CHAPTER XIII.

"I warn the Aristocracy not to force the people to look into the subject of taxation, not to force them to see how they have been robbed, plundered, and bamboozled for ages by them."-RICHARD COBDEN, at Covent Garden, Dec. 17th, 1845.

Ir has been the jubilant vaunt of toryism, that the people of England had a taste of democracy, and had enough of it. That the Commonwealth had introduced such troubles and distractions and distresses into the kingdom, that all men were transported at the idea of the return of a king. It is not now our question which form of government is the best, and we may be excused entering far into the discussion of it; but we must not permit a vulgar error to damage the cause of freedom, and must therefore state plainly, what is the recorded truth.

A republic is, in my opinion, the most perfect form of human government, and the most consonant to every rational view of our nature, or of our rights, and of the economy of a civil community; but it is equally true, that it is a government only for men in the most perfect state. Before this noble form of government, most noble and worthy of free and independent men, can be satisfactorily and firmly maintained, men must have learned much of the true science of civil rule, and made it practicable. They must have learned to work by moral means and principles, and not by swords and muskets; they must have become, from reading, from reasoning, and from active discussion of private and public rights, keenly sensible, not only of their own claims, but of the claims of others; they must have learned to respect themselves, and to respect the rights of their neighbours, be they indeed their opponents. The divine sentiment of JUSTICE must have become a CONSCIENCE; the divine law of LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF, must have become a GOSPEL in them. They must have become habitually able to put their own passions and selfish views under the controling and INVIOLABLE Sense of the common good. Till men are thus enlightened, and thus practically disciplined, there will be faction instead of good government, and private ambition instead of public service. Till this knowledge and this discipline are those too not of a number, even of a large number, but of the mass of the people, the vicious adventurer will outstrip modest ability; private stratagem will defeat public virtue; and there will always be agitation and

danger of relapse. Monarchy is the necessary evil of a low state of moral sentiment in a community. It is a compliance with that weak spirit of a poor idolatry which has always displayed itself in the cloudy mind of the vulgar mass, beginning with the adoration of ugly wooden stumps carved and vermilioned, and ending in that of golden calves; not the rational homage of godillumined_intellect, which can worship nothing on this side of heaven. It is the schoolmaster with his rod, awing and chastising ill-disciplined children, not the leader of great and wise men. It is at once the badge and the punishment of an imperfect or a corrupt civilisation. A republic, on the contrary, is the most perfect and humane of governments, it implies self-government, and the national embodiment of Christianity, and is therefore the glory of human nature, but, as is evident, can only stand fast on the pyramidal basis of the knowledge and virtue of a whole people.

This latter condition was assuredly not that of England at this time. The cause of knowledge and its offspring, virtue, was but in its growth, but it was a glorious growth, and produced triumphs such as had never before been witnessed in the history of man, and which can never again be utterly lost. The nation had been insulted and oppressed; but there were in it many men glowing with all the ideas of liberty derived from the study of the classics, and of that great fountain of all liberty, the Bible. These champions, endowed with an extraordinary wealth of eloquence, bravery, and ability, stood forward dauntlessly for the nation. Their words were words of fire which kindled the excited spirits of their countrymen. They won the ear, and heart, and soul of the million. The enthusiasm grew with opposition; the strife came, and in the contest liberty triumphed, and despotism fell. But the great men who fought this glorious battle were not immortal. They perished in the field, or in the course of nature, and it was then seen that in them, and not in the nation at large, had the great ideal of the reign of freedom been realised. The nation loved freedom, but was far from being prepared to comprehend all that pertained to its maintenance. These men were lights from the regions of the past, which their countrymen had not yet sufficiently explored; they had filled their souls with the philosophy of Greece, strengthened them with the fortitude of Rome, and clarified them to a more than eagle's clearness of vision into the true principles of things, in the divine fountain of Bethlehem; they had thus shot far ahead of their age, and when they fell, freedom for a time fell with them.

But that it was because the people had been so harassed by

the republican party, or because prosperity was departing under their rule, that the people again hailed the return of monarchy, is opposed to all facts. It was not that they groaned under the heavy yoke of the Commonwealth, and remembered the good days which they enjoyed under their kings, but precisely the reverse, which induced them with joy to admit Charles to the throne. They had, in fact, enjoyed of late years so much prosperity and security, and especially freedom of religion, that the memory of former monarchical persecutions and exactions had grown faint. They saw with Cromwell's death the firm hand which preserved their peace gone; most of the great men of the revolution had gone before; and they trembled at the distractions of feeble successors, while they were induced to hope from a king, whose father had lost his head for his despotism, and who himself had suffered much adversity, a better and milder rule than that of his ancestors.

