Appendix, which prevailed during that age, were so favourable to monarchy, that they bestowed on it an authority almost absolute and unlimited, sacred and indefeasible. The meetings of Parliament were so precarious; their sessions so short, compared to the vacations; that, when men's eyes were turned upwards in search of sovereign power, the prince alone was apt to strike them as the only permanent magistrate, invested with the whole majesty and authority of the state. The great complaisance too of Parliaments, during so long a period, had extremely degraded and obscured those assemblies; and as all instances of opposition to prerogative must have been drawn from a remote age, they were unknown to a great many, and had the less authority even with those who were acquainted with them. These examples, besides, of liberty, had commonly in ancient times been accompanied with such circumstances of violence, convulsion, civil war, and disorder, that they presented but a disagreeable idea to the inquisitive part of the people, and afforded small inducement to renew such dismal scenes. By a great many, therefore, monarchy, simple and unmixed, was conceived to be the government of England; and those popular assemblies were supposed to form only the ornament of the fabric, without being in any degree essential to its being and existence. The prerogative of the crown was represented by lawyers as something real and durable; like those eternal essences of the schools which no time or force could alter. The sanction of religion was by divines called in aid; and the Monarch of Heaven was supposed to be interested in supporting the authority of his earthly vicegerent. And though it is pretended that these doctrines were more openly inculcated and more strenuously insisted on during the reign of the Stuarts, they were not then invented: and were only found by the court to be more necessary at that period, by reason of the opposite doctrines which began to be promulgated by the puritanical party'. In consequence of these exalted ideas of kingly authority, the prerogative, besides the articles of jurisdiction founded on precedent, was by many supposed to possess e See note [RR], at the end of the volume. an inexhaustible fund of latent powers which might be Appendix. exerted on any emergence. In every government, necessity, when real, supersedes all laws, and levels all limitations but in the English government, convenience alone was conceived to authorize any extraordinary act of regal power, and to render it obligatory on the people. Hence the strict obedience required to proclamations, during all periods of the English history; and if James has incurred blame on account of his edicts, it is only because he too frequently issued them at a time when they began to be less regarded, not because he first assumed or extended to an unusual degree that exercise of authority. Of his maxims in a parallel case, the following is a pretty remarkable instance. Queen Elizabeth had appointed commissioners for the inspection of prisons, and had bestowed on them full discretionary powers to adjust all differences between prisoners and their creditors, to compound debts, and to give liberty to such debtors as they found honest and insolvent. From the uncertain and undefined nature of the English constitution, doubts sprang up in many, that this commission was contrary to law; and it was represented in that light to James. He forbore therefore renewing the commission till the fifteenth of his reign; when complaints rose so high with regard to the abuses practised in prisons, that he thought himself obliged to overcome his scruples, and to appoint new commissioners invested with the same discretionary powers which Elizabeth had formerly conferred. Upon the whole, we must conceive that monarchy, on the accession of the house of Stuart, was possessed of a very extensive authority: an authority, in the judgment of all, not exactly limited; in the judgment of some, not limitable. But, at the same time, this authority was founded merely on the opinion of the people, influenced by ancient precedent and example. It was not supported either by money or by force of arms. And, for this reason, we need not wonder that the princes of that line were so extremely jealous of their prerogative; being sensible that when those claims were ravished from them, they possessed no influence by which they could maintain 8 Rymer, tom. xviii. p. 117. 594. Appendix. their dignity, or support the laws. By the changes which have since been introduced, the liberty and independence of individuals have been rendered much more full, entire, and secure; those of the public more uncertain and precarious. And it seems a necessary, though perhaps a melancholy truth, that in every government, the magistrate must either possess a large revenue and a military force, or enjoy some discretionary powers, in order to execute the laws and support his own authority. Ecclesias tical government. We have had occasion to remark, in so many instances, the bigotry which prevailed in that age, that we can look for no toleration among the different sects. Two Arians, under the title of heretics, were punished by fire during this period; and no one reign since the reformation had been free from like barbarities. Stowe says, that these Arians were offered their pardon at the stake, if they would merit it by a recantation. A madman who called himself the Holy Ghost was, without any indulgence for his frenzy, condemned to the same punishment. Twenty pounds a month could by law be levied on every one who frequented not the established worship. This rigorous