I.

and Mary,

and lately endangered; and their prayer is only, "That it CHAP. may be declared and enacted, that all and singular the rights and liberties asserted and declared, are the true, ancient, and indubitable rights and liberties of the people of this kingdom."1 "By adhering in this manner," says 11 William Burke, "to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the c.i. superstition of antiquarians, but the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of policy the image of a relation in blood, binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties, adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections; keeping inseparable, and 89, 141, 223 cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars."2

2 Planta's Switzer

land, ii. 137.

Hume, ii.

Burke, vi.

76, 80.

36.

extends to

These principles have not been abandoned by the descendants of England in their Transatlantic possessions. And which When the Americans threw off the yoke of Britain, they America. retained its laws, its religion, its institutions, with the exception of the monarchical and aristocratic part; no massacres or proscriptions, no confiscations or exiles, disgraced the rise of their liberty; no oblivion of the past was made the foundation of their hopes for the future. The English church is still the prevailing religion of the land, at least in the higher classes; the English decisions yet regulate their courts of justice; and English institutions form the basis on which their national prosperity has been reared. Amidst the exasperations of a civil war, they have deviated less than others engaged in revolution from the usages of civilised life. Alone of all foreigners, an Englishman still feels at home when he crosses the Atlantic; and the first efforts of American eloquence have been exerted in painting the feelings of an ingenuous inhabitant of that country, when he first visited the land of 3 Washinghis fathers. It is the distinctive mark of the growth, not ton Irving's of the free, but the democratic spirit, that the majority of Book, i. 19. the inhabitants of the United States, in later times, have

VOL. I.

F

Sketch

I.

37.

racter of the

Ireland.

CHAP. departed from this reverence for antiquity, and imbibed, with jealousy of England, and partiality for French alliance, a progressive disregard of the institutions and good faith to which their former greatness has been owing. When this spirit becomes universal, it is not going too far to affirm that the last hour of American freedom is at hand. As the best proof that the Revolution of England owed Savage cha- its distinctive character to the circumstances which precivil wars in ceded it, and to the large share enjoyed by previous generations in the government of the country, it is sufficient to refer to what took place at the same period in the sister kingdoms. Ireland, conquered by Henry II., was retained for four centuries in a state of feudal subjection to Britain; none of the privileges of English subjects had been communicated to her inhabitants-they had neither tasted of the severity of Saxon conquest, nor the blessings of Saxon freedom. Feudal aristocracy, in its worst form, accompanied by national exasperation, and an absent nobility, there prevailed; and what was the consequence ? Instead of the moderate reforms, the humane conquests, and the security to property, which distinguished the English Rebellion, there appeared the most terrible horrors of popular licentiousness, and the last severities of military execution—general massacres, the burning of families, torrents of blood shed both in the field and on the scaffold, the storming of cities, and the desolation of provinces. English revenge, though grievously provoked, was still more terrible. Cromwell seriously endeavoured to extirpate the native Irish Catholics, though they were eight times as numerous as the Protestants: forty thousand men were sent as soldiers to foreign states, and their wives and children hurried off to the plantations; the most severe and arbitrary laws were enforced against those who remained in the country; the estates of all who had borne arms against the parliament were forfeited, and one-third of their possessions cut off from all those proprietors who had not served in the popular ranks. A large portion of

CHAP.

I.

the people were removed from one part of the country to another, and any transplanted Irishman, found out of his district, might be put to death by the first person who met him. Such was the effect of these measures, that nearly one-half of the whole land in the country, amounting to above seven millions of acres, was forfeited, and bestowed. on the revolutionary soldiers: even after the restoration 74. Hume, of Charles, two-thirds of these immense possessions were Laing's left in the hands of the recent acquirers; and though the iii. 218, 219. remainder was nominally restored to the Catholics, none of it returned to the dispossessed proprietors.1

i. 379.

Scotland,

land.

38.

