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

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their spirits high, but they understood the character of the

nation that they governed, and never once, like some of their

predecessors, and some of their successors, carried obstinacy to

a fatal point. The discretion of the Tudors was such, that their

power, though it was often resisted, was never subverted. The

reign of every one of them was disturbed by formidable

discontents: but the government was always able either to soothe

the mutineers or to conquer and punish them. Sometimes, by timely

concessions, it succeeded in averting civil hostilities; but in

general it stood firm, and called for help on the nation. The

nation obeyed the call, rallied round the sovereign, and enabled

him to quell the disaffected minority.


Thus, from the age of Henry the Third to the age of Elizabeth,

England grew and flourished under a polity which contained the

germ of our present institutions, and which, though not very

exactly defined, or very exactly observed, was yet effectually

prevented from degenerating into despotism, by the awe in which

the governors stood of the spirit and strength of the governed.


But such a polity is suited only to a particular stage in the

progress of society. The same causes which produce a division of

labour in the peaceful arts must at length make war a distinct

science and a distinct trade. A time arrives when the use of arms

begins to occupy the entire attention of a separate class. It

soon appears that peasants and burghers, however brave, are

unable to stand their ground against veteran soldiers, whose

whole life is a preparation for the day of battle, whose nerves

have been braced by long familiarity with danger, and whose

movements have all the precision of clockwork. It is found that

the defence of nations can no longer be safely entrusted to

warriors taken from the plough or the loom for a campaign of

forty days. If any state forms a great regular army, the

bordering states must imitate the example, or must submit to a

foreign yoke. But, where a great regular army exists, limited

monarchy, such as it was in the middle ages, can exist no longer.

The sovereign is at once emancipated from what had been the chief

restraint on his power; and he inevitably becomes absolute,

unless he is subjected to checks such as would be superfluous in

a society where all are soldiers occasionally, and none

permanently.


With the danger came also the means of escape. In the monarchies

of the middle ages the power of the sword belonged to the prince;

but the power of the purse belonged to the nation; and the

progress of civilisation, as it made the sword of the prince more

and more formidable to the nation, made the purse of the nation

more and more necessary to the prince. His hereditary revenues

would no longer suffice, even for the expenses of civil

government. It was utterly impossible that, without a regular and

extensive system of taxation, he could keep in constant

efficiency a great body of disciplined troops. The policy which

the parliamentary assemblies of Europe ought to have adopted was

to take their stand firmly on their constitutional right to give

or withhold money, and resolutely to refuse funds for the support

of armies, till ample securities had been provided against

despotism.


This wise policy was followed in our country alone. In the

neighbouring kingdoms great military establishments were formed;

no new safeguards for public liberty were devised; and the

consequence was, that the old parliamentary institutions

everywhere ceased to exist. In France, where they had always been

feeble, they languished, and at length died of mere weakness. In

Spain, where they had been as strong as in any part of Europe,

they struggled fiercely for life, but struggled too late. The

mechanics of Toledo and Valladolid vainly defended the privileges

of the Castilian Cortes against the veteran battalions of Charles

the Fifth. As vainly, in the next generation, did the citizens of

Saragossa stand up against Philip the Second, for the old

constitution of Aragon. One after another, the great national

councils of the continental monarchies, councils once scarcely

less proud and powerful than those which sate at Westminster,

sank into utter insignificance. If they met, they met merely as

our Convocation now meets, to go through some venerable forms.


