The third great Progressist of those times, whose name will occur to us, is Milton. He, too, looks onward. He sees glorious things which are yet to be, and indulges in prophecy. He is confident that the future will excel the past, and that those who cannot get on without a precedent, and murmur that "it was never yet seen in such a fashion," will some day learn that Providence is inventive and does not choose always to repeat itself. Now of these three great Progressists none, to be sure, was ever in his lifetime called either Whig or Tory, for those names were first heard in English politics a year or two after the youngest of the three, Milton, had left the scene. But all of them were engaged in party conflicts which it is usual to regard as substantially the same as the conflict of Whigs and Tories. For in the fashionable view, the Roundheads and the followers of Eliot were virtually Whigs, the Cavaliers and followers of Strafford virtually Tories. This view regards without distinction the statesmen who represent the Court as the Tories, and those who in Parliament oppose the Court as the Whigs of their time. Observe, then, that two out of our three Progressists, Bacon and Strafford, would appear to have been not Whigs, but High Tories. Even the third, Milton, could not in the loosest classification be set down as a Whig. But even if he could, as no doubt the Whigs stood nearer to him than the Tories, still it would result that the doctrine of progress was in those days in no way peculiar to either of the two parties, that it was exceptional on both sides, but not at all more exceptional on one side than the other. And as the Whigs of those times were not Progressists in theory, neither were they so in practice. This has been often admitted by those historians who have believed themselves to belong to their party. Certainly the two reigns of uninterrupted Whig government, those of George I. and George II., do not stand out in our history as a period of vigorous legislative reform. It was a prosperous period, because all great questions had been settled at the beginning of it, but politically it was a languid, inert period. When Walpole was humbly asked by the Dissenters when they might look forward to the removal of their disabilities, he replied, "Never!" and when the same minister appeared as a financial reformer, his scheme of an excise was opposed not less vehemently by the Whigs than the Tories. And for this the Whigs are not to be censured any more than the Tories as if they had forgotten their principles in the security of office. They had forgotten no principles; so long as the Hanover settlement was safe, their consciences were at ease. To suppose that their name pledged them to a policy of continuous moderate reform is to associate with the name Whig notions which only became connected with it a century later. Now this is a fundamental point. If the modern Whigs are Reformers, and the ancient Whigs were not, we may surely say that the two parties are fundamentally different, and any resemblances that can be shown between them must be of minor importance. Such resemblances no doubt can be pointed out ; they are inevitable from the way in which our parties are propagated from generation to generation. For there is no solution of continuity, but a gradual process of modification conducted with regard to conventional decorum. They continue to be led by the same families, and they do their best to make the same watchwords serve them. But in spite of all such efforts these outward resemblances do not amount to much. Superficially, it is evident that parties are very unlike what they were. Our ancestors did not discuss Reform Bills; we do not quarrel over the dispensing power or the standing army. A substantial identity is all that can be-nay, all that usually is-claimed for them. The assumption commonly made is that there are such things as a Tory spirit and a Whig spirit, and that these are opposed to each other in the same way in every age. Now this is precisely what we find not to be the case. For that difference of spirit which we observe in the parties of the present day, namely, that the one looks forward and the other backward, that the one has faith in the future while the other seems afraid of it-this difference is not to be traced in the ancient parties, which seem both alike to cling to the past, and not to be familiar with the idea of progress. As to the actual question which was agitated between those old parties, it was evidently wholly different from that which is in issue between the parties of the present time--so different, that it is only by an unconscious mystification that any analogy can be established between them. I should myself go further, and say that the issue has been entirely changed several times in the course of our party history. I should distinguish between the controversy of our own time and that of the reign of George III. before the French Revolution; again between the controversy of George III.'s time and that of the original Whigs and Tories from the Exclusion Bill to the accession of the House of Hanover; and again