
oath taken by the clergy was in the teeth of their principles, so was their
conduct in the teeth of their oath. Their constant machinations against the
Government to which they had sworn fidelity brought a reproach on their order
and on Christianity itself. A distinguished prelate has not scrupled to say that
the rapid increase of infidelity at that time was principally produced by the
disgust which the faithless conduct of his brethren excited in men not
sufficiently candid or judicious to discern the beauties of the system amidst
the vices of its ministers.
But the reproach was not confined to the Church. In every political party in the
Cabinet itself, duplicity and perfidy abounded. The very men whom William loaded
with benefits and in whom he reposed most confidence, with his seals of office
in their hands, kept up a correspondence with the exiled family. Orford, Leeds,
and Shrewsbury were guilty of this odious treachery. Even Devonshire is not
altogether free from suspicion. It may well be conceived that, at such a time,
such a nature as that of Marlborough would riot in the very luxury of baseness.
His former treason, thoroughly furnished with all that makes infamy exquisite,
placed him under the disadvantage which attends every artist from the time that
he produces a masterpiece. Yet his second great stroke may excite wonder, even
in those who appreciate all the merit of the first. Lest his admirers should be
able to say that at the time of the Revolution he had betrayed his King from any
other than selfish motives, he proceeded to betray his country. He sent
intelligence to the French Court of a secret expedition intended to attack
Brest. The consequence was that the expedition failed, and that eight hundred
British soldiers lost their lives from the abandoned villainy of a British
general. Yet this man has been canonized by so many eminent writers that to
speak of him as he deserves may seem scarcely decent.
The reign of William the Third, as Mr. Hallam happily says, was the Nadir of the
national prosperity. It was also the Nadir of the national character. It was the
time when the rank harvest of vices sown during thirty years of licentiousness
and confusion was gathered in; but it was also the seed-time of great virtues.
The press was emancipated from the censorship soon after the Revolution; and the
Government immediately fell under the censorship of the press. Statesmen had a
scrutiny to endure which was every day becoming more and more severe. The
extreme violence of opinions abated. The Whigs learned moderation in office; the
Tories learned the principles of liberty in opposition. The parties almost
constantly approximated, often met, sometimes, crossed each other. There were
occasional bursts of violence; but, from the time of the Revolution, those
bursts were constantly becoming less and less terrible. The severity with which
the Tories, at the close of the reign of Anne, treated some of those who had
directed the public affairs during the war of the Grand Alliance, and the
retaliatory measures of the Whigs, after the accession of the House of Hanover,
cannot be justified; but they were by no means in the style of the infuriated
parties, whose alternate murders had disgraced our history towards the close of
the reign of Charles the Second. At the fall of Walpole far greater moderation
was displayed. And from that time it has been the practice, a practice not
strictly according to the theory of our Constitution, but still most salutary,
to consider the loss of office, and the public disapprobation, as punishments
sufficient for errors in the administration not imputable to personal
corruption. Nothing, we believe, has contributed more than this lenity to raise
the character of public men. Ambition is of itself a game sufficiently hazardous
and sufficiently deep to inflame the passions without adding property, life, and
liberty to the stake. Where the play runs so desperately high as in the
seventeenth century, honor is at an end. Statesmen instead of being, as they
should be, at once mild and steady, are at once ferocious and inconsistent. The
axe is for ever before their eyes. A popular outcry sometimes unnerves them, and
sometimes makes them desperate; it drives them to unworthy compliances, or to
measures of vengeance as cruel as those which they have reason to expect. A
Minister in our times need not fear either to be firm or to be merciful. Our old
policy in this respect was as absurd as that of the king in the Eastern tale who
proclaimed that any physician who pleased might come to court and prescribe for
his diseases, but that if the remedies failed the adventurer should lose his
head. It is easy to conceive how many able men would refuse to undertake the
cure on such conditions; how much the sense of extreme danger would confuse the
perceptions, and cloud the intellect of the practitioner, at the very crisis
which most called for self-possession, and how strong his temptation would be,
if he found that he had committed a blunder, to escape the consequences of it by
poisoning his patient.
