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

so agreeable to

his master, that the design failed.25


Halifax was not content with standing on the defensive. He openly

accused Rochester of malversation. An inquiry took place. It

appeared that forty thousand pounds had been lost to the public

by the mismanagement of the First Lord of the Treasury. In

consequence of this discovery he was not only forced to

relinquish his hopes of the white staff, but was removed from the

direction of the finances to the more dignified but less

lucrative and important post of Lord President. "I have seen

people kicked down stairs," said Halifax; "but my Lord Rochester

is the first person that I ever saw kicked up stairs." Godolphin,

now a peer, became First Commissioner of the Treasury.


Still, however, the contest continued. The event depended wholly

on the will of Charles; and Charles could not come to a decision.

In his perplexity he promised everything to everybody. He would

stand by France: he would break with France: he would never meet

another Parliament: he would order writs for a Parliament to be

issued without delay. He assured the Duke of York that Halifax

should be dismissed from office, and Halifax that the Duke should

be sent to Scotland. In public he affected implacable resentment

against Monmouth, and in private conveyed to Monmouth assurances

of unalterable affection. How long, if the King's life had been

protracted, his hesitation would have lasted, and what would have

been his resolve, can only be conjectured. Early in the year

1685, while hostile parties were anxiously awaiting his

determination, he died, and a new scene opened. In a few mouths

the excesses of the government obliterated the impression which

had been made on the public mind by the excesses of the

opposition. The violent reaction which had laid the Whig party

prostrate was followed by a still more violent reaction in the

opposite direction; and signs not to be mistaken indicated that

the great conflict between the prerogatives of the Crown and the

privileges of the Parliament, was about to be brought to a final

issue.


CHAPTER III.


I INTEND, in this chapter, to give a description of the state in

which England was at the time when the crown passed from Charles

the Second to his brother. Such a description, composed from

scanty. and dispersed materials, must necessarily be very

imperfect. Yet it may perhaps correct some false notions which

would make the subsequent narrative unintelligible or

uninstructive.


If we would study with profit the history of our ancestors, we

must be constantly on our guard against that delusion which the

well known names of families, places, and offices naturally

produce, and must never forget that the country of which we read

was a very different country from that in which we live. In every

experimental science there is a tendency towards perfection. In

every human being there is a wish to ameliorate his own

condition. These two principles have often sufficed, even when

counteracted by great public calamities and by bad institutions,

to carry civilisation rapidly forward. No ordinary misfortune, no

ordinary misgovernment, will do so much to make a nation

wretched, as the constant progress of physical knowledge and the

constant effort of every man to better himself will do to make a

nation prosperous. It has often been found that profuse

expenditure, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions,

corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions,

conflagrations, inundations, have not been able to destroy

capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been

able to create it. It can easily be proved that, in our own land,

the national wealth has, during at least six centuries, been

almost uninterruptedly increasing; that it was greater under the

Tudors than under the Plantagenets; that it was greater under the

Stuarts than under the Tudors; that, in spite of battles, sieges,

and confiscations, it was greater on the day of the Restoration

than on the day when the Long Parliament met; that, in spite of

maladministration, of extravagance, of public bankruptcy, of two

costly and unsuccessful wars, of the pestilence and of the fire,

it was greater on the day of the death of Charles the Second than

on the day of his Restoration. This progress, having continued

during many ages, became at length, about the middle of the

eighteenth century, portentously rapid, and has proceeded, during

the nineteenth, with accelerated velocity. In consequence partly

of our geographical and partly of our moral position, we have,

during several generations, been exempt from evils which have

elsewhere impeded the efforts and destroyed the fruits of

industry. While every part of the Continent, from Moscow to

Lisbon, has been the theatre of bloody and devastating wars, no

hostile standard has been seen here but as a trophy. While

revolutions have taken place all around us, our government has

never once been subverted by violence. During more than a hundred

years there has been in our island no tumult of sufficient

importance to be called an insurrection; nor has the law been

once borne down either by popular fury or by regal tyranny:

public credit has been held sacred: the administration of justice

has been pure: even in times which might by Englishmen be justly

called evil times, we have enjoyed what almost every other nation

in the world would have considered as an ample measure of civil

and religious freedom. Every man has felt entire confidence that

the state would protect him in the possession of what had been

earned by his diligence and hoarded by his selfdenial. Under the

benignant influence of peace and liberty, science has flourished,

and has been applied to practical purposes on a scale never

before known. The consequence is that a change to which the

history of the old world furnishes no parallel has taken place in

our country. Could the England of 1685 be, by some magical

process, set before our eyes, we should not know one landscape in

a hundred or one building in ten thousand. The country gentleman

would not recognise his own fields. The inhabitant of the town

would not recognise his own street. Everything has been changed,

but the great features of nature, and a few massive and durable

works of human art. We might find out Snowdon and Windermere, the

Cheddar Cliffs and Beachy Head. We might find out here and there

a Norman minster, or a castle which witnessed the wars of the

Roses. But, with such rare exceptions, everything would be

strange to us. Many thousands of square miles which are now rich

corn land and meadow, intersected by green hedgerows and dotted

with villages and pleasant country seats, would appear as moors

overgrown with furze, or fens abandoned to wild ducks. We should

see straggling huts built of wood and covered with thatch, where

we now see manufacturing towns and seaports renowned to the

farthest ends of the world. The capital itself would shrink to

dimensions not much exceeding those of its present suburb on the

south of the Thames. Not less strange to us would be the garb and

manners of the people, the furniture and the equipages, the

interior of the shops and dwellings. Such a change in the state

of a nation seems to be at least as well entitled to the notice

of a historian as any change of the dynasty or of the ministry.26


One of the first objects of an inquirer, who wishes to form a

correct notion of the state of a community at a given time, must

be to ascertain of how many persons that community then

consisted. Unfortunately the population of England in 1685,

cannot be ascertained with perfect accuracy. For no great state

had then adopted the wise course of periodically numbering the

people. All men were left to conjecture for themselves; and, as

they generally conjectured without examining facts, and under the

influence of strong passions and prejudices, their guesses were

often ludicrously absurd. Even intelligent Londoners ordinarily

talked of London as containing several millions of souls. It was

confidently asserted by many that, during the thirty-five years

which had elapsed between the accession of Charles the First and

the Restoration the population of the City had increased by two

millions.27 Even while the ravages of the plague and fire were

recent, it was the fashion to say that the capital still had a

million and a half of inhabitants.28 Some persons, disgusted by

these exaggerations, ran violently into the opposite extreme.

Thus Isaac Vossius, a man of undoubted parts and learning,

strenuously maintained that there were only two millions of human

beings in England, Scotland, and Ireland taken together.29


We are not, however, left without the means of correcting the

wild blunders into which some minds were hurried by national

vanity and others by a morbid love of paradox. There are extant

three computations which seem to be entitled to peculiar

attention. They are entirely independent of each other: they

proceed on different principles; and yet there is little

difference in the results.


One of these computations was made in the year 1696 by Gregory

King, Lancaster herald, a political arithmetician of great

acuteness and judgment. The basis of his calculations was the

number of houses returned in 1690 by the officers who made the

last collection of the hearth money. The conclusion at which he

arrived was that the population of England was nearly five

millions and a half.30


About the same time King William the Third was desirous to

ascertain the comparative strength of the religious sects into

which the community was divided. An inquiry was instituted; and

reports were laid before him from all the dioceses of the realm.

According to these reports the number of his English subjects

must have been about five million two hundred thousand.31


Lastly, in our own days, Mr. Finlaison, an actuary of eminent

skill, subjected the ancient parochial registers of baptisms,

marriages, and burials, to all the tests which the modern

improvements in statistical science enabled him to apply. His

opinion was, that, at the close of the seventeenth century, the

population of England was a little under five million two hundred

thousand souls.32


Of these three estimates, framed without concert by different

persons from different sets of materials, the highest, which is

that of King, does not exceed the lowest, which is that of

Finlaison, by one twelfth. We may, therefore, with confidence

pronounce that, when James the Second reigned, England contained

between five million and five million five hundred thousand

inhabitants. On the very highest supposition she then had less

than one third of her present population, and less than three

times the population which is now collected in her gigantic

capital.


The increase of the people has been great in every part of the

kingdom, but generally much greater in