Thus the church had, on all occasions, freely and fully surrendered to these arbitrary monarchs, as far as in them lay, the rights and liberties of all England. They had done all that they could for their own selfish aggrandisement, to overturn the constitution of their country; to lay it in eternal thraldom, and that in the sacred name of God, at the feet of Church and King, and it was beautiful that it should come to this at last. It was beautiful that the universities, which had always been the great hotbeds and nurseries of toryism, and had been the most truculently officious in fuming these kings with the adulation of the non-resistance doctrine, which no religion, no law, no fault or forfeiture in the monarch himself could alter or diminish, should be the first to be tested by their divine-right king. This was done in 1687, when he demanded that they should admit seven popish fellows of Exeter College in Oxford, and confer the degree of M.A. on one Alban Francis, a Benedictine friar at Cambridge. Then the worthies who had for four reigns been preaching and teaching non-resistance as the law of Heaven to others, on being touched themselves, "cursed the king to his face!" He tried the equally adulatory and gospel-twisting bishops, and they did the same! All that the church had taught, the aristocracy had supported; nay, when the Commons made a violent effort to prevent this James coming to the throne, the Lords threw out the Bill of Exclusion. But now his folly was grown too egregious; his atrocities had become too monstrous. There was nothing for it but to fling him forth, and with him thus terminate at once the line of the Stuarts, and the mischievous trash of divine right; to throw off the hypocritical mask of nonresistance, and end the second great period in the history of the English aristocracy. CHAPTER XVI. THE THIRD, OR MOLE-PERIOD OF THE ARISTOCRACY. WE are now arrived at the third and last period of this remarkable history. In the fifth chapter I observed that the history of the aristocracy divided itself into three epochs. During the first, which commenced with the Conquest, and, ended with the Wars of the Roses, the aristocrats made their way by fighting for the crown, clinging to the crown, and moreover, not the less zealously plundering the crown, on all possible occasions. Their object was to feather their nest well; and, as the narrative shows, they succeeded to such an extent, that they alarmed the jealousy of the crown, nay, made it totter on the monarch's head; and they at length grew audacious enough to pluck it from one head, and set it on another, according to their pleasure. The ascension of the Tudors to the throne, saw, therefore, these monarchs set earnestly about to abate this arrogance and overgrown affluence of their feudal vassals; and thus commenced the second epoch, which ended with the expulsion of the Stuarts. The Tudors humbled them to the dust, and yet, though a new power during this period arose-that of the people-the aristocracy never attempted to ally itself with this new power against the crown, in order to regain its lost wealth and influence, No; it was too clear-sighted. It had an instinctive perception that this new power was a hostile power; that it was too newly awakened to consciousness of its rights, and therefore too watchful to be flattered or deluded out of them. The crown, though it had so sharply punished its pride, and reduced its pride-inspiring wealth, was still the only power on which it could lean. It, therefore, allowed itself to be drawn by the crown into its daring attacks on the people and constitution, under the Stuarts, and fell with it. Then came that third and last period of which we are now to treat. Both crown and aristocracy had received such a lesson from the great patriots of the Commonwealth; from the sword of Cromwell, from the tongues of Pym and Hampden, and from the stern integrity of such men as Marvel and Selden, as was never likely to be forgotten either by them or the world. They had been rent down from their high places and swelling lordliness. All their boasts of divine right, and hereditary right, had been swept away like the cobwebs of the schools. They had been cut down like great trees that had travelled in leafy grandeur and colossal stature towards the skies through long ages-cut down by the democratic axe in one hour. They rubbed their eyes and found that their inborn, inherent, invincible might was but a dream, a smoke, a wreath of mist, that lay only over the earth, because the sun of truth and knowledge had so long delayed its rising. All their aphorisms and sage saws, and grave and round-mouthed declarations of kingly and aristocratic godhead had been struck down at a single announcement by common sense, that the people were alive and awake, M and would take vengeance for many and long injuries. This development of so stupendous a power on earth, struck terror into crown and coronet. But time went over. The first outburst of popular power, like steam which had been 'pressed, not under human engines, but under the mountains of earth, rent its passage through all opposing denseness, made our globe quake, and shot up into the air. It then again became gradually calm. The giant intellects and great hearts of the new reign of things passed, one after another, into the infinite, their true world and abiding place, and CUNNING Soon showed to crown and coronet, that through him they might still rule; that the people were still infants in wisdom; that the Samson who had alarmed and chastened them, might be robbed of the locks of his power by flatterers; that STRENGTH, who, for a moment, had been against them, might be again lured to their side. The people was found, like Samson, strong, but like Samson, not overdone with sagacity. It was discerned to be gullible: to be Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw. The aristocracy having, therefore, made this consolatory discovery, commenced its last, its greatest, its most astoundingly successful course- —that of cajoling and undermining. To beard John Bull was, it perceived, to get a fall; but how readily might he be stroked to quiescence, and soothed to sleep! To ally itself to the popular power, and thereby to give to STRENGTH his full dominion, dominion in the right, and for universal good, was totally opposed to its own nature. Aristocracy is essentially a