I should consider the controversy between Charles's parliaments and the party of Strafford and Laud to be radically different from that between the original Whigs and Tories. But to attempt to establish all this here would lead me too far. I will content myself with setting in opposition the present controversy, dating from the Reform Bill, and that of the original Whigs and Tories of the Revolution, which of all past party controversies we know best because we have read of it in Macaulay. Now those who have lived all their lives in the midst of this controversy may no doubt easily fancy that it is a standing controversy wherever there have been political parties, and that our ancestors discussed it as pertinaciously and as perpetually as we do. That this was so seems proved by the fact that we talk of Whigs and Tories then and that we talk of Whigs and Tories now. And if you come to the study of the Stuart period with this preconception strong on your mind you may continue for a long time under the dominion of it. You find the ancient Tories at times speaking of the divine right of kings, and this reminds you of that sort of divine right of existing institutions which Conservatives seem sometimes to assert. On the other hand, the old Whigs discuss royal power in a rationalistic tone which resembles that of the modern Reformer when he argues for the removal of an old institution on the ground that it has ceased to be useful. But as you grow familiar with that old debate, and with the way of thinking of those who conducted it, you begin to think it a solecism in history, a confusion of two different phases of political consciousness, to identify it with the modern debate between ConOur generation then has lived in the servatives and Reformers. There was midst of a controversy which has turned no question then of revising the instituentirely on the question of reform. Α tions of the country, of putting each on great war occupying us for twenty years, its trial before the tribunal of reason. at the very time when a great industrial Both parties alike would have rejected revolution was going on at home, had such a thought with something like horcrated a cry for reform which may be ror, for to both parties ancient institucompared with that which preceded in tions were almost equally sacred. DiFrance the Revolution of 1789. The vine right might theoretically be mainburden of debt and taxation and the tained by Tory theorists and denied by throes of social transformation calling their Whig opponents. But as in its out on the one side for legislative strict form many Tories rejected it, so in change; on the other side the example a wider sense many-perhaps mostof the French Revolution making all Whigs practically accepted it. The Tory such change seem dangerous in the ex- Bolingbroke ridicules it, and when at treme-here was a violent opposition of this day we denounce it, we commonly feeling which led to a long party contro- use the words of the Tory Pope, and versy. "Is it safe to change ancient in- speak of "the right divine of kings to stitutions?" this has been the question. govern wrong," of "the enormous faith Perfectly safe!" some have answered; of many made for one." On the other Iwe need not think twice about it !" hand one may remark in Edmund Burke Safe if you do it cautiously and grad- that even in the days when he was the ually," say others. "Not safe, but yet great light and philosopher of Whiggism, in some cases inevitable," says a third he accepts the doctrine of divine right as party. "Wholly unsafe, and not to be it has been held by modern Conservathought of," says a fourth. Such is the tives. One may say that he believes in debate we are all familiar with. the divine right of the constitution, though not of the king. He denies the right of human reason to discuss fundamental political institutions. He thinks them divine in the same sense that the family is divine. And therefore without consciously abandoning old Whiggism he founded modern Conservatism. "I know," he said, "that there is an order which is made for me, and I am made for it. I might as well desire another wife and other children." I fancy too that when we read our modern notions into that old controversy we efface other highly characteristic notions which really influenced the men of that time. That theory of divine right which seems to us so superstitious, expressed, I take it, for many Tories a perfectly practical and rational conviction. I confess I do not find the Tories of William and Anne's time to have been the friends or tools of arbitrary power that Macaulay describes them. He seems to me to suppress the positive side of their creed, which, nevertheless, was highly important. It was, I take it, in one word, opposition to military imperialism. I have already dwelt upon the constant zeal with which they opposed a spirited foreign policy as being likely to lead to a large standing army. Now this is precisely of a piece with all the rest of their action, and it is not difficult to penetrate to the fundamental thought which actuates them. The Whigs are rightly considered as the