But in fact it would have been impossible, since the Revolution, to punish any
Minister for the general course of his policy, with the slightest semblance of
justice; for since that time no Minister has been able to pursue any general
course of policy without the approbation of the Parliament. The most important
effects of that great change were, as Mr. Hallam has most truly said, and most
ably shown, those which it indirectly produced. Thenceforward it became the
interest of the executive government to protect those very doctrines which an
executive government is in general inclined to persecute. The sovereign, the
ministers, the courtiers, at last even the universities and the clergy, were
changed into advocates of the right of resistance. In the theory of the Whigs,
in the situation of the Tories, in the common interest of all public men, the
Parliamentary constitution of the country found perfect security. The power of
the House of Commons, in particular, has been steadily on the increase. Since
supplies have been granted for short terms and appropriated to particular
services, the approbation of that House has been as necessary in practice to the
executive administration as it has always been in theory to taxes and to laws.
Mr. Hallam appears to have begun with the reign of Henry the Seventh, as the
period at which what is called modern history, in contradistinction to the
history of the middle ages, is generally supposed to commence. He has stopped at
the accession of George the Third, "from unwillingness" as he says, "to excite
the prejudices of modern politics, especially those connected with personal
character." These two eras, we think, deserved the distinction on other grounds.
Our remote posterity, when looking back on our history in that comprehensive
manner in which remote posterity alone can, without much danger of error, look
back on it, will probably observe those points with peculiar interest. They are,
if we mistake not, the beginning and the end of an entire and separate chapter
in our annals. The period which lies between them is a perfect cycle, a great
year of the public mind.
In the reign of Henry the Seventh, all the political differences which had
agitated England since the Norman conquest seemed to be set at rest. The long
and fierce struggle between the Crown and the Barons had terminated. The
grievances which had produced the rebellions of Tyler and Cade had disappeared.
Villanage was scarcely known. The two royal houses, whose conflicting claims had
long convulsed the kingdom, were at length united. The claimants whose
pretensions, just or unjust, had disturbed the new settlement, were overthrown.
In religion there was no open dissent, and probably very little secret heresy.
The old subjects of contention, in short, had vanished; those which were to
succeed had not yet appeared.
Soon, however, new principles were announced; principles which were destined to
keep England during two centuries and a half in a state of commotion. The
Reformation divided the people into two great parties. The Protestants were
victorious. They again subdivided themselves. Political factions were engrafted
on theological sects. The mutual animosities of the two parties gradually
emerged into the light of public life. First came conflicts in Parliament; then
civil war; then revolutions upon revolutions, each attended by its appurtenance
of proscriptions, and persecutions, and tests; each followed by severe measures
on the part of the conquerors; each exciting a deadly and festering hatred in
the conquered. During the reign of George the Second, things were evidently
tending to repose. At the close of that reign, the nation had completed the
great revolution which commenced in the early part of the sixteenth century, and
was again at rest, The fury of sects had died away. The Catholics themselves
practically enjoyed toleration; and more than toleration they did not yet
venture even to desire. Jacobitism was a mere name. Nobody was left to fight for
that wretched cause, and very few to drink for it. The Constitution, purchased
so dearly, was on every side extolled and worshipped. Even those distinctions of
party which must almost always be found in a free state could scarcely be
traced. The two great bodies which, from the time of the Revolution, had been
gradually tending to approximation, were now united in emulous support of that
splendid Administration which smote to the dust both the branches of the House
of Bourbon. The great battle for our ecclesiastical and civil polity had been
fought and won. The wounds had been healed. The victors and the vanquished were
rejoicing together. Every person acquainted with the political writers of the
last generation will recollect the terms in which they generally speak of that
time. It was a glimpse of a golden age of union and glory, a short interval of
rest, which had been preceded by centuries of agitation, and which centuries of
agitation were destined to follow.
