The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) π
Excerpt from the book:
Read free book Β«The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) πΒ» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
Download in Format:
- Author: Thomas Babington Macaulay
Read book online Β«The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) πΒ». Author - Thomas Babington Macaulay
delight of the House of Lords. His
conversation overflowed with thought, fancy, and wit. His
political tracts well deserve to be studied for their literary
merit, and fully entitle him to a place among English classics.
To the weight derived from talents so great and various he united
all the influence which belongs to rank and ample possessions.
Yet he was less successful in politics than many who enjoyed
smaller advantages. Indeed, those intellectual peculiarities
which make his writings valuable frequently impeded him in the
contests of active life. For he always saw passing events, not in
the point of view in which they commonly appear to one who bears
a part in them, but in the point of view in which, after the
lapse of many years, they appear to the philosophic historian.
With such a turn of mind he could not long continue to act
cordially with any body of men. All the prejudices, all the
exaggerations, of both the great parties in the state moved his
scorn. He despised the mean arts and unreasonable clamours of
demagogues. He despised still more the doctrines of divine right
and passive obedience. He sneered impartially at the bigotry of
the Churchman and at the bigotry of the Puritan. He was equally
unable to comprehend how any man should object to Saints' days
and surplices, and how any man should persecute any other man for
objecting to them. In temper he was what, in our time, is called
a Conservative: in theory he was a Republican. Even when his
dread of anarchy and his disdain for vulgar delusions led him to
side for a time with the defenders of arbitrary power, his
intellect was always with Locke and Milton. Indeed, his jests
upon hereditary monarchy were sometimes such as would have better
become a member of the Calf's Head Club than a Privy Councillor
of the Stuarts. In religion he was so far from being a zealot
that he was called by the uncharitable an atheist: but this
imputation he vehemently repelled; and in truth, though he
sometimes gave scandal by the way in which he exerted his rare
powers both of reasoning and of ridicule on serious subjects, he
seems to have been by no means unsusceptible of religious
impressions.
He was the chief of those politicians whom the two great parties
contemptuously called Trimmers. Instead of quarrelling with this
nickname, he assumed it as a title of honour, and vindicated,
with great vivacity, the dignity of the appellation. Everything
good, he said, trims between extremes. The temperate zone trims
between the climate in which men are roasted and the climate in
which they are frozen. The English Church trims between the
Anabaptist madness and the Papist lethargy. The English
constitution trims between Turkish despotism and Polish anarchy.
Virtue is nothing but a just temper between propensities any one
of which, if indulged to excess, becomes vice. Nay, the
perfection of the Supreme Being himself consists in the exact
equilibrium of attributes, none of which could preponderate
without disturbing the whole moral and physical order of the
world.20 Thus Halifax was a Trimmer on principle. He was also a
Trimmer by the constitution both of his head and of his heart.
His understanding was keen, sceptical, inexhaustibly fertile in
distinctions and objections; his taste refined; his sense of the
ludicrous exquisite; his temper placid and forgiving, but
fastidious, and by no means prone either to malevolence or to
enthusiastic admiration. Such a man could not long be constant to
any band of political allies. He must not, however, be confounded
with the vulgar crowd of renegades. For though, like them, he
passed from side to side, his transition was always in the
direction opposite to theirs. He had nothing in common with those
who fly from extreme to extreme, and who regard the party which
they have deserted with all animosity far exceeding that of
consistent enemies. His place was on the debatable ground between
the hostile divisions of the community, and he never wandered far
beyond the frontier of either. The party to which he at any
moment belonged was the party which, at that moment, he liked
least, because it was the party of which at that moment he had
the nearest view. He was therefore always severe upon his violent
associates, and was always in friendly relations with his
moderate opponents. Every faction in the day of its insolent and
vindictive triumph incurred his censure; and every faction, when
vanquished and persecuted, found in him a protector. To his
lasting honour it must be mentioned that he attempted to save
those victims whose fate has left the deepest stain both on the
Whig and on the Tory name.
