Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 328, February, 1843. Various
result of popular and anti-popular principles blended together, rather than of the mere ascendancy of either; whose aim, therefore, is to prevent either from going too far, and to throw their weight into the lighter scale: wise men and most useful, up to the moment when the two parties are engaged in actual civil war, and the question is—which shall conquer? For no man can pretend to limit the success of a party, when the sword is the arbitrator: he who wins in that game does not win by halves: and therefore the only question then is, which party is on the whole the best, or rather perhaps the least evil; for as one must crush the other, it is at least desirable that the party so crushed should be the worse."
Dr Arnold—rightly, we hope—assumes, that in lectures addressed to Englishmen and Protestants, it is unnecessary to vindicate the principles of the Revolution; it would, indeed, be an affront to any class of educated Protestant freemen, to argue that our present constitution was better than a feudal monarchy, or the religion of Tillotson superior to that of Laud—in his own words, "whether the doctrine and discipline of our Protestant Church of England, be not better and truer than that of Rome." He therefore supposes the Revolution complete, the Bill of Rights and the Toleration Act already passed, the authority of King William recognized in England and in Scotland, while in Ireland the party of King James was still predominant. He then bids us consider the character and object of the parties by which Great Britain was then divided; on the side of the Revolution were enlisted the great families of our aristocracy, and the bulk of the middle classes. The faction of James included the great mass of country gentlemen, the lower orders, and, (after the first dread of a Roman Catholic hierarchy had passed away,) except in a very few instances, the parochial and teaching clergy; civil and religious liberty was the motto of one party—hereditary right and passive obedience, of the other. As the Revolution had been bloodless, it might have been supposed that its reward would have been secure, and that our great deliverer would have been allowed to pursue his schemes for the liberty of Europe, if not without opposition, at least without hostility. But the old Royalist party had been surprised and confounded, not broken or altogether overcome. They rallied—some from pure, others from selfish and sordid motives—under the banner to which they had been so long accustomed; and, though ultimately baffled, they were able to place in jeopardy, and in some measure to fling away the advantages which the blood and treasure of England had been prodigally lavished to obtain.
The conquest of Ireland was followed by that terrible code against the Catholics, the last remnant of which is now obliterated from our statute-book. It is singular that this savage proscription should have been the work of the party at whose head stood the champion of toleration. The account which Mr Burke has given of it, and for the accuracy of which he appeals to Bishop Burnet, does not entirely coincide with the view taken by Dr Arnold. Mr Burke says—
"A party in this nation, enemies to the system of the Revolution, were in opposition to the government of King William. They knew that our glorious deliverer was an enemy to all persecution. They knew that he came to free us from slavery and Popery, out of a country where a third of the people are contented Catholics, under a Protestant government. He came, with a part of his army composed of those very Catholics, to overset the power of a Popish prince. Such is the effect of a tolerating spirit, and so much is liberty served in every way, and by all persons, by a manly adherence to its own principles. Whilst freedom is true to itself, every thing becomes subject to it, and its very adversaries are an instrument in its hands.
"The party I speak of (like some amongst us who would disparage the best friends of their country) resolved to make the King either violate his principles of toleration, or incur the odium of protecting Papists. They, therefore, brought in this bill, and made it purposely wicked and absurd, that it might be rejected. The then court-party discovering their game, turned the tables on them, and returned their bill to them stuffed with still greater absurdities, that its loss might lie upon its original authors. They, finding their own ball thrown back to them, kicked it back again to their adversaries. And thus this act, loaded with the double injustice of two parties, neither of whom intended to pass what they hoped the other would be persuaded to reject, went through the legislature, contrary to the real wish of all parts of it, and of all the parties that composed it. In this manner these insolent and profligate factions, as if they were playing with balls and counters, made a sport of the fortunes and the liberties of their fellow-creatures. Other acts of persecution have been acts of malice. This was a subversion of justice from wantonness."
Whether Dr Arnold's theory be applicable or not to this particular case, it furnishes but too just a solution of Irish misgovernment in general. It is, that excessive severity toward conquered rebels, is by no means inconsistent with the principles of free government, or even with the triumph of a democracy. The truth of this fact is extorted from us by all history, and may be accounted for first, by the circumstance, that large bodies of men are less affected than individuals, by the feelings of shame and a sense of responsibility; and, secondly, that conduct the most selfish and oppressive, the mere suspicion of which would be enough to brand an individual with everlasting infamy, assumes, when adopted by popular assemblies, the air of statesmanlike wisdom and patriotic inflexibility. The main cause of the difference with which the lower orders in France and England regarded the Revolution in their respective countries, is to be found in the different nature of the evils which they were intended to remove. The English Revolution was merely political—the French was social also; the benefits of the Bill of Rights, great and inestimable as they were, were such as demanded some knowledge and reflection to appreciate—they did not come home directly to the business and bosom of the peasant; it was only in rare and great emergencies that he could become sensible of the rights they gave, or of the means of oppression they took away: while the time-honoured dwellings of the Cavendishes and Russells were menaced and assailed, nothing but the most senseless tyranny could render the cottage insecure; but the abolition of the seignorial rights in France, free communication between her provinces, equal taxation, impartial justice—these were blessings which it required no economist to illustrate, and no philosopher to explain. Every labourer in France, whose sweat had flowed for the benefit of others, whose goods had been seized by the exactors of the Taille and the Gabelle,1 the fruits of whose soil had been wasted because he was not allowed to sell them at the neighbouring market, whose domestic happiness had been polluted, or whose self-respect had been lowered by injuries and insults, all retribution for which was hopeless, might well be expected to value these advantages more than life itself. But when the principles of the Revolution were triumphant, and the House of Brunswick finally seated on the throne of this country, it remains to be seen what were, during the eighteenth century, the fruits of this great and lasting victory. The answer is a melancholy one. Content with what had been achieved, the nation seems at once to have abandoned all idea of any further moral or intellectual progress. In private life the grossest ignorance and debauchery were written upon our social habits, in the broadest and most legible characters. In public life, we see chicanery in the law, apathy in the Church, corruption in Parliament, brutality on the seat of justice; trade burdened with a great variety of capricious restrictions; the punishment of death multiplied with the most shocking indifference; the state of prisons so dreadful, that imprisonment—which might be, and in those days often was, the lot of the most innocent of mankind—became in itself a tremendous punishment; the press virtually shackled; education every where wanted, and no where to be found.
The laws that were passed resemble the edicts of a jealous, selfish, and even vindictive oligarchy, rather than institutions adopted for the common welfare, by the representatives of a free people. Turn to any of the works which describe the manners of the age, from the works of Richardson or Fielding, to the bitter satire of Churchill and the melancholy remonstrances of Cowper, and you are struck with the delineation of a state and manners, and a tone of feeling which, in the present day, appears scarcely credible. "'Sdeath, madam, do you threaten me with the law?" says Lovelace to the victim of his calculating and sordid violence. Throughout the volumes of these great writers, the features perpetually recur of insolence, corruption, violence, and debauchery in the one class, and of servility and cunning in the other. It is impossible for the worst quality of an aristocracy—nominally, to be sure, subject to the restraint of the law, but practically, almost wholly exempt from its operation—to be more clearly and more fearfully represented. The South Sea scheme,
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