Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 402, April, 1849. Various
of which, against the tyranny of the Stuarts, the subsequent greatness of England is mainly to be ascribed. The trial and execution of Charles I. he describes as an event melancholy, and to be deplored; but unavoidable and necessary, in consequence of the perfidy and deceit of a "man whose whole life had been a series of attacks on the liberties of England." He does full justice to the courage and dignity with which he met his fate, but holds that he was deservedly destroyed, though in a most violent and illegal manner, in consequence of his flatteries and machinations.6 "There never," says he, "was a politician to whom so many frauds and falsehoods were brought home by undeniable evidence." We take a directly opposite view of the question. We consider the resistance of the Long Parliament to Charles as a series of selfish and unprincipled acts of treason against a lawful sovereign; not less fatal to the liberties of the country at the time, than they were calculated in the end to have proved to its independence, and which would long ere this have worked out its ruin, if another event had not, in a way which its author did not intend, worked out a cure for the disease. We consider the civil war as commenced from blind selfishness, "ignorant impatience of taxation," and consummated under the combined influence of hypocritical zeal and guilty ambition. We regard the death of Charles as an atrocious and abominable murder, vindicated by no reasons of expedience, authorised by no principle of justice, which has lowered for ever England to the level of the adjoining nations in the scale of crime; and which, had it not been vindicated by subsequent loyalty and chivalrous feeling, in the better part of the people, would long since have extinguished alike its liberties and its independence. Even Hume has represented the conduct and motives of the leaders of the Long Parliament in too favourable a light – and it is no wonder he did so, for it is only since his time that the selfish Passions have been brought into play on the political theatre – which at once explains the difficulties with which Charles had to struggle, and put in a just light his tragic fate.
Mr Hume represents the Long Parliament, in the commencement of the contest with the king, as influenced by a generous desire to secure and extend the liberties of their country, and as making use of the constitutional privilege of giving or withholding supplies for that important object. If this was really their object, we should at once admit they acted the part of true patriots, and are entitled to the lasting gratitude of their country and the world. But, admitting this was what they professed, that this was their stalking-horse, in what respect did their conduct correspond with such patriotic declarations? Did they use either their legitimate or usurped power for the purpose of extending and confirming the liberties of their country, or even diminishing the weight of the public burdens which pressed most severely on the people? So far from doing so, they multiplied these burdens fiftyfold; they levied them, not by the authority of parliament, but by the terrors of military execution; and while they refused to the entreaties of the king the pittance of a few hundred thousand pounds, to put the coasts in a state of defence, and protect the commerce of his subjects, they levied of their own authority, and without parliamentary sanction, no less than eighty-four millions sterling, between 1640 and 1659, in the form of military contributions – levied for no other purpose but to deluge the kingdom with blood, destroy its industry, and subject its liberties to the ruin of military oppression. True, Charles I. dissolved many parliaments, was often hasty and intemperate in the mode of doing so; for eleven years reigned without a House of Commons, and brought on the collision by his attempt to levy ship-money, for the protection of the coasts, of his own authority. But why did he do so? Why did he endeavour to dispense with the old and venerable name of parliament, and incur the odium, and run the risk, of governing alone in a country where the hereditary revenue was so scanty, and the passion for freedom so strong that, even with all the aids from parliament, he had never enjoyed so large an income as two millions a-year? Simply because he was driven to it by necessity; because he found it was absolutely impossible to get on with parliaments which obstinately refused to discharge their first of duties – that of providing for the public defence – or discharge his duties as chief magistrate of the realm, in conformity either with his coronation oath or the plain necessities and obligations of his office, from the invincible resistance which the House of Commons, on every occasion, made to parting with money.
Their conduct was regulated by a very plain principle – it was perfectly consistent, and such as, under the existing constitution, could not fail very soon to bring government to a dead-lock, and compel the sovereign either at once to abdicate his authority, or barter it away piecemeal against small grants of money, reluctantly, and in the most parsimonious spirit, granted by his subjects. They said, "Govern any way you please, defend the country the best way you can, get out of your difficulties as you think fit, but do not come to us for money. Anything but that. It is your business to defend us, it is not ours to contribute to our defence. Let our coasts be insulted by the French, or pillaged by the Dutch; let our trade be ruined, and even our fishermen chased into their harbours, by the Continental privateers; but don't come to us for money. If we give you anything, it will be as little as we can in decency offer; and, in return for such liberal concessions, you must on every occasion surrender an important part of the prerogative of the crown." The king did this for some years after he came to the throne, always trusting that his concessions would secure at length a liberal supply of money, for the public defence, from the House of Commons. He said, and said with truth, that he had conceded more to his subjects than any monarch that ever sat on the throne of England. The Petition of Rights, granted early in his reign, proved this: it contained nearly all the guarantees since desired or obtained for English freedom. But all was unavailing. The Commons would give no money, or they would give it only in exchange for the most essential prerogatives of the crown, without which public defence was impossible, and anarchy must have usurped its place.
They began the civil war at length, and handed the nation over to the horrors of domestic slaughter and military despotism, because the king would not consent to part with the command of the armed force – a requisition so monstrous that it plainly amounted to an abrogation of the royal authority, and has never, since the Restoration, been seriously contended for by Radicals, Repealers, or Chartists, even in the worst periods of the Irish Rebellion or French Revolution. It is not surprising that subsequent times for long mistook the real nature of the king's situation, and threw on him blame for events of which, in reality, he was blameless. Mankind were not then so well acquainted as they have since become, with the strength of an ignorant impatience of taxation. Since then, they have seen it divide the greatest empires, ruin the most celebrated commonwealths, disgrace the most famed republics, paralyse the most powerful states. It has broken down the central authority, and divided into separate kingdoms the once puissant German empire; it has ruined and brought partition on the gallant Polish democracy; it induced on France the horrors of the Revolution, and permanently destroyed its liberties by causing the Notables to refuse Calonne's proposition for equal taxation; it has disgraced the rise of American freedom, by the selfishness of repudiation and the cupidity of conquest. These were the evils, and this the disgrace, which Charles I. strove to avert in his contest with the Long Parliament; these the evils, and this the disgrace, which their leaders strove to impose on this country. We have only to look at the Free-trade Hall at Manchester, at this time re-echoing with applause at proposals to disband our army and sell our ships, in order to be able to sell cotton goods a halfpenny per pound cheaper than at present, to see what was the spirit with which Charles I. had to contend during the Great Rebellion.
Historians have often expressed their surprise at the vigour of the rule of Cromwell, and the energetic manner in which he caused the national flag to be respected by foreign states. But, without detracting from the well-earned fame of the Protector in this respect, it may safely be affirmed, that the main cause of his success in foreign transactions was, that he had got the means of making the English pay taxes. He levied them with the sabre and the bayonet. Between contributions, sequestrations, and impositions, his commissioners contrived to wrench enormous sums, for those days, out of the country. He raised the revenue from £2,000,000 a-year to nearly £6,000,000. He got quit of the disagreeable burden of parliamentary grants. He found his troops much more effectual tax-gatherers. He did what, by gentler means, and in a less oppressive way, Charles had tried to do. He levied sums from the nation adequate for the public defence, and which enabled it to take the place to which it was entitled in the scale of nations. Had the original leaders of the Long Parliament not been superseded by his iron hand, they would have left England as much exposed to
Vol. i. p. 127, 128.