How soon faction again began to ferment is well known. The Letters of Junius, in
Burke's Thoughts on the Cause of the Discontents, and in many other writings of
less merit, the violent dissensions which speedily convulsed the country are
imputed to the system of favoritism which George the Third introduced, to the
influence of Bute, or to the profligacy of those who called themselves the
King's friends. With all deference to the eminent writers to whom we have
referred, we way venture to say that they lived too near the events of which
they treated to judge correctly. The schism which was then appearing in the
nation, and which has been from that time almost constantly widening, had little
in common with those schisms which had divided it during the reigns of the
Tudors and the Stuarts. The symptoms of popular feeling, indeed, will always be
in a great measure the same; but the principle which excited that feeling was
here new. The support which was given to Wilkes, the clamor for reform during
the American war, the disaffected conduct of large classes of people at the time
of the French Revolution, no more resembled the opposition which had been
offered to the government of Charles the Second, than that opposition resembled
the contest between the Roses.
In the political as in the natural body, a sensation is often referred to a part
widely different from that in which it really resides. A man whose leg is cut
off fancies that he feels a pain in his toe. And in the same manner the people,
in the earlier part of the late reign, sincerely attributed their discontent to
grievances which had been effectually lopped off. They imagined that the
prerogative was too strong for the Constitution, that the principles of the
Revolution were abandoned, that the system of the Stuarts was restored. Every
impartial man must now acknowledge that these charges were groundless. The
conduct of the Government with respect to the Middlesex election would have been
contemplated with delight by the first generation of Whigs. They would have
thought it a splendid triumph of the cause of liberty that the King and the
Lords should resign to the lower House a portion of the legislative power, and
allow it to incapacitate without their consent. This, indeed, Mr. Burke clearly
perceived. "When the House of Commons," says he, "in an endeavor to obtain new
advantages at the expense of the other orders of the state, for the benefit of
the commons at large, have pursued strong measures, if it were not just, it was
at least natural, that the constituents should connive at all their proceedings;
because we ourselves were ultimately to profit. But when this submission is
urged to us in a contest between the representatives and ourselves, and where
nothing can be put into their scale which is not taken from ours, they fancy us
to be children when they tell us that they are our representatives, our own
flesh and blood, and that all the stripes they give us are for our good." These
sentences contain, in fact, the whole explanation of the mystery. The conflict
of the seventeenth century was maintained by the Parliament against the Crown.
The conflict which commenced in the middle of the eighteenth century, which
still remains undecided, and in which our children and grandchildren will
probably be called to act or to suffer, is between a large portion of the people
on the one side, and the Crown and the Parliament united on the other.
The privileges of the House of Commons, those privileges which, in 1642, all
London rose in arms to defend, which the people considered as synonymous with
their own liberties, and in comparison of which they took no account of the most
precious and sacred principles of English jurisprudence, have now become nearly
as odious as the rigors of martial law. That power of committing which the
people anciently loved to see the House of Commons exercise, is now, at least
when employed against libelers, the most unpopular power in the Constitution. If
the Commons were to suffer the Lords to amend money-bills, we do not believe
that the people would care one straw about the matter. If they were to suffer
the Lords even to originate money-bills, we doubt whether such a surrender of
their constitutional rights would excite half so much dissatisfaction as the
exclusion of strangers from a single important discussion. The gallery in which
the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm. The publication of
the debates, a practice which seemed to the most liberal statesmen of the old
school full of danger to the great safeguards of public liberty, is now regarded
by many persons as a safeguard tantamount, and more than tantamount, to all the
rest together.
Burke, in a speech on parliamentary reform which is the more remarkable because
it was delivered long before the French Revolution, has described, in striking
language, the change in public feeling of which we speak. "It suggests
melancholy reflections," says he, "in consequence of the strange course we have
long held, that we are now no longer quarrelling about the character, or about
the conduct of men, or the tenor of measures; but we are grown out of humor with
the English Constitution itself; this is become the object of the animosity of
Englishmen. This constitution in former days used to be the envy of the world;
it was the pattern for politicians; the theme of the eloquent; the meditation of
the philosopher in every part of the world. As to Englishmen, it was their
pride, their consolation. By it they lived, and for it they were ready to die.
