The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) π
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them a pure body. They then
became supreme in the state. No man could hope to rise to
eminence and command but by their favour. Their favour was to be
gained only by exchanging with them the signs and passwords of
spiritual fraternity. One of the first resolutions adopted by
Barebone's Parliament, the most intensely Puritanical of all our
political assemblies, was that no person should be admitted into
the public service till the House should be satisfied of his real
godliness. What were then considered as the signs of real
godliness, the sadcoloured dress, the sour look, the straight
hair, the nasal whine, the speech interspersed with quaint texts,
the Sunday, gloomy as a Pharisaical Sabbath, were easily imitated
by men to whom all religions were the same. The sincere Puritans
soon found themselves lost in a multitude, not merely of men of
the world, but of the very worst sort of men of the world. For
the most notorious libertine who had fought under the royal
standard might justly be thought virtuous when compared with some
of those who, while they talked about sweet experiences and
comfortable scriptures, lived in the constant practice of fraud,
rapacity, and secret debauchery. The people, with a rashness
which we may justly lament, but at which we cannot wonder, formed
their estimate of the whole body from these hypocrites. The
theology, the manners, the dialect of the Puritan were thus
associated in the public mind with the darkest and meanest vices.
As soon as the Restoration had made it safe to avow enmity to the
party which had so long been predominant, a general outcry
against Puritanism rose from every corner of the kingdom, and was
often swollen by the voices of those very dissemblers whose
villany had brought disgrace on the Puritan name.
Thus the two great parties, which, after a long contest, had for
a moment concurred in restoring monarchy, were, both in politics
and in religion, again opposed to each other. The great body of
the nation leaned to the Royalists. The crimes of Strafford and
Laud, the excesses of the Star Chamber and of the High
Commission, the great services which the Long Parliament had,
during the first year of its existence, rendered to the state,
had faded from the minds of men. The execution of Charles the
First, the sullen tyranny of the Rump, the violence of the army,
were remembered with loathing; and the multitude was inclined to
hold all who had withstood the late King responsible for his
death and for the subsequent disasters.
The House of Commons, having been elected while the Presbyterians
were dominant, by no means represented the general sense of the
people. Most of the members, while execrating Cromwell and
Bradshaw, reverenced the memory of Essex and of Pym. One sturdy
Cavalier, who ventured to declare that all who had drawn the
sword against Charles the First were as much traitors as those
who kind cut off his head, was called to order, placed at the
bar, and reprimanded by the Speaker. The general wish of the
House undoubtedly was to settle the ecclesiastical disputes in a
manner satisfactory to the moderate Puritans. But to such a
settlement both the court and the nation were averse.
The restored King was at this time more loved by the people than
any of his predecessors had ever been. The calamities of his
house, the heroic death of his father, his own long sufferings
and romantic adventures, made him an object of tender interest.
His return had delivered the country from an intolerable bondage.
Recalled by the voice of both the contending factions, he was in
a position which enabled him to arbitrate between them; and in
some respects he was well qualified for the task. He had received
from nature excellent parts and a happy temper. His education had
been such as might have been expected to develope his
understanding, and to form him to the practice of every public
and private virtue. He had passed through all varieties of
fortune, and had seen both sides of human nature. He had, while
very young, been driven forth from a palace to a life of exile.
penury, and danger. He had, at the age when the mind and body are
in their highest perfection, and when the first effervescence of
boyish passions should have subsided, been recalled from his
wanderings to wear a crown. He had been taught by bitter
experience how much baseness, perfidy, and ingratitude may lie
hid under the obsequious demeanor of courtiers. He had found, on
the other hand, in the huts of the poorest, true nobility of
soul. When wealth was offered to any who would betray him, when
death was denounced against all who should shelter him, cottagers
and serving men had kept his secret truly, and had kissed his
hand under his mean disguises with as much reverence as if he had
been seated on his ancestral throne. From such a school it might
have been expected that a young man who wanted neither abilities
nor amiable qualities would have come forth a great and good
King. Charles came forth from that school with social habits,
with polite and engaging manners, and with some talent for lively
conversation, addicted beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond
of sauntering and of frivolous amusements, incapable of
selfdenial and of exertion, without faith in human virtue or in
human attachment without desire of renown, and without
sensibility to reproach. According to him, every person was to be
bought: but some people haggled more about their price than
others; and when this haggling was very obstinate and very
skilful it was called by some fine name. The chief trick by which
clever men kept up the price of their abilities was called
integrity. The chief trick by which handsome women kept up the
price of their beauty was called modesty. The love of God, the
love of country, the love of family, the love of friends, were
phrases of the same sort, delicate and convenient synonymes for
the love of self. Thinking thus of mankind, Charles naturally
cared very little what they thought of him. Honour and shame were
scarcely more to him than light and darkness to the blind. His
contempt of flattery has been highly commended, but seems, when
viewed in connection with the rest of his character, to deserve
no commendation. It is possible to be below flattery as well as
above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One
who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.