He had greatly distinguished himself in opposition, and had thus
drawn on himself the royal displeasure, which was indeed so
strong that he was not admitted into the Council of Thirty
without much difficulty and long altercation. As soon, however,
as he had obtained a footing at court, the charms of his manner
and of his conversation made him a favourite. He was seriously
alarmed by the violence of the public discontent. He thought that
liberty was for the present safe, and that order and legitimate
authority were in danger. He therefore, as was his fashion,
joined himself to the weaker side. Perhaps his conversion was not
wholly disinterested. For study and reflection, though they had
emancipated him from many vulgar prejudices, had left him a slave
to vulgar desires. Money he did not want; and there is no
evidence that he ever obtained it by any means which, in that
age, even severe censors considered as dishonourable; but rank
and power had strong attractions for him. He pretended, indeed,
that he considered titles and great offices as baits which could
allure none but fools, that he hated business, pomp, and
pageantry, and that his dearest wish was to escape from the
bustle and glitter of Whitehall to the quiet woods which
surrounded his ancient mansion in Nottinghamshire; but his
conduct was not a little at variance with his professions. In
truth he wished to command the respect at once of courtiers and
of philosophers, to be admired for attaining high dignities, and
to be at the same time admired for despising them.
Sunderland was Secretary of State. In this man the political
immorality of his age was personified in the most lively manner.
Nature had given him a keen understanding, a restless and
mischievous temper, a cold heart, and an abject spirit. His mind
had undergone a training by which all his vices had been nursed
up to the rankest maturity. At his entrance into public life, he
had passed several years in diplomatic posts abroad, and had
been, during some time, minister in France. Every calling has its
peculiar temptations. There is no injustice in saying that
diplomatists, as a class, have always been more distinguished by
their address, by the art with which they win the confidence of
those with whom they have to deal, and by the ease with which
they catch the tone of every society into which they are
admitted, than by generous enthusiasm or austere rectitude; and
the relations between Charles and Lewis were such that no English
nobleman could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any
patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the
bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple,
shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all
principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but
with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous
for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance. Yet they
had sturdy English hearts which would never have endured real
despotism. He, on the contrary, had a languid speculative liking
for republican institutions which was compatible with perfect
readiness to be in practice the most servile instrument of
arbitrary power. Like many other accomplished flatterers and
negotiators, he was far more skilful in the art of reading the
characters and practising on the weaknesses of individuals, than
in the art of discerning the feelings of great masses, and of
foreseeing the approach of great revolutions. He was adroit in
intrigue; and it was difficult even for shrewd and experienced
men who had been amply forewarned of his perfidy to withstand the
fascination of his manner, and to refuse credit to his
professions of attachment. But he was so intent on observing and
courting particular persons, that he often forgot to study the
temper of the nation. He therefore miscalculated grossly with
respect to some of the most momentous events of his time. More
than one important movement and rebound of the public mind took
him by surprise; and the world, unable to understand how so
clever a man could be blind to what was clearly discerned by the
politicians of the coffee houses, sometimes attributed to deep
design what were in truth mere blunders.
It was only in private conference that his eminent abilities
displayed themselves. In the royal closet, or in a very small
circle, he exercised great influence. But at the Council board he
was taciturn; and in the House of Lords he never opened his lips.
The four confidential advisers of the crown soon found that their
position was embarrassing and invidious. The other members of the
Council murmured at a distinction inconsistent with the King's
promises; and some of them, with Shaftesbury at their head, again
betook themselves to strenuous opposition in Parliament. The
agitation, which had been suspended by the late changes, speedily
became more violent than ever. It was in vain that Charles
offered to grant to the Commons any security for the Protestant
religion which they could devise, provided only that they would
not touch the order of succession. They would hear of no
compromise. They would have the Exclusion Bill, and nothing but
the Exclusion Bill. The King, therefore, a few weeks after he had
publicly promised to take no step without the advice of his new
Council, went down to the House of Lords without mentioning his
intention in Council, and prorogued the Parliament.
The day of that prorogation, the twenty-sixth of May, 1679, is a
great era in our history. For on that day the Habeas Corpus Act
received the royal assent. From the time of the Great Charter the
substantive law respecting the personal liberty of Englishmen had
been nearly the same as at present: but it had been inefficacious
for want of a stringent system of procedure. What was needed was
not a new light, but a prompt and searching remedy; and such a
remedy the Habeas Corpus Act supplied. The King would gladly have
refused his consent to that measure: but he was about to appeal
from his Parliament to his people on the question of the
succession, and he could not
conversation overflowed with thought, fancy, and wit. His
political tracts well deserve to be studied for their literary
merit, and fully entitle him to a place among English classics.