Its defects, if it had any, were partly covered by partiality, and partly borne
by prudence. Now all its excellencies are forgot, its faults are forcibly
dragged into day, exaggerated by every artifice of misrepresentation. It is
despised and rejected of men; and every device and invention of ingenuity or
idleness is set up in opposition, or in preference to it." We neither adopt nor
condemn the language of reprobation which the great orator here employs. We call
him only as a witness to the fact. That the revolution of public feeling which
he described was then in progress is indisputable; and it is equally
indisputable, we think, that it is in progress still.
To investigate and classify the causes of so great a change would require far
more thought, and far more space, than we at present have to bestow. But some of
them are obvious. During the contest which the Parliament carried on against the
Stuarts, it had only to cheek and complain. It has since had to govern. As an
attacking body, it could select its points of attack, and it naturally chose
those on which it was likely to receive public support. As a ruling body, it has
neither the same liberty of choice, nor the same motives to gratify the people.
With the power of an executive government, it has drawn to itself some of the
vices, and all the unpopularity of an executive government. On the House of
Commons above all, possessed as it is of the public purse, and consequently of
the public sword, the nation throws all the blame of an ill-conducted war, of a
blundering negotiation, of a disgraceful treaty, of an embarrassing commercial
crisis. The delays of the Court of Chancery, the misconduct of a judge at Van
Diemen's Land, any thing, in short, which in any part of the administration any
person feels as a grievance, is attributed to the tyranny, or at least to the
negligence, of that all-powerful body. Private individuals pester it with their
wrongs and claims. A merchant appeals to it from the Courts of Rio Janeiro or
St. Petersburg. A historical painter complains to it that his department of art
finds no encouragement. Anciently the Parliament resembled a member of
opposition, from whom no places are expected, who is not expected to confer
favors and propose measures, but merely to watch and censure, and who may,
therefore, unless he is grossly injudicious, be popular with the great body of
the community. The Parliament now resembles the same person put into office,
surrounded by petitioners whom twenty times his patronage would not satisfy,
stunned with complaints, buried in memorials, compelled by the duties of his
station to bring forward measures similar to those which he was formerly
accustomed to observe and to check, and perpetually encountered by objections
similar to those which it was formerly his business to raise.
Perhaps it may be laid down as a general rule that a legislative assembly, not
constituted on democratical principles, cannot be popular long after it ceases
to be weak. Its zeal for what the people, rightly or wrongly, conceive to be
their interests, its sympathy with their mutable and violent passions, are
merely the effects of the particular circumstances in which it is placed. As
long as it depends for existence on the public favor, it will employ all the
means in its power to conciliate that favor. While this is the case, defects in
its constitution are of little consequence. But, as the close union of such a
body with the nation is the effect of an identity of interests not essential but
accidental, it is in some measure dissolved from the time at which the danger
which produced it ceases to exist.
Hence, before the Revolution, the question of Parliamentary reform was of very
little importance. The friends of liberty had no very ardent wish for reform.
The strongest Tories saw no objections to it. It is remarkable that Clarendon
loudly applauds the changes which Cromwell introduced, changes far stronger than
the Whigs of the present day would in general approve. There is no reason to
think, however, that the reform effected by Cromwell made any great difference
in the conduct of the Parliament. Indeed, if the House of Commons had, during
the reign of Charles the Second, been elected by universal suffrage, or if all
the seats had been put up to sale, as in the French Parliaments, it would, we
suspect, have acted very much as it did. We know how strongly the Parliament of
Paris exerted itself in favor of the people on many important occasions; and the
reason is evident. Though it did not emanate from the people, its whole
consequence depended on the support of the people.