It is creditable to Charles's temper that, ill as he thought of
his species, he never became a misanthrope. He saw little in men
but what was hateful. Yet he did not hate them. Nay, he was so
far humane that it was highly disagreeable to him to see their
sufferings or to hear their complaints. This, however, is a sort
of humanity which, though amiable and laudable in a private man
whose power to help or hurt is bounded by a narrow circle, has in
princes often been rather a vice than a virtue. More than one
well disposed ruler has given up whole provinces to rapine and
oppression, merely from a wish to see none but happy faces round
his own board and in his own walks. No man is fit to govern great
societies who hesitates about disobliging the few who have access
to him, for the sake of the many whom he will never see. The
facility of Charles was such as has perhaps never been found in
any man of equal sense. He was a slave without being a dupe.
Worthless men and women, to the very bottom of whose hearts he
saw, and whom he knew to be destitute of affection for him and
undeserving of his confidence, could easily wheedle him out of
titles, places, domains, state secrets and pardons. He bestowed
much; yet he neither enjoyed the pleasure nor acquired the fame
of beneficence. He never gave spontaneously; but it was painful
to him to refuse. The consequence was that his bounty generally
went, not to those who deserved it best, nor even to those whom
he liked best, but to the most shameless and importunate suitor
who could obtain an audience.
The motives which governed the political conduct of Charles the
Second differed widely from those by which his predecessor and
his successor were actuated. He was not a man to be imposed upon
by the patriarchal theory of government and the doctrine of
divine right. He was utterly without ambition. He detested
business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have
undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.
Such was his aversion to toil, and such his ignorance of affairs,
that the very clerks who attended him when he sate in council
could not refrain from sneering at his frivolous remarks, and at
his childish impatience. Neither gratitude nor revenge had any
share in determining his course; for never was there a mind on
which both services and injuries left such faint and transitory
impressions. He wished merely to be a King such as Lewis the
Fifteenth of France afterwards was; a King who could draw without
limit on the treasury for the gratification of his private
tastes, who could hire with wealth and honours persons capable of
assisting him to kill the time, and who, even when the state was
brought by maladministration to the depths of humiliation and to
the brink of ruin, could still exclude unwelcome truth from the
purlieus of his own seraglio, and refuse to see and hear whatever
might disturb his luxurious repose. For these ends, and for these
ends alone, he wished to obtain arbitrary power, if it could be
obtained without risk or trouble. In the religious disputes which
divided his Protestant subjects his conscience was not at all
interested. For his opinions oscillated in contented suspense
between infidelity and Popery. But, though his conscience was
neutral in the quarrel between the Episcopalians and the
Presbyterians, his taste was by no means so. His favourite vices
were precisely those to which the Puritans were least indulgent.
