The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1 - Thomas Babington Macaulay (novel books to read TXT) 📗

a sudden hurled down from the chair of state without a

struggle. They had seen a new representative system devised,

tried and abandoned. They had seen a new House of Lords created

and scattered. They had seen great masses of property violently

transferred from Cavaliers to Roundheads, and from Roundheads

back to Cavaliers. During these events no man could be a stirring

and thriving politician who was not prepared to change with every

change of fortune. It was only in retirement that any person

could long keep the character either of a steady Royalist or of a

steady Republican. One who, in such an age, is determined to

attain civil greatness must renounce all thoughts of consistency.

Instead of affecting immutability in the midst of endless

mutation, he must be always on the watch for the indications of a

coming reaction. He must seize the exact moment for deserting a

falling cause. Having gone all lengths with a faction while it

was uppermost, he must suddenly extricate himself from it when

its difficulties begin, must assail it, must persecute it, must

enter on a new career of power and prosperity in company with new

associates. His situation naturally developes in him to the

highest degree a peculiar class of abilities and a peculiar class

of vices. He becomes quick of observation and fertile of

resource. He catches without effort the tone of any sect or party

with which he chances to mingle. He discerns the signs of the

times with a sagacity which to the multitude appears miraculous,

with a sagacity resembling that with which a veteran police

officer pursues the faintest indications of crime, or with which

a Mohawk warrior follows a track through the woods. But we shell

seldom find, in a statesman so trained, integrity, constancy, any

of the virtues of the noble family of Truth. He has no faith in

any doctrine, no zeal for any cause. He has seen so many old

institutions swept away, that he has no reverence for

prescription. He has seen so many new institutions, from which

much had been expected, produce mere disappointment, that he has

no hope of improvement. He sneers alike at those who are anxious

to preserve and at those who are eager to reform. There is

nothing in the state which he could not, without a scruple or a

blush, join in defending or in destroying. Fidelity to opinions

and to friends seems to him mere dulness and wrongheadedness.

Politics he regards, not as a science of which the object is the

happiness of mankind, but as an exciting game of mixed chance and

skill, at which a dexterous and lucky player may win an estate, a

coronet, perhaps a crown, and at which one rash move may lead to

the loss of fortune and of life. Ambition, which, in good times,

and in good minds, is half a virtue, now, disjoined from every

elevated and philanthropic sentiment, becomes a selfish cupidity

scarcely less ignoble than avarice. Among those politicians who,

from the Restoration to the accession of the House of Hanover,

were at the head of the great parties in the state, very few can

be named whose reputation is not stained by what, in our age,

would be called gross perfidy and corruption. It is scarcely an

exaggeration to say that the most unprincipled public men who

have taken part in affairs within our memory would, if tried by

the standard which was in fashion during the latter part of the

seventeenth century, deserve to be regarded as scrupulous and

disinterested.