From the time of the Revolution the House of Commons has been gradually becoming
what it now is, a great council of state, containing many members chosen freely
by the people, and many others anxious to acquire the favor of the people; but,
on the whole, aristocratical in its temper and interest. It is very far from
being an illiberal and stupid oligarchy; but it is equally far from being an
express image of the general feeling. It is influenced by the opinion of the
people, and influenced powerfully, but slowly and circuitously. Instead of
outrunning the public mind, as before the Revolution it frequently did, it now
follows with slow steps and at a wide distance. It is therefore necessarily
unpopular; and the more so because the good which it produces is much less
evident to common perception than the evil which it inflicts. It bears the blame
of all the mischief which is done, or supposed to be done, by its authority or
by its connivance. It doe not get the credit, on the other hand, of having
prevented those innumerable abuses which do not exist solely because the House
of Commons exists.
A large part of the nation is certainly desirous of a reform in the
representative system. How large that part may be, and how strong its desires on
the subject may be, it is difficult to say. It is only at intervals that the
clamor on the subject is loud and vehement. But it seems to us that, during the
remissions, the feeling gathers strength, and that every successive burst is
more violent than that which preceded it. The public attention may be for a time
diverted to the Catholic claims or the Mercantile code but it is probable that
at no very distant period, perhaps in the lifetime of the present generation,
all other questions will merge in that which is, in a certain degree, connected
with them all.
Already we seem to ourselves to perceive the signs of unquiet times the vague
presentiment of something great and strange which pervades the community, the
restless and turbid hopes of those who have everything to gain, the dimly hinted
forebodings of those who have everything to lose. Many indications might be
mentioned, in themselves indeed as insignificant as straws; but even the
direction of a straw, to borrow the illustration of Bacon, will show from what
quarter the storm in setting in.
A great statesman might, by judicious and timely reformations by reconciling the
two great branches of the natural aristocracy, the capitalists and the
landowners, and by so widening the base of the government as to interest in its
defense the whole of the middle class that brave, honest, and sound-hearted
class, which is as anxious for the maintenance of order and the security of
property, as it is hostile to corruption and oppression, succeed in averting a
struggle to which no rational friend of liberty or of law can look forward
without great apprehensions. There are those who will be contented with nothing
but demolition; and there are those who shrink from all repair. There are
innovators who long for a President and a National Convention; and there are
bigots who, while cities larger and richer than the capitals of many great
kingdoms are calling out for representatives to watch over their interests,
select some hackneyed jobber in boroughs, some peer of the narrowest and
smallest mind, as the fittest depository of a forfeited franchise. Between these
extremes there lies a more excellent way. Time is bringing round another crisis
analogous to that which occurred in the seventeenth century. We stand in a
situation similar to that in which our ancestors stood under the reign of James
the First. It will soon again be necessary to reform that we may preserve, to
save the fundamental principles of the Constitution by alterations in the
subordinate parts. It will then be possible, as it was possible two hundred
years ago, to protect vested rights, to secure every useful institution, every
institution endeared by antiquity and noble associations, and, at the same time,
to introduce into the system improvements harmonizing with the original plan. It
remains to be seen whether two hundred years have made us wiser.
We know of no great revolution which might not have been prevented by compromise
early and graciously made. Firmness is a great virtue in public affairs; but it
has its proper sphere. Conspiracies and insurrections in which small minorities
are engaged, the outbreakings of popular violence unconnected with any extensive
project or any durable principle, are best repressed by vigor and decision. To
shrink from them is to make them formidable. But no wise ruler will confound the
pervading taint with the slight local irritation. No wise ruler will treat the
deeply seated discontents of a great party, as he treats the fury of a mob which
destroys mills and power-looms. The neglect of this distinction has been fatal
even to governments strong in the power of the sword. The present time is indeed
a time of peace and order. But it is at such a time that fools are most
thoughtless and wise men most thoughtful. That the discontents which have
agitated the country during the late and the present reign, and which, though
not always noisy, are never wholly dormant, will again break forth with
aggravated symptoms, is almost as certain as that the tides and seasons will
follow their appointed course. But in all movements of the human mind which tend
to great revolutions there is a crisis at which moderate concession may amend,
conciliate, and preserve. Happy will it be for England if, at that crisis her
interests be confided to men for whom history has not recorded the long series
of human crimes and follies in vain.
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