He could not get through one day without the help of diversions
which the Puritans regarded as sinful. As a man eminently well
bred, and keenly sensible of the ridiculous, he was moved to
contemptuous mirth by the Puritan oddities. He had indeed some
reason to dislike the rigid sect. He had, at the age when the
passions are most impetuous and when levity is most pardonable,
spent some months in Scotland, a King in name, but in fact a
state prisoner in the hands of austere Presbyterians. Not content
with requiring him to conform to their worship and to subscribe
their Covenant, they had watched all his motions, and lectured
him on all his youthful follies.
became supreme in the state. No man could hope to rise to
eminence and command but by their favour. Their favour was to be
gained only by exchanging with them the signs and passwords of
spiritual fraternity. One of the first resolutions adopted by
Barebone's Parliament, the most intensely Puritanical of all our
political assemblies, was that no person should be admitted into
the public service till the House should be satisfied of his real
godliness. What were then considered as the signs of real
godliness, the sadcoloured dress, the sour look, the straight
hair, the nasal whine, the speech interspersed with quaint texts,
the Sunday, gloomy as a Pharisaical Sabbath, were easily imitated
by men to whom all religions were the same. The sincere Puritans
soon found themselves lost in a multitude, not merely of men of
the world, but of the very worst sort of men of the world. For
the most notorious libertine who had fought under the royal
standard might justly be thought virtuous when compared with some
of those who, while they talked about sweet experiences and
comfortable scriptures, lived in the constant practice of fraud,
rapacity, and secret debauchery. The people, with a rashness
which we may justly lament, but at which we cannot wonder, formed
their estimate of the whole body from these hypocrites. The
theology, the manners, the dialect of the Puritan were thus
associated in the public mind with the darkest and meanest vices.
As soon as the Restoration had made it safe to avow enmity to the
party which had so long been predominant, a general outcry
against Puritanism rose from every corner of the kingdom, and was
often swollen by the voices of those very dissemblers whose
villany had brought disgrace on the Puritan name.
Thus the two great parties, which, after a long contest, had for
a moment concurred in restoring monarchy, were, both in politics
and in religion, again opposed to each other. The great body of
the nation leaned to the Royalists. The crimes of Strafford and
Laud, the excesses of the Star Chamber and of the High
Commission, the great services which the Long Parliament had,
during the first year of its existence, rendered to the state,
had faded from the minds of men. The execution of Charles the
First, the sullen tyranny of the Rump, the violence of the army,
were remembered with loathing; and the multitude was inclined to
hold all who had withstood the late King responsible for his
death and for the subsequent disasters.
The House of Commons, having been elected while the Presbyterians
were dominant, by no means represented the general sense of the
people. Most of the members, while execrating Cromwell and
Bradshaw, reverenced the memory of Essex and of Pym. One sturdy
Cavalier, who ventured to declare that all who had drawn the
sword against Charles the First were as much traitors as those
who kind cut off his head, was called to order, placed at the
bar, and reprimanded by the Speaker. The general wish of the
House undoubtedly was to settle the ecclesiastical disputes in a
manner satisfactory to the moderate Puritans. But to such a
settlement both the court and the nation were averse.
The restored King was at this time more loved by the people than
any of his predecessors had ever been. The calamities of his
house, the heroic death of his father, his own long sufferings
and romantic adventures, made him an object of tender interest.
His return had delivered the country from an intolerable bondage.
Recalled by the voice of both the contending factions, he was in
a position which enabled him to arbitrate between them; and in
some respects he was well qualified for the task. He had received
from nature excellent parts and a happy temper. His education had
been such as might have been expected to develope his
understanding, and to form him to the practice of every public
and private virtue. He had passed through all varieties of
fortune, and had seen both sides of human nature. He had, while
very young, been driven forth from a palace to a life of exile.
penury, and danger. He had, at the age when the mind and body are
in their highest perfection, and when the first effervescence of
boyish passions should have subsided, been recalled from his
wanderings to wear a crown. He had been taught by bitter
experience how much baseness, perfidy, and ingratitude may lie
hid under the obsequious demeanor of courtiers. He had found, on
the other hand, in the huts of the poorest, true nobility of
soul. When wealth was offered to any who would betray him, when
death was denounced against all who should shelter him, cottagers
and serving men had kept his secret truly, and had kissed his
hand under his mean disguises with as much reverence as if he had
been seated on his ancestral throne. From such a school it might
have been expected that a young man who wanted neither abilities
nor amiable qualities would have come forth a great and good
King. Charles came forth from that school with social habits,
with polite and engaging manners, and with some talent for lively
conversation, addicted beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond
of sauntering and of frivolous amusements, incapable of
selfdenial and of exertion, without faith in human virtue or in
human attachment without desire of renown, and without
sensibility to reproach. According to him, every person was to be
bought: but some people haggled more about their price than
others; and when this haggling was very obstinate and very
skilful it was called by some fine name. The chief trick by which
clever men kept up the price of their abilities was called
integrity. The chief trick by which handsome women kept up the
price of their beauty was called modesty. The love of God, the
love of country, the love of family, the love of friends, were
phrases of the same sort, delicate and convenient synonymes for
the love of self. Thinking thus of mankind, Charles naturally
cared very little what they thought of him. Honour and shame were
scarcely more to him than light and darkness to the blind. His
contempt of flattery has been highly commended, but seems, when
viewed in connection with the rest of his character, to deserve
no commendation. It is possible to be below flattery as well as
above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One
who does not value real glory will not value its counterfeit.