beast of prey. It can fawn like a tiger, but it fawns only to spring and devour. It cannot exist but by a false and preponderating share of the public wealth; by false and fictitious honours. It, therefore, once more allied itself to the crown, but with a whisper from CUNNING, that even that too might be secured and put in subjection to it. With the revolution of 1688 commenced, then, the reign of aristocratic humbug. It was declared broadly, and with a visage as honest as that of honesty itself, that the root of all national power is the people: that crown and aristocracy are of its election, and for its use: they are its state menials, its mere livery servants. All their insignia were protested to be only the badges and baubles of the state service. The people, in fact, chose the crown, and the crown those that should serve the people; but the people was sovereign, and the root of right and power. The three estates of the constitution were all for the good of the people; the constitution was proclaimed to be free and glorious; the people to be a free people. The people could dismiss monarch or aristocracy; had once done it, and could do it again-nobody denied it; but the monarch or aristocracy could not dismiss the people. The people, therefore, was a great, free, glorious people; and the House of Commons was given it as the theatre of its greatness, its freedom, and its glory, in which it could dictate to kings or peers the perpetual remembrance of its paramount title. Nay, on the plea that it would render the crown more dependent on its legitimate source of existence, the people, it was ordained by the aristocracy to give away its estate, its old family estate, its patrimonial support to themselves! or to lease it out in everlasting leases-to themselves! It was done; and John Bull, charmed with all this homage, swelling with all his greatness, and his freedom, and his glory, went away to his farm, and thence to his factory, and thence to his ships, and saw that all was going on prosperously everywhere; but forgot just one most essential thing—to take the house-door key in his pocket. This key, the aristocracy adroitly possessed itself of. The key of John's house, the House of Commons, when not in his own pouch, was intrusted to a set of sturdy janitors named Counties and Boroughs. But the Counties were, in reality, the sworn slaves of the aristocracy, and the Boroughs were grown old, decrepit, and superannuated. Like most old men, they had become dreadfully avaricious; and, bribed by the aristocracy, they feigned deafness, and John, on his return, found himself shut out of doors. So great was his astonishment, that he was supposed to have lost his senses; for ever since, though wandering about without a roof to protect him, he is always filled with the idea that the servants of the aristocracy who crowd his house, are his own servants, and are preparing his dinner. To this hour, therefore, the aristocracy rule in his abode, collect his rents, rob and fleece his tenants remorselessly, and have brought him to the brink of ruin. His debts are the wonder of the world; his lunacy is its grand subject of compassion; and his true friends ask themselves with sighs, whether the day will ever come when, in the shape of another Cromwell, he will once more seize the house-door key, turn out the riotous knaves that waste his substance, and command them to "give place to better men!" This, quitting our metaphor, and employing the language of serious and melancholy truth, is the state of things of which we have to take a more particular view. From and after the revolution of 1688, we see nothing more of a whole people in arms against the sovereign; we hear no more of divine right and absolutism; the cannon of the Commonwealth mowed down these old and profitable humbugs, with their assertors, never to rise again. The only contentions from this period became for places; the eternal war of aristocrats for the ministerial power. Aristocracy, dividing itself into two belligerent parties, under the names of Whigs and Tories, assumed the real government of the country, and kept up, and still keeps up to this hour, a fierce struggle for the reins of power and the good things of office. The warfare is maintained in the name, and for the people, and professedly for its benefit; but the only people who receive any benefit are themselves. As we have shown, under Charles II. the aristocracy continued to free themselves from all their constitutional burdens, and to fling the sole taxation of the country on the people. Their next step, under William III., was to cajole the crown out of its private estate, and fling it too as a pauper on the people. Thus the aristocracy became the great possessors of the land, or, in other words, of the whole country, while the whole entire expenses were laid on the people. They had got the purse-strings into their hands by usurping the House of Commons, and thus both king and people were in their power. This was the triumph and chef d'œuvre of CUNNING. Both of these parties had a show of freedom, and a share of the constitution. The king could choose his own ministers, but where, and whence? Out of the aristocracy. If the tories did not suit him, he could turn them out, and choose the whigs; if the whigs displeased him, he could dismiss them, and call in the tories. But who were these whigs and tories? The aristocracy! Thus was the crown caught in a political net out of which there was no escape; it was rivetted to an everlasting see-saw between whig and tory, but always the same aristocracy. It was amused with a sort of political Darby and Joan. Push back Darby, and out started Joan into the royal presence; reject Joan, and out again came Darby ! It was the same thing with the people. The people were declared by the Bill of Rights to be the possessors of the House of Commons; of one-third of the constitution. They were to choose their own representatives; they were to grant or refuse money; nothing could apparently be done without them. Such was the theory,—but what was the fact? When they came to put their machinery into operation, they found it had exactly the same result; their house was filled, not by themselves, but with the aristocracy. They had both Darby and Joan, both whigs and tories there, fighting and haranguing most zealously; but about what? About, as this history will show, who should |