To the weight derived from talents so great and various he united
all the influence which belongs to rank and ample possessions.
Yet he was less successful in politics than many who enjoyed
smaller advantages. Indeed, those intellectual peculiarities
which make his writings valuable frequently impeded him in the
contests of active life. For he always saw passing events, not in
the point of view in which they commonly appear to one who bears
a part in them, but in the point of view in which, after the
lapse of many years, they appear to the philosophic historian.
With such a turn of mind he could not long continue to act
cordially with any body of men. All the prejudices, all the
exaggerations, of both the great parties in the state moved his
scorn. He despised the mean arts and unreasonable clamours of
demagogues. He despised still more the doctrines of divine right
and passive obedience. He sneered impartially at the bigotry of
the Churchman and at the bigotry of the Puritan. He was equally
unable to comprehend how any man should object to Saints' days
and surplices, and how any man should persecute any other man for
objecting to them. In temper he was what, in our time, is called
a Conservative: in theory he was a Republican. Even when his
dread of anarchy and his disdain for vulgar delusions led him to
side for a time with the defenders of arbitrary power, his
intellect was always with Locke and Milton. Indeed, his jests
upon hereditary monarchy were sometimes such as would have better
become a member of the Calf's Head Club than a Privy Councillor
of the Stuarts. In religion he was so far from being a zealot
that he was called by the uncharitable an atheist: but this
imputation he vehemently repelled; and in truth, though he
sometimes gave scandal by the way in which he exerted his rare
powers both of reasoning and of ridicule on serious subjects, he
seems to have been by no means unsusceptible of religious
impressions.
He was the chief of those politicians whom the two great parties
contemptuously called Trimmers. Instead of quarrelling with this
nickname, he assumed it as a title of honour, and vindicated,
with great vivacity, the dignity of the appellation. Everything
good, he said, trims between extremes. The temperate zone trims
between the climate in which men are roasted and the climate in
which they are frozen. The English Church trims between the
Anabaptist madness and the Papist lethargy. The English
constitution trims between Turkish despotism and Polish anarchy.
Virtue is nothing but a just temper between propensities any one
of which, if indulged to excess, becomes vice. Nay, the
perfection of the Supreme Being himself consists in the exact
equilibrium of attributes, none of which could preponderate
without disturbing the whole moral and physical order of the
world.20 Thus Halifax was a Trimmer on principle. He was also a
Trimmer by the constitution both of his head and of his heart.
His understanding was keen, sceptical, inexhaustibly fertile in
distinctions and objections; his taste refined; his sense of the
ludicrous exquisite; his temper placid and forgiving, but
fastidious, and by no means prone either to malevolence or to
enthusiastic admiration. Such a man could not long be constant to
any band of political allies. He must not, however, be confounded
with the vulgar crowd of renegades. For though, like them, he
passed from side to side, his transition was always in the
direction opposite to theirs. He had nothing in common with those
who fly from extreme to extreme, and who regard the party which
they have deserted with all animosity far exceeding that of
consistent enemies. His place was on the debatable ground between
the hostile divisions of the community, and he never wandered far
beyond the frontier of either. The party to which he at any
moment belonged was the party which, at that moment, he liked
least, because it was the party of which at that moment he had
the nearest view. He was therefore always severe upon his violent
associates, and was always in friendly relations with his
moderate opponents. Every faction in the day of its insolent and
vindictive triumph incurred his censure; and every faction, when
vanquished and persecuted, found in him a protector. To his
lasting honour it must be mentioned that he attempted to save
those victims whose fate has left the deepest stain both on the
Whig and on the Tory name.