It is creditable to Charles's temper that, ill as he thought of
his species, he never became a misanthrope. He saw little in men
but what was hateful. Yet he did not hate them. Nay, he was so
far humane that it was highly disagreeable to him to see their
sufferings or to hear their complaints. This, however, is a sort
of humanity which, though amiable and laudable in a private man
whose power to help or hurt is bounded by a narrow circle, has in
princes often been rather a vice than a virtue. More than one
well disposed ruler has given up whole provinces to rapine and
oppression, merely from a wish to see none but happy faces round
his own board and in his own walks. No man is fit to govern great
societies who hesitates about disobliging the few who have access
to him, for the sake of the many whom he will never see. The
facility of Charles was such as has perhaps never been found in
any man of equal sense. He was a slave without being a dupe.
Worthless men and women, to the very bottom of whose hearts he
saw, and whom he knew to be destitute of affection for him and
undeserving of his confidence, could easily wheedle him out of
titles, places, domains, state secrets and pardons. He bestowed
much; yet he neither enjoyed the pleasure nor acquired the fame
of beneficence. He never gave spontaneously; but it was painful
to him to refuse. The consequence was that his bounty generally
went, not to those who deserved it best, nor even to those whom
he liked best, but to the most shameless and importunate suitor
who could obtain an audience.
The motives which governed the political conduct of Charles the
Second differed widely from those by which his predecessor and
his successor were actuated. He was not a man to be imposed upon
by the patriarchal theory of government and the doctrine of
divine right. He was utterly without ambition. He detested
business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have
undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.
Such was his aversion to toil, and such his ignorance of affairs,
that the very clerks who attended him when he sate in council
could not refrain from sneering at his frivolous remarks, and at
his childish impatience. Neither gratitude nor revenge had any
share in determining his course; for never was there a mind on
which both services and injuries left such faint and transitory
impressions. He wished merely to be a King such as Lewis the
Fifteenth of France afterwards was; a King who could draw without
limit on the treasury for the gratification of his private
tastes, who could hire with wealth and honours persons capable of
assisting him to kill the time, and who, even when the state was
brought by maladministration to the depths of humiliation and to
the brink of ruin, could still exclude unwelcome truth from the
purlieus of his own seraglio, and refuse to see and hear whatever
might disturb his luxurious repose. For these ends, and for these
ends alone, he wished to obtain arbitrary power, if it could be
obtained without risk or trouble. In the religious disputes which
divided his Protestant subjects his conscience was not at all
interested. For his opinions oscillated in contented suspense
between infidelity and Popery. But, though his conscience was
neutral in the quarrel between the Episcopalians and the
Presbyterians, his taste was by no means so. His favourite vices
were precisely those to which the Puritans were least indulgent.
He could not get through one day without the help of diversions
which the Puritans regarded as sinful. As a man eminently well
bred, and keenly sensible of the ridiculous, he was moved to
contemptuous mirth by the Puritan oddities. He had indeed some
reason to dislike the rigid sect. He had, at the age when the
passions are most impetuous and when levity is most pardonable,
spent some months in Scotland, a King in name, but in fact a
state prisoner in the hands of austere Presbyterians. Not content
with requiring him to conform to their worship and to subscribe
their Covenant, they had watched all his motions, and lectured
him on all his youthful follies.
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