successors of the party that opposed Charles I. Now, in like manner, the Tories oppose the system of Cromwell. Both parties alike are the opponents of arbitrary power, but to the Tories it presents itself under the image of the Lord Protector. They are afraid of a military Emperor-for Cromwell was an Emperor. While the other party fears to see another Charles I., supported by his bishops and his judges, they are haunted by the dread of a new Oliver, propped firmly upon a standing army and religious toleration. It is to meet this danger that the whole Tory creed is framed. They see the new Oliver rising first in William III., then in Marlborough. They see him fomenting wars on the Continent in order to maintain his army, and leaning on the Dissenters at home in order to revive the old Cromwellian connection. Their policy therefore is one of peace and intolerance-in one word, anti-Cromwellianism. This is why the Tories applauded Addison's "Cato" as much as the Whigs, and this is the point of the Tory Bolingbroke's celebrated bon mot, when in the name of the Tory party he presented the actor with fifty guineas for having so well defended the cause of liberty against a perpetual dictator. This, too, is the practical meaning of the theory of divine right. It means that you must cling to legitimism at all costs, because English experience has shown that there is no alternative but the rule of force, that is, the military dictator. My space is exhausted before I have been able to do more than barely state my case. But I shall be content if I have made it conceivable how the serious study of history may modify those party preconceptions in which most of us have been bred-if I have only made out a prima facie case for the opinion, which I cannot pretend here to establish, that the politics of this age are divided by a much greater gulf than is imagined from those of the old régime of Europe. Our modern politics took their rise in the French Revolution. It is easy, no doubt, to trace analogies between modern political controversies and the controversies of that old régime. But when we infer from such analogies that the change has only been apparent, and that the party war is substantially the same that it always was, then, I say, we are radically mistaken. No, the resemblances are superficial, the differences are susbtantial. And still more is this remark applicable to older and remoter party controversies. It is an unhistorical confusion, a false and shallow theory of history, concealing the true course of development, which imagines mankind as eternally debating the same question. And if this is so, you will see the consequence which follows from it. You will see that this truth throws open history to schools and universities, takes the interdict off it, and restores to it the place in education and culture to which it has a right. From the higher schools of education-where assuredly the hindrance is already little felt, for there the serious student soon sees these redoubtable party disputes fade away and almost lose their meaning a new tolerance, the result of wider views, may spread slowly downwards into popular education, until at last it may become possible for Eng lish people to draw some useful instruction from the history of their country.Macmillan's Magazine. (To be continued.) EARLY ENGLISH BALLADS. "LET me write the ballads of a people, and I care not who makes their laws,' said Sir Philip Sydney. In all ages the songs of the people have exercised a strong influence in their history. Popular ballads are of very ancient date. The earliest are nearly always of an historical character. The singing women" of the East chanted lays of victory or lamentations over defeat, and these ballads were remembered and handed down by their listeners. In classic days the ballad-makers flourished. What was Homer but one of them? The early history of the northern nations has come down to us only in the form of sagas and eddas, the rude rhymes sung by the hero as he prepared for the battle, praying rather to be slain on the field than reserved for a "cow's death" at home; the trumpet shout of the victors returning from the conflict; the strange wild mythology which formed the creed of the ancient nations of the north. Germany too has her Nibelungenlied, a perfect picture of early media val existence, and later on her Minnesänger, and her framers of Volkslied; France, her songs of the troubadours. To attempt to give even a sketch of the early ballad literature of Europe would be an impossible task within the limits of a single article. We will confine ourselves to a cursory glance at our own national ballad lore; and if this sketch induces any of our readers to examine our ancient stores of poetry more closely than they have done before, they will find much to repay their labor. It is difficult to assign a precise date to any of our old ballads. Living from age to age on the lips of the people, the date of their authorship and the name of the writer has rarely been preserved to us. We can only judge from internal evidence. Those relating to Robin Hood probably date about the twelfth