Never, indeed, had the people of England enjoyed so much respect abroad, or prosperity at home, as under the rule of the Protector. At first the ambassadors and subjects of England were insulted in every country on the continent; some of them were murdered; but Cromwell soon compelled all foreigners to alter their tone and behaviour. By the hand of Drake, his immortal admiral, he drove from the ocean the fleets of Holland, France, and Spain;-those of Holland being such for number, fame of commanders, De Witt and Van Tromp, and for the desperate valour of the men, as never came against England before. He made the name of England terrible in all countries, and all kings and governments did him homage. At home he preserved peace, gave freedom to religious faith, and put the whole commerce and constitution of England into such a posture, that the statistical returns of the latter part of his government, and the period immediately succeeding it, present results that are perfectly amazing. "All authorities," says a late writer, "agree in testifying to the prosperity which England enjoyed from the termination of the war to the death of Cromwell."*" When this tyrant, or Protector, as some call him," observes a writer after the Restoration, "turned out the Long Parliament in April, 1653, the kingdom was arrived at the highest pitch of trade, wealth, and honour that it in any age ever knew. The trade appeared by the great sums offered them for the Customs and Excise, 900,000l. a-year being refused. The riches of the nation showed itself in the high value that land and all our native commodities bore, which are the certain marks of opulence."+

* Knight's History of England.

The World's Mistake in Oliver Cromwell; Harleian Miscellany.

Even the population, spite of the disturbances and slaughters of the civil war, had advanced. It is calculated at the commencement of the civil war, at six millions, and at the Restoration at not less than six millions and a half. "The hurricane of the civil war," says the writer of Knight's History, "disastrous as it may have been in its immediate operation, had yet put a new life into the air, the inspiration of which, on the return of a settled condition of things, was felt by our commerce and manufactures, as well as by all other parts of our social system; the very gap to be filled up, in consequence of the partial suspension of mercantile and other industrial activity during the war, quickened that activity when the war was over. The government of the protectorate exerted itself to promote the trading interests of the country, and the impulse thus given continued to carry forward the spirit of enterprise after the Restoration in a state of greater public security, and under circumstances otherwise much more favourable than had existed previous to that event."

As evidences of this impulse, we may state that between the Restoration and the revolution, the Custom-house receipts doubled themselves, being in 1660 only 421,582., and in 1687, 884,9557. Davenant gives the value of the whole rental of England in 1660, at six millions; in 1688, at fourteen millions.* So that in 1660, the whole land of England, at twelve years' purchase, was only worth 72,000,0007.; and in 1668, at eighteen years' purchase, 254,000,0007.; or three and a half times as much. As to the mercantile shipping of the country, old and experienced merchants all agreed, that its tonnage in 1688, was nearly double what it had been in 1666; and it appeared by authentic accounts, that the royal navy, which, in 1666, amounted only to 62,594 tons, was grown in 1688 to 101,032 tons. Sir William Petty in his Political Arithmetic, published 1676, states, that within the previous forty years, the houses in London had doubled themselves; the royal navy had doubled or quadrupled itself; the coal-trade from Newcastle had quadrupled itself, being then 80,000 tons yearly; the Guinea and American trades had grown up from next to nothing above 40,000 tons of shipping; the Customs were tripled; the postage of letters increased from one to twenty; the whole income of government, in short, was trebled, and the number and splendour of coaches, equipages, and household furniture was wonderfully increased.

These effects were surely no results of the wise measures of such monarchs as Charles II. and James II.; they were trace*Discourses on Trade.

able, as clearly as light to the sun, to the bold and able heads of the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth; to their victories over the enemies and rivals of the nation; and to the able regulations which they had made in all quarters for the honourable maintenance of our name and the prosperity of our

commerce.

But the aristocracy were sighing for the return of monarchy, and by conspiracy with the army they effected it. And how did they effect it? The story forms one of the darkest and most disgraceful spots in our history. The aristocracy determined at any rate and cost to have the monarchy back again, as the only chance of regaining their old privileges of plundering the nation. For this purpose they cast their eyes on General Monk. They soon found that he was the man for their object. They found that he was a man to be tempted by promises of rank, title, and fortune; and these were plentifully made him. It is well known that great bargainings went on between the English aristocracy previous to the Restoration; and these being terminated to the satisfaction of the two parties, the dissolute prince was hastily admitted again to the throne, without any securities being taken for the preservation of the national liberties. The aristocracy had gained their own selfish ends; Monk had gained his, and became Duke of Albemarle. The aristocracy had set up again the golden tree of monarchy, under whose branches only their power and privileges were safe, and whose golden apples they have made to rain so plentifully into their hands. But with this grand and fundamental acquisition they were not contented; they took care to make a special bargain for themselves, and this was nothing less than to exempt themselves from their feudal obligations, their military tenures, the proceeds of which constituted, in fact, a land-tax; and to throw this burden not merely from themselves, but upon the shoulders of the unsuspicious people, in the shape of the Excise.

Of this singular, base, and selfish transaction on the part of the aristocracy, we get a pretty clear view from Blackstone. He reminds us of the imposition of the various feudal burdens by William the Conqueror on those of his followers, to whom, according to the feudal system, he granted lands. For every grant of a certain quantity of land, called a knight's feud, fief, or fee, the said grantee was bound to do personal service in the army of the grantor, or feudal lord, forty days in every year, if

called upon. 66 "But this personal attendance growing trouble

some in many respects, the tenants found means of compounding for it by first sending others in their stead, and in process of time, by making pecuniary satisfaction to the crown in lieu of