He had greatly distinguished himself in opposition, and had thus
drawn on himself the royal displeasure, which was indeed so
strong that he was not admitted into the Council of Thirty
without much difficulty and long altercation. As soon, however,
as he had obtained a footing at court, the charms of his manner
and of his conversation made him a favourite. He was seriously
alarmed by the violence of the public discontent. He thought that
liberty was for the present safe, and that order and legitimate
authority were in danger. He therefore, as was his fashion,
joined himself to the weaker side. Perhaps his conversion was not
wholly disinterested. For study and reflection, though they had
emancipated him from many vulgar prejudices, had left him a slave
to vulgar desires. Money he did not want; and there is no
evidence that he ever obtained it by any means which, in that
age, even severe censors considered as dishonourable; but rank
and power had strong attractions for him. He pretended, indeed,
that he considered titles and great offices as baits which could
allure none but fools, that he hated business, pomp, and
pageantry, and that his dearest wish was to escape from the
bustle and glitter of Whitehall to the quiet woods which
surrounded his ancient mansion in Nottinghamshire; but his
conduct was not a little at variance with his professions. In
truth he wished to command the respect at once of courtiers and
of philosophers, to be admired for attaining high dignities, and
to be at the same time admired for despising them.
Sunderland was Secretary of State. In this man the political
immorality of his age was personified in the most lively manner.
Nature had given him a keen understanding, a restless and
mischievous temper, a cold heart, and an abject spirit. His mind
had undergone a training by which all his vices had been nursed
up to the rankest maturity. At his entrance into public life, he
had passed several years in diplomatic posts abroad, and had
been, during some time, minister in France. Every calling has its
peculiar temptations. There is no injustice in saying that
diplomatists, as a class, have always been more distinguished by
their address, by the art with which they win the confidence of
those with whom they have to deal, and by the ease with which
they catch the tone of every society into which they are
admitted, than by generous enthusiasm or austere rectitude; and
the relations between Charles and Lewis were such that no English
nobleman could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any
patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the
bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple,
shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all
principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but
with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous
for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance. Yet they
had sturdy English hearts which would never have endured real
despotism. He, on the contrary, had a languid speculative liking
for republican institutions which was compatible with perfect
readiness to be in practice the most servile instrument of
arbitrary power. Like many other accomplished flatterers and
negotiators, he was far more skilful in the art of reading the
characters and practising on the weaknesses of individuals, than
in the art of discerning the feelings of great masses, and of
foreseeing the approach of great revolutions. He was adroit in
intrigue; and it was difficult even for shrewd and experienced
men who had been amply forewarned of his perfidy to withstand the
fascination of his manner, and to refuse credit to his
professions of attachment. But he was so intent on observing and
courting particular persons, that he often forgot to study the
temper of the nation. He therefore miscalculated grossly with
respect to some of the most momentous events of his time. More
than one important movement and rebound of the public mind took
him by surprise; and the world, unable to understand how so
clever a man could be blind to what was clearly discerned by the
politicians of the coffee houses, sometimes attributed to deep
design what were in truth mere blunders.
It was only in private conference that his eminent abilities
displayed themselves. In the royal closet, or in a very small
circle, he exercised great influence. But at the Council board he
was taciturn; and in the House of Lords he never opened his lips.
The four confidential advisers of the crown soon found that their
position was embarrassing and invidious. The other members of the
Council murmured at a distinction inconsistent with the King's
promises; and some of them, with Shaftesbury at their head, again
betook themselves to strenuous opposition in Parliament. The
agitation, which had been suspended by the late changes, speedily
became more violent than ever. It was in vain that Charles
offered to grant to the Commons any security for the Protestant
religion which they could devise, provided only that they would
not touch the order of succession. They would hear of no
compromise. They would have the Exclusion Bill, and nothing but
the Exclusion Bill. The King, therefore, a few weeks after he had
publicly promised to take no step without the advice of his new
Council, went down to the House of Lords without mentioning his
intention in Council, and prorogued the Parliament.
The day of that prorogation, the twenty-sixth of May, 1679, is a
great era in our history. For on that day the Habeas Corpus Act
received the royal assent. From the time of the Great Charter the
substantive law respecting the personal liberty of Englishmen had
been nearly the same as at present: but it had been inefficacious
for want of a stringent system of procedure. What was needed was
not a new light, but a prompt and searching remedy; and such a
remedy the Habeas Corpus Act supplied. The King would gladly have
refused his consent to that measure: but he was about to appeal
from his Parliament to his people on the question of the
succession, and he could not
Free e-book: Β«The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (diy ebook reader .txt) πΒ» - read online now on website american library books (americanlibrarybooks.com)
Similar e-books:
Comments (0)