law, however, had one indulgent clause, that the fines exacted should not exceed two-thirds of the yearly income of the person. It had been usual for Elizabeth to allow those penalties to run on for several years, and to levy them all at once, to the utter ruin of such Catholics as had incurred her displeasure. James was more humane in this, as in every other respect. The puritans formed a sect which secretly lurked in the church, but pretended not to any separate worship or discipline. An attempt of that kind would have been universally regarded as the most unpardonable enormity. And had the king been disposed to grant the puritans a full toleration for a separate exercise of their religion, it is certain, from the spirit of the times, that this sect itself would have despised and hated him for it, and would have reproached him with lukewarmness and indifference in the cause of religion. They maintained, that they themselves were the only pure church; that their principles and practices ought to be established by law; and that no others ought to be tolerated. It may be questioned, therefore, whether the administration at this time could with propriety deserve the appellation of persecutors Appendix. with regard to the puritans. Such of the clergy, indeed, as refused to comply with the legal ceremonies, were deprived of their livings, and sometimes, in Elizabeth's reign, were otherwise punished: and ought any man to accept of an office or benefice in an establishment, while he declines compliance with the fixed and known rules of that establishment? But puritans were never punished for frequenting separate congregations; because there were none such in the kingdom; and no Protestant ever assumed or pretended to the right of erecting them. The greatest well-wishers of the puritanical sect would have condemned a practice, which in that age was universally, by statesmen and ecclesiastics, philosophers and zealots, regarded as subversive of civil society. Even so great a reasoner as Lord Bacon thought that uniformity in religion was absolutely necessary to the support of government, and that no toleration could with safety be given to sectaries". Nothing but the imputation of idolatry, which was thrown on the Catholic religion, could justify, in the eyes of the puritans themselves, the schism made by the Hugonots and other Protestants who lived in popish countries. In all former ages, not wholly excepting even those of Greece and Rome, religious sects and heresies and schisms had been esteemed dangerous, if not pernicious, to civil government, and were regarded as the source of faction, and private combination, and opposition to the laws. The magistrate, therefore, applied himself directly to the cure of this evil as of every other; and very naturally attempted by penal statutes to suppress those separate communities, and punish the obstinate innovators. But it was found by fatal experience, and after spilling an ocean of blood in those theological quarrels, that the evil was of a peculiar nature, and was both inflamed by violent remedies, and diffused itself more rapidly throughout the whole society. Hence, though late, arose the paradoxical principle and salutary practice of toleration. The liberty of the press was incompatible with such maxims and such principles of government as then pre h See his essay De unitate ecclesiæ. i See Cicero de Legibus. Appendix. vailed, and was therefore quite unknown in that age. Besides employing the two terrible courts of star-chamber and high commission, whose powers were unlimited, Queen Elizabeth exerted her authority by restraints upon the press. She passed a decree in her court of starchamber, that is, by her own will and pleasure, forbidding any book to be printed in any place, but in London, Oxford, and Cambridge: and another, in which she prohibited, under severe penalties, the publishing of any book or pamphlet against the form or meaning of any restraint or ordinance, contained or to be contained, in any statute or laws of this realm, or in any injunction made or set forth by her majesty or her privy council, or against the true sense or meaning of any letters patent, commissions, or prohibitions under the great seal of England'. James extended the same penalties to the importing of such books from abroad". And to render these edicts more effectual, he afterwards inhibited the printing of any book without a licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, the Bishop of London, or the vice-chancellor of one of the universities, or of some person appointed by them". In tracing the coherence among the systems of modern theology, we may observe, that the doctrine of absolute decrees has ever been intimately connected with the enthusiastic spirit; as that doctrine affords the highest subject of joy, triumph, and security to the supposed elect, and exalts them by infinite degrees above the rest of mankind. All the first reformers adopted these principles; and the Jansenists too, a fanatical sect in France, not to mention the Mahometans in Asia, have ever embraced them. As the Lutheran establishments were subjected to episcopal jurisdiction, their enthusiastic genius gradually decayed, and men had leisure to perceive the absurdity of supposing God to punish by infinite torments what he himself from all eternity had unchangeably decreed. The king, though at this time his Calvinistic education had riveted him in the doctrine of absolute decrees, yet, being a zealous partisan of episcopacy, was insensibly engaged, towards the end of his reign, to k 28th of Elizabeth. See State Trials. Sir Robert Knightly, vol. vii. edit. 1st. |