Algernon Sidney.

Not the least conspicuous among the stern but patriotic spirits that graced the age of Cromwell, stands the name of Algernon Sidney. Living in a land blessed with choicer gifts than heaven ever vouchsafed to man before, this name, associated as it is with all that renders life tolerable to the free, and grateful to all, ought to possess for us a peculiar and hallowed charm. Long has his memory been enshrined with unwonted homage in all true English hearts, as the most eminent of those, by the influence of whose lofty sentiments and glorious martyrdom, their present freedom has been achieved, and will be perpetuated. The Romans had a custom of transferring from other lands those divinities, whose power they believed would conduce to their own security. Let us imitate their example, and transfer from English shores a strong, but not idolatrous reverence for one, whose very name is the watchword of republicanism. Yet, notwithstanding the honor in which even bigoted tories held him, very little is known respecting his history. All the accounts that have come down to us are meagre and unsatisfying; and it is only by the most rigorous research that we can gather materials enough to make out a brief and scarcely continuous biography. Such as they are, however, we place them briefly before our readers, confident that, though the scanty and unconnected sketch may prove uninteresting, it cannot prove unprofitable. We shall see a great and generous spirit, entertaining a bitter and uncompromising hatred of tyranny, which ripened with its growth into an hostility that never knew cessation. We shall see, that when the victory seemed won, this spirit never yielded to an inconsiderate exultation, and when its fairest hopes were dashed by the strong usurpation of a comrade, it never sunk into inactive despair. We shall see him an exile from his native land, and a wanderer, still animated by hope, and upon his return still struggling against oppression with all the energetic hate of former years. We shall see him before a corrupt and venal bar, fighting gallantly for life, and flinging back with haughty scorn the defamation of his foes.

"Last scene of all,

That ends this strange, eventful history,"

is the scaffold, where, with a voice that faltered not an instant, and a pulse that beat with steady composure, he crowns a life of toil and sacrifice with a death not less glorious than undeserving.

The childhood and youth of such a man would naturally interest us. We are curious to learn, what early influences were brought to bear upon him; and what hand first planted that germ of freedom, which sprang up into life so soon, and flourished afterward with such rank, though not unhealthy vigor. But this satisfaction is denied us. Even the year of his birth is unknown, though it is estimated at about 1622. The utmost we can learn of him at this period is, that he enjoyed the

advantages of noble parentage, and a superior education. At the age of ten, he accompanied his father on an embassy to the court of Denmark, where he distinguished himself by the keenness of his wit, and the sweetness of his disposition. For several years afterward he confined himself to his studies. What those studies were, and what was their influence, we are uninformed, though we conjecture that Epaminondas, Cato, and Brutus received their full share of attention. At the age of nineteen we find him at the head of a troop of horse in Ireland, under his father, who was lord-lieutenant of that country. Here he so distinguished himself by his gallantry, and displayed such an unusual combination of energy with prudence, that he was promoted to the governorship of Dublin. The parliament, however, saw fit to supersede him, though not without highly eulogizing his services,. and rewarding them with the command of Dover.

It

Henceforth his career was a civil rather than a military one, notwithstanding that he held a situation in the parliamentary army. was a fit crisis to call forth into bold and active exercise the daring spirit of Sidney. All England was in a state of Revolution. The people had been goaded to desperation by the haughty exactions of Charles, and the monstrous oppressions of the Star Chamber, and the Court of High Commission. To have a licentious and brutal soldiery quartered upon them without their consent; to have their money extorted from them on the meanest and most unjust pleas; to see those they looked upon as patriots whipped through the streets like the vilest malefactors; to see those they reverenced as spiritual guides wronged with the mockery of a trial, their members mutilated at the pillory, the stumps of those members grubbed out with the hangman's knife, and themselves cast into prison, there fairly to rot while living, was more than the patience of English loyalty could bear. The result showed the impotence of even a royal arm against the united strength of an injured and enraged nation. I pass by all the paltry evasions, the mean and gratuitous falsehoods, the base and ineffectual intrigues, by which Charles consummated his ruin. Sidney was one of the hundred and thirtythree who were selected to sit in judgment on the fallen monarch. From some unknown cause, however, he was not present at the trial. his absence was not owing to any change of principle, or untimely relenting, is seen from a remark he made at the Danish court not long afterward. Being congratulated by a minister there, for not having been guilty of the king's death-" guilty ?"-said he-" do you call that guilt? why it was the bravest and the justest action ever done in England or anywhere else."