In England events took a different course. This singular felicity

she owed chiefly to her insular situation. Before the end of the

fifteenth century great military establishments were

indispensable to the dignity, and even to the safety, of the

French and Castilian monarchies. If either of those two powers

had disarmed, it would soon have been compelled to submit to the

dictation of the other. But England, protected by the sea against

invasion, and rarely engaged in warlike operations on the

Continent, was not, as yet, under the necessity of employing

regular troops. The sixteenth century, the seventeenth century,

found her still without a standing army. At the commencement of

the seventeenth century political science had made considerable

progress. The fate of the Spanish Cortes and of the French States

General had given solemn warning to our Parliaments; and our

Parliaments, fully aware of the nature and magnitude of the

danger, adopted, in good time, a system of tactics which, after a

contest protracted through three generations, was at length

successful


Almost every writer who has treated of that contest has been

desirous to show that his own party was the party which was

struggling to preserve the old constitution unaltered. The truth

however is that the old constitution could not be preserved

unaltered. A law, beyond the control of human wisdom, had decreed

that there should no longer be governments of that peculiar class

which, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, had been common

throughout Europe. The question, therefore, was not whether our

polity should undergo a change, but what the nature of the change

should be. The introduction of a new and mighty force had

disturbed the old equilibrium, and had turned one limited

monarchy after another into an absolute monarchy. What had

happened elsewhere would assuredly have happened here, unless the

balance had been redressed by a great transfer of power from the

crown to the parliament. Our princes were about to have at their

command means of coercion such as no Plantagenet or Tudor had

ever possessed. They must inevitably have become despots, unless

they had been, at the same time, placed under restraints to which

no Plantagenet or Tudor had ever been subject.


It seems certain, therefore, that, had none but political causes

been at work, the seventeenth century would not have passed away

without a fierce conflict between our Kings and their

Parliaments. But other causes of perhaps greater potency

contributed to produce the same effect. While the government of

the Tudors was in its highest vigour an event took place which

has coloured the destinies of all Christian nations, and in an

especial manner the destinies of England. Twice during the middle

ages the mind of Europe had risen up against the domination of

Rome. The first insurrection broke out in the south of France.

The energy of Innocent the Third, the zeal of the young orders of

Francis and Dominic, and the ferocity of the Crusaders whom the

priesthood let loose on an unwarlike population, crushed the

Albigensian churches. The second reformation had its origin in

England, and spread to Bohemia. The Council of Constance, by

removing some ecclesiastical disorders which had given scandal to

Christendom, and the princes of Europe, by unsparingly using fire

and sword against the heretics, succeeded in arresting and

turning back the movement. Nor is this much to be lamented. The

sympathies of a Protestant, it is true, will naturally be on the

side of the Albigensians and of the Lollards. Yet an enlightened

and temperate Protestant will perhaps be disposed to doubt

whether the success, either of the Albigensians or of the

Lollards, would, on the whole, have promoted the happiness and

virtue of mankind. Corrupt as the Church of Rome was, there is

reason to believe that, if that Church had been overthrown in the

twelfth or even in the fourteenth century, the vacant space would

have been occupied by some system more corrupt still. There was

then, through the greater part of Europe, very little knowledge;

and that little was confined to the clergy. Not one man in five

hundred could have spelled his way through a psalm. Books were

few and costly. The art of printing was unknown. Copies of the

Bible, inferior in beauty and clearness to those which every

cottager may now command, sold for prices which many priests

could not afford to give. It was obviously impossible that the

laity should search the Scriptures for themselves. It is probable

therefore, that, as soon as they had put off one spiritual yoke,

they would have put on another, and that the power lately

exercised by the clergy of the Church of Rome would have passed

to a far worse class of teachers. The sixteenth century was

comparatively a time of light. Yet even in the sixteenth century

a considerable number of those who quitted the old religion

followed the first confident and plausible guide who offered

himself, and were soon led into errors far more serious than

those which they had renounced. Thus Matthias and Kniperdoling,

apostles of lust, robbery, and murder, were able for a time to

rule great cities. In a darker age such false prophets might have

founded empires; and Christianity might have been distorted into

a cruel and licentious superstition, more noxious, not only than

Popery, but even than Islamism.


About a hundred years after the rising of the Council of

Constance, that great change emphatically called the Reformation

began. The fulness of time was now come. The clergy were no

longer the sole or the chief depositories of knowledge The

invention of printing had furnished the assailants of the Church

with a mighty weapon which had been wanting to their

predecessors. The study of the ancient writers, the rapid

development of the powers of the modern languages, the

unprecedented activity which was displayed in every department of

literature, the political state of Europe, the vices of the Roman

court, the exactions of the Roman chancery, the jealousy with

which the wealth and privileges of the clergy were naturally

regarded by laymen, the jealousy with which the Italian

ascendency was naturally regarded by men born on our side of the

Alps, all these things gave to the teachers of the new theology

an advantage which they perfectly understood how to use.


Those who hold that the influence of the Church of Rome in the

dark ages was, on the whole, beneficial to mankind, may yet with

perfect consistency regard the Reformation as an inestimable