In Scotland, also, at the same period, the struggle for freedom was marked by all the horrors of popular licen- And Scottiousness. In that state, neither the Saxon institutions, nor the principles of freedom, had in early times obtained any solid footing; and, in consequence, the nobles and peasantry, without either the intervention of a middle rank or the moderating influence of previous privileges, were brought into fierce collision at the Reformation. As might have been expected, the proceedings of the Revolutionists were from the very first characterised by the utmost violence and injustice. The whole property of the church, amounting to about a third of the kingdom, was confiscated, and bestowed on the barons of the popular party; blood flowed profusely on the scaffold; quarter was almost invariably refused in the field; and the proceedings of the adverse parties resembled rather the sanguinary vengeance of savages, than the conduct of men contending for important civil privileges. The mild and humane conduct of the Civil War Revolu in England, forms the most striking contrast to the cruelty ii. p. 137. of the Royalists or the severity of the Covenanters in 329,530, Scotland. The horrors of the La Vendée insurrection 355, 448. Napier's were anticipated in the massacres of Montrose's followers; Life of and the Noyades of the Loire are not without a parallel 268. in the atrocious revenge of the popular faction.2*

* The whole Irish prisoners belonging to Montrose's army, taken in various

2 Chambers'

tions, 1642,

Montrose,

СНАР.

I.

39.

Cruelty of the civil wars of York

and Lan

caster.

Nor was it any peculiarity in the national character which stamped its singular and honourable features on the English Rebellion. The civil wars of York and Lancaster, not a century and a half before, had been distinguished by a degree of ferocious cruelty, to which a parallel is hardly to be found even in the terrific annals of the French Revolution. Prisoners of every rank were uniformly massacred in cold blood, after the action was over; a leader of one of the factions did not scruple to murder, with his own hands, the youthful prince whom fortune had placed in his power; and the savage orders to give no quarter, which the French revolutionary Hist. ii. 58. government issued to their armies, but the humanity of the commanders refused to execute, were deliberately acted upon, for a course of years, by bodies of Englishmen against each other.1

1 Lac. Pr.

Hume, iii. 203, 210. Laing, iii.

355.

It

The humane and temperate spirit of the English Rebellion must, therefore, be ascribed to the circumstances under which the contest began in that country-the rights previously acquired, the privileges long exercised, the attachments descending from a remote age, the moderation flowing from the possession of freedom. It was disgraced by no violent innovations, because it arose among a people attached by long habit to old institutions. was followed by no proscriptions, because it was headed by the greater part of the intelligence of the state, and not abandoned to the undirected passions of the populace; it was distinguished by singular moderation in the use of power, because it was conducted by men to whom its exercise had long been habitual; it was attended by little confiscation of property, because among its ranks was to be found a large portion of the wealth of the kingdom.

parts of Scotland, were put to death in cold blood after the battle of Philiphaugh by the victorious Covenanters; and the children of those taken in West Lothian were dropped from the bridge of Linlithgow into the river Avon; while bands of the ferocious Republicans stood by the side of the stream further down, with halberds in their hands, to massacre such of the drowning innocents as might be thrown ashore.-NAPIER's Life of Montrose, 268; and CHAMBERS's Revolutions, 1648, ii. 137.

CHAP.

I.

Lac. Hist.

The remarkable moderation of public opinion, which has ever since distinguished this country from the neighbouring states, and attracted equal attention among foreigners1 and ourselves,2 has arisen from the continued operation of vii. 39. the same circumstances.

de France,

2 Robert

son's Scot

182. Burke,

The importance of these circumstances will best be land, iii. appreciated, and their application to the French Revolu- vi. 80. tion understood, by reviewing the past history of that country.

41.

State of the decline of

Gauls in the

the Roman

Like the other provinces of the Roman empire, Gaul, upon the irruption of the barbarous nations, was sunk to the lowest stage of effeminacy and degradation. So early as the time of Tacitus, the decay in the military courage empire. of the people had become conspicuous; and before the fall of the empire, it was found to be impossible to recruit the legions among its enervated inhabitants. Slavery, like a cancer, had consumed the vitals of the state; patrician wealth had absorbed or extinguished plebeian industry; the race of independent freemen had disappeared, and in their room had sprung up a swarm of ignoble dependents upon absent proprietors. These miserable inhabitants were oppressed to the greatest degree by the Roman governors; they were rigidly excluded from every office of trust, civil or military. The whole freemen in the province only amounted to five hundred thousand men; and the capitation-tax, in the time of Constantine, is said to have reached the enormous sum of nine pounds sterling for each free citizen. Under this iron despotism, population in the provinces rapidly Agric. c. ii. declined; the slaves went willingly off with every invader, 83; iii. 65, and swelled the ranks of the northern conquerors; and 66 x 143. while the numbers of the people steadily increased among Saxons, i. the free inhabitants of the German forests, the human race 188. Sism. i. 69, 74, 77, was fast disappearing in the opulent provinces of the Roman empire. National character, as might easily have been anticipated, ere long declined under the combined

3 Tac. Vit.

Gib. i. 82,

Turner's

Anglo

84, 89, 108.

Luitprand,

ii. 481.