century, and are among the earliest of our ballad literature. For we do not include po ems like that of Cadmon or the rhyming chronicles of the monks among our ballad literature. By this we mean the actual songs of the people; the rhymes chanted by the blacksmith at his forge, the hind at his labor-ballads that must have been "sung at festivals, At ember-eves and holy ales, And lords and ladies of their lives A worse "restorative" might be found than some of these fine old ballads. Reading them is like passing into a breezy out-door atmosphere. The rhymes may sometimes flow inharmoniously, the style may be faulty, but the verses live. They bring before us real men and women, tell us of real incidents of joy and sorrow. Their writers were utterly ignorant of the art of "book-making," they waste no words in analyzing fine-drawn sentiments-simply and graphically do they tell their tale, with a brevity and clearness too rarely met with in modern writers. Also they breathe a manly, healthy spirit. Let the follower of Werther or Byron, with his list of sentimental miseries and his weariness of existence, turn to one of these ancient ballads. What a cheery ring is in their lines, what a contrast to the dismal philosophy that pronounces that there is nothing good under the sun!" Sometimes, indeed, the ballad-writer relates a tragedy of sin and shame, as in "Glasgorian" and "Little Musgrave," but though he can be terrible he is never misanthropical. He can bewail real sorrow, but is not disposed to shed tears at imaginary ones. In fact the commonsense consolation offered in "The Friar of Orders Gray" is a fair specimen of the practical view the ballad-writer usually takes of life. "Weep no more, lady, weep no more, This advice, if not perfect rhyme, at least is reason. 44 A high moral tone breathes through these old songs. Even the ballads of the outlaws in merry Sherwood" prove that there may be "honor among thieves." We may not exactly agree with Robin Hood's views of honesty, but there are surely many "extenuating circumstances" to be urged in his favor. Like Hereward and the remnant of his Saxons, many a brave and noble spirit "took to the greenwood" in those evil days as the only refuge from temporal and spiritual misrule and tyranny. It was not against law and order but against oppression and misgovernment, not against the Church but against her unworthy ministers, that Robin Hood and Clym of the Clough and their brethren waged war. All the ballads tell of a strong love of justice and "fair play, of a law-abiding spirit among themselves, of a true chivalrous consideration for the weak-all rare qualities in that turbulent and cruel age. If Robin Hood and his merry men occasionally took the law too much into their own hands, and had a greater desire to redress the inequalities. of fortune than to respect the rights of property, large allowance is to be made for them. Had they indeed respected the rights of their neighbors at all, they would have been marvellously in advance of their age. In the twelfth century the old law of "lex talionis" was in full force. King, baron, and bishop observed "The simple plan That they should take-who have the power, And they should keep—who can." Robin Hood at least did good with the "black-mail" he levied, which is more than many of his contemporaries could assert. It is noticeable how little the element of tragedy enters into these early English ballads, while the Scotch ones of the same date are so full of terrible histories. In the blithe ballads of Sherwood we find no parallel to Edom o' Gordon" and "Gill Morice." The ballads relating to Robin Hood are far too numerous to be quoted here. They ånd "Chevy Chase" survived as popular favorites till about this century, when nigger songs and comic "break-downs" appear to be taking their place. Whether "Ten Little Niggers' and the "Two Obadiahs" quite equal them, either in wit or wisdom, is of course a matter of individual taste. In the ballads relating to him we trace Robin Hood's life and adventures: how he was an unerring shot with bow and arrow, and withal "As courteous an outlawe As ever walked the ground." Whether he were in truth born Earl of Huntingdon, or merely a "bold yeo- "And if he will be one of us, Of gold and good whate'er we get 46 We must refer our readers to the ballads themselves to learn how Robin held his Court under the oaks and beeches of the forest, how he relieved poor widows and destitute knights, how he levied contributions on fat priests" and dissolute monks, how he braved the sheriff and his men, how he rescued his followers more than once from the foot of the gallows, and how the king himself ventured into the forest in disguise of a "stalwarte friar, and after an amicable contest in archery with the outlaws, in which the monarch shot well, but was foiled by their superior skill, induced Robin to accompany him to Nottingham and accept the royal amnesty for all past offences. But the bold outlaw's spirit could not long brook the constraint of Court life, and we soon find him back again" under the greenwood tree," with his merry men at his side. As they are |