While these political, religious, and moral changes were taking

place in England, the Royal authority had been without difficulty

reestablished in every other part of the British islands. In

Scotland the restoration of the Stuarts had been hailed with

delight; for it was regarded as the restoration of national

independence. And true it was that the yoke which Cromwell had

imposed was, in appearance, taken away, that the Scottish Estates

again met in their old hall at Edinburgh, and that the Senators

of the College of Justice again administered the Scottish law

according to the old forms. Yet was the independence of the

little kingdom necessarily rather nominal than real; for, as long

as the King had England on his side, he had nothing to apprehend

from disaffection in his other dominions. He was now in such a

situation that he could renew the attempt which had proved

destructive to his father without any danger of his father's

fate. Charles the First had tried to force his own religion by

his regal power on the Scots at a moment when both his religion

and his regal power were unpopular in England; and he had not

only failed, but had raised troubles which had ultimately cost

him his crown and his head. Times had now changed: England was

zealous for monarchy and prelacy; and therefore the scheme which

had formerly been in the highest degree imprudent might be

resumed with little risk to the throne. The government resolved

to set up a prelatical church in Scotland. The design was

disapproved by every Scotchman whose judgment was entitled to

respect. Some Scottish statesmen who were zealous for the King's

prerogative had been bred Presbyterians. Though little troubled

with scruples, they retained a preference for the religion of

their childhood; and they well knew how strong a hold that

religion had on the hearts of their countrymen. They remonstrated

strongly: but, when they found that they remonstrated in vain,

they had not virtue enough to persist in an opposition which

would have given offence to their master; and several of them

stooped to the wickedness and baseness of persecuting what in

their consciences they believed to be the purest form of

Christianity. The Scottish Parliament was so constituted that it

had scarcely ever offered any serious opposition even to Kings

much weaker than Charles then was. Episcopacy, therefore, was

established by law. As to the form of worship, a large discretion

was left to the clergy. In some churches the English Liturgy was

used. In others, the ministers selected from that Liturgy such

prayers and thanksgivings as were likely to be least offensive to

the people. But in general the doxology was sung at the close of

public worship; and the Apostles' Creed was recited when baptism

was administered. By the great body of the Scottish nation the

new Church was detested both as superstitious and as foreign; as

tainted with the corruptions of Rome, and as a mark of the

predominance of England. There was, however, no general

insurrection. The country was not what it had been twenty-two

years before. Disastrous war and alien domination had tamed the

spirit of the people. The aristocracy, which was held in great

honour by the middle class and by the populace, had put itself at

the head of the movement against Charles the First, but proved

obsequious to Charles the Second. From the English Puritans no

aid was now to be expected. They were a feeble party, proscribed

both by law and by public opinion. The bulk of the Scottish

nation, therefore, sullenly submitted, and, with many misgivings

of conscience, attended the ministrations of the Episcopal

clergy, or of Presbyterian divines who had consented to accept

from the government a half toleration, known by the name of the

Indulgence. But there were, particularly in the western lowlands,

many fierce and resolute men who held that the obligation to

observe the Covenant was paramount to the obligation to obey the

magistrate. These people, in defiance of the law, persisted in

meeting to worship God after their own fashion. The Indulgence

they regarded, not as a partial reparation of the wrongs

inflicted by the State on the Church, but as a new wrong, the

more odious because it was disguised under the appearance of a

benefit. Persecution, they said, could only kill the body; but

the black Indulgence was deadly to the soul. Driven from the

towns, they assembled on heaths and mountains. Attacked by the

civil power, they without scruple repelled force by force. At

every conventicle they mustered in arms. They repeatedly broke

out into open rebellion. They were easily defeated, and

mercilessly punished: but neither defeat nor punishment could

subdue their spirit. Hunted down like wild beasts, tortured till

their bones were beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds, hanged by

scores, exposed at one time to the license of soldiers from

England, abandoned at another time to the mercy of troops of

marauders from the Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood

so savage that the boldest and mightiest oppressor could not but

dread the audacity of their despair.


Such was, during the reign of Charles the Second, the state of

Scotland. Ireland was not less distracted. In that island existed

feuds, compared with which the hottest animosities of English

politicians were lukewarm. The enmity between the Irish Cavaliers

and the Irish Roundheads was almost forgotten in the fiercer

enmity which raged between the English and the Celtic races. The

interval between the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian seemed to

vanish, when compared with the interval which separated both from

the Papist. During the late civil troubles the greater part of

the Irish soil had been transferred from the vanquished nation to

the victors. To the favour of the Crown few either of the old or

of the new occupants had any pretensions. The despoilers and the

despoiled had, for the most part, been rebels alike. The

government was soon perplexed and wearied by the conflicting

claims and mutual accusations of the two incensed factions. Those

colonists among whom Cromwell had portioned out the conquered

territory, and whose descendants are still called Cromwellians,

asserted that the aboriginal inhabitants were deadly enemies of

the English nation under every dynasty, and of the Protestant

religion in every form. They described and exaggerated the

atrocities which had disgraced the insurrection of Ulster: they

urged the King to follow up with resolution the policy of the

Protector; and they were not ashamed to hint that there would

never be peace in Ireland till the old Irish race should be

extirpated. The Roman Catholics extenuated their offense as they

best might, and expatiated in piteous language on the severity of

their punishment, which, in truth, had not been lenient. They

implored Charles not to confound the innocent with the guilty,

and reminded him that many of the guilty had atoned for their

fault by returning to their allegiance, and by defending his

rights against the murderers of his father. The court, sick of

the importunities of two parties, neither of which it had any

reason to love, at length relieved itself from trouble by

dictating a compromise. That system, cruel, but most complete and

energetic, by which Oliver had proposed to make the island

thoroughly English, was abandoned. The Cromwellians were induced

to relinquish a third part