That

It may well be supposed that a man of Sidney's undeviating principle would look upon the successive encroachments of Cromwell with no favoring eye. He was about to realize his darling idea of a republic, when he saw that realization torn from him by the usurpation of another. He regarded tyranny of all kinds, whether open or secret, whether sudden or gradual, whether by friend or foe, with the same stern and uncomplying aversion. Besides, Cromwell, in his view, was a renegade from his professions; and this thought aggravated the

bitterness of his opposition. High and lucrative offices were vainly employed to win him over. His Roman constancy was utterly insensible to such inducements. All the places within the gift of Cromwell could not have enticed him one step from his high vantage-ground. To the last, though his hopes for liberty were crushed, he waged a firm and constant war with the usurper. At the end of the second protectorate these hopes revived for a time. He was chosen a member of the council of state, and with a zeal that ever characterized him when freedom was the object, he entered at once upon the duties of his station. He was now in his element. On the ruins of tyranny, he, with his fellow-laborers, would found a republic, in which the people should be the sovereign, and parliament the representative; which should perpetuate his name, and associate it with the names of Gracchus, Brutus, and Rienzi. But he was doomed to a second disappointment. A few months, and all these glorious visions, all these bright but delusive anticipations withered, and nought was left of them but the memory of their former loveliness. Breathing a parting sigh over its coming degradation, he bade his country a long farewell, and sought on other shores the freedom that was denied him on his own.

After a long series of restless wanderings, he was permitted to return. But O, how changed was England now from the England he had left eighteen years before. He found the court reveling in a licentiousness that has known no parallel since the age of Helagabalus, and Charles himself, the presiding genius of the scene; the ministers to a man utterly destitute of anything that could be distorted into political honor; the parliament prostituting its blood-bought dignity at the shrine of the miser's god; and all, king, court, ministers and parliament, the servile hirelings of a foreign and hostile power. Nor was this all, or even the worst. He found the judiciary, that last refuge of national integrity, a great centre of bribery and the grossest injustice; theatres, whose atmosphere virtue could not breathe and live; the church, tolerant of vice, intolerant of dissent, preaching the doctrine of non-resistance, and openly conniving at the foulest indecencies; the people, following with utter recklessness in the steps of their spiritual and temporal leaders; chastity a word almost unknown-never employed, unless as an object of derision-and patriotism a mockery. The whole state seemed wasting away with a loathsome and deadly marasmus. England had never seen the like before, and God grant, for the world's sake and her own, she may never see the like again. How that strong and ardent spirit bent beneath the weight of these sorrows; how it erected itself by one mighty effort; how it nerved and braced itself for another contest, I have not time to mention. It was not of a nature to be crushed by difficulties. It would hope on, though expectation was dead. first effort was to obtain a seat in parliament; but the king had watched his motions, and he failed of an election. These efforts, combined with his known republican principles, and certain hasty expressions, carelessly dropped, but eagerly seized upon, were sufficient to draw down upon him the vengeance of the court. Henceforth he was

His

marked as its prey, and secretly but surely the toils were set around him.

Early in the year 1583, the
Whether such a plot really

The wished-for opportunity arrived. famous Rye-house plot was disclosed. existed is altogether questionable, and the evidence for and against its existence is as indecisive now as at the time of its announcement. Whether, if it existed, such men as Russel and Sidney had a share in its machinations, is still more questionable. Notwithstanding all this, the court could not afford to let pass so favorable an occasion for wreaking its accumulated vengeance, and Sidney was arrested for high treason. And now came the test of that iron fortitude, and hitherto unfaltering virtue. He had already undergone what would have crushed the spirit even of a more than ordinary man. His life had been a life of toil, of suffering, of exile, and, what was still more galling to a proud and patriotic soul like his, of shame for his country's degradation. It is said that the scorpion girt about with fire, stings itself to death. So the heart, surrounded with wretchedness often dies a suicide. Such is the death of the feeble heart; but the heart that is fired with a noble ambition and an energetic will never dies thus. Opposition only kindles it to a brighter energy; defeat serves to animate it to a fiercer combat; disappointment nerves it to a stronger hope; grief prepares it for a higher joy; desolation introduces it to a surer companionship. Such a heart never dies of wretchedness, never pines in loneliness. Like Cesar's bridge over the Rhine, it increases in strength, as the waters dash more violently against it. Such a heart was Sidney's. Though he knew his death was as inevitable as if the finger of God had written it upon the walls of his prison; though he knew that his foes, instigated by malice and sustained by power, were eager for the sacrifice, and that all the assistance of his friends could not avail him now, his confidence in that invisible arm, which is never shortened, and in his own tried and faithful spirit, wavered not a moment.

At length the trial came on. And such a trial! It was the merest judicial mockery. It was the sport of a wild beast, dallying with its prey, and gloating over its vain attempts to escape, before destroying it. Some idea of the justice he was to obtain may be formed, when we mention that the twelve impartial citizens, who were chosen to decide the question of life and death, were a packed jury, and the presiding judge, the immortal, because infamous Jeffries. That trial even at this distant day, though the records were distorted by hireling reporters into some resemblance of fairness, thrills one with all the magic power of a drama. The court room was crowded to overflowing, and not a person in the whole assembly but hung with almost breathless suspense upon the progress and issue of the proceedings. The evident exultation of the judges augured ill for the fate of the prisoner; but men detected in that proud bearing, in that unsubdued and penetrating glance, more than one omen of the great contest that was approaching. Sidney, in truth, was not the man to be idle in such a situation. He had never read a law-book in his life, and the court

refused him the assistance of counsel; but his keen and powerful mind, aided by profound learning, supplied him with weapons, and his admirable coolness with the full power of wielding them. Manfully did he wield them. Even the practiced skill of the crown lawyers could not baffle his own. All their turnings and doublings; all the foul means they employed to ensnare him; all their contemptible yet destructive artifices he penetrated and exposed to universal detestation. After much rambling and irrelevant testimony, Lord Howard was called to the stand. This wretch had been an intimate friend of Sidney; at least we must suppose him to have been, if we adopt the criterion of intimacy at that time, for he had borrowed large sums of the prisoner at different times, which remained unpaid. He also professed to have been a coadjutor in the plot, and he appeared of course in, what is always the last resort of infamy, the character of state's evidence. As he came forward to testify, we can imagine the mean and treacherous cowardice painted on the countenance of the one, and the haughty scorn that shot from the eyes of the other. Howard's was the only testimony to an overt act of treason, and, as two witnesses were essential, the court resorted to a strange and flagrant perversion of the rules of evidence. At the time of his arrest, certain of his papers, setting forth the doctrines of popular government, had been seized upon. These were now produced, and read as equivalent to a second witness. The minds of all were astounded at such unparalleled effrontery, but murmurs were utterly unavailing. Then came the defense of Sidney, and it fully showed that he had relied upon himself with no undue confidence. No one can read that noble speech, garbled as it is, without sympathizing in the strong emotions which urged him on to the effort. It proved him a perfect master of all the weapons of logic, and of the lighter, but often not less efficient ones of sarcasm and invective. So searching was his investigation of the testimony; so caustic were his remarks upon the witnesses; so eloquent and powerful the whole defense, that Jeffries began to fear its effect even upon the venal jury. To a disposition naturally brutal, Jeffries had applied the usual stimulus of intoxication. But drunk as he was, and with all his bad passions raging within him, he never lost his remarkable shrewdness. He knew that all men had their vulnerable points, and he was keen in detecting where those points lay. He now attempted, by interrupting the prisoner with the grossest insults, to arouse his indignation, and thereby entice him away from his argument. His efforts were unsuccessful. Sidney retained his composure admirably. But it was all in vain. The court had hemmed the victim around too securely for escape, and all the struggles of that gallant spirit were ineffectual.

The closing scene of that drama was not unworthy of those which had preceded. As the prisoner was brought in to receive his sentence, he bitterly denounced the injustice with which he had been treated, and scornfully refused to accord it the name of trial. But he spoke to ears deaf to all remonstrance. One of the judges, quite as drunk and almost as brutal as Jeffries, gave him the lie in open court.

All