Note Book of an English Opium-Eater, Thomas de Quincey [the reading list .TXT] 📗

inflicted--was to curse them with the complete gratification of their own inordinate desires.' I quote this passage--not as containing any thing singular, but for the very reason that it is _not_ singular: it expresses in fact the universal opinion: notwithstanding which I am happy to say that it is false. What 'complete gratification of their own desires' was ever granted to the 'reformers' in question? On the contrary, it is well known (and no book illustrates that particular fact so well as Sir William Waller's) that as early as 1647 the army had too effectually subverted the just relations between itself and parliament--not to have suggested fearful anticipations to all discerning patriots of that unhappy issue which did in reality blight their prospects. And, when I speak of an 'unhappy issue,' I would be understood only of the immediate issue: for the remote issue was--the revolution of 1688, as I have already asserted. Neither is it true that even the immediate issue was 'unhappy' to any extent which can justify the ordinary language in which it is described. Here again is a world of delusions. We hear of 'anarchy,' of 'confusions,' of 'proscriptions,' of 'bloody and ferocious tyranny.' All is romance; there was no anarchy; no confusions; no proscriptions; no tyranny in the sense designed. The sequestrations, forfeitures, and punishments of all sorts which were inflicted by the conquering party on their antagonists--went on by due course of law; and the summary justice of courts martial was not resorted to in England: except for the short term of the two wars, and the brief intermediate campaign of 1648, the country was in a very tranquil state. Nobody was punished without an open trial; and all trials proceeded in the regular course, according to the ancient forms, and in the regular courts of justice. And as to 'tyranny,' which is meant chiefly of the acts of Cromwell's government, it should be remembered that the Protectorate lasted not a quarter of the period in question (1640-1660); a fact which is constantly forgotten even by very eminent writers, who speak as though Cromwell had drawn his sword in January 1649--cut off the king's head-- instantly mounted his throne--and continued to play the tyrant for the whole remaining period of his life (nearly ten years). Secondly, as to the _kind_ of tyranny which Cromwell exercised, the misconception is ludicrous: continental writers have a notion, well justified by the language of English writers, that Cromwell was a ferocious savage who built his palace of human skulls and desolated his country. Meantime, he was simply a strong-minded--rough-built Englishman, with a character thoroughly English, and exceedingly good-natured. Gray valued himself upon his critical knowledge of English history: yet how thoughtlessly does he express the abstract of Cromwell's life in the line on the village Cromwell--'Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood!' How was Cromwell guilty of his country's blood? What blood did he cause to be shed? A great deal was shed no doubt in the wars (though less, by the way, than is imagined): but in those Cromwell was but a servant of the parliament: and no one will allege that he had any hand in causing a single war. After he attained the sovereign power, no more domestic wars arose: and as to a few persons who were executed for plots and conspiracies against his person, they were condemned upon evidence openly given and by due course of law. With respect to the general character of his government, it is evident that in the unsettled and revolutionary state of things which follows a civil war some critical cases will arise to demand an occasional 'vigor beyond the law'--such as the Roman government allowed of in the dictatorial power. But in general, Cromwell's government was limited by law: and no reign in that century, prior to the revolution, furnishes fewer instances of attempts to tamper with the laws --to overrule them--to twist them to private interpretations--or to dispense with them. As to his major-generals of counties, who figure in most histories of England as so many _Ali Pachas_ that impaled a few prisoners every morning before breakfast--or rather as so many ogres that ate up good Christian men, women and children alive, they were disagreeable people who were disliked much in the same way as our commissioners of the income-tax were disliked in the memory of us all; and heartily they would have laughed at the romantic and bloody masquerade in which they are made to figure in the English histories. What then was the 'tyranny' of Cromwell's government, which is confessedly complained of even in those days? The word 'tyranny' was then applied not so much to the mode in which his power was administered (except by the prejudiced)--as to its origin. However mercifully a man may reign,--yet, if he have no right to reign at all, we may in one sense call him a tyrant; his power not being justly derived, and resting upon an unlawful (_i.e._ a military) basis. As a usurper, and one who had diverted the current of a grand national movement to selfish and personal objects, Cromwell was and will be called a tyrant; but not in the more obvious sense of the word. Such are the misleading statements which disfigure the History of England in its most important chapter. They mislead by more than a simple error of fact: those, which I have noticed last, involve a moral anachronism; for they convey images of cruelty and barbarism such as could not co-exist with the national civilization at that time; and whosoever has not corrected this false picture by an acquaintance with the English literature of that age, must necessarily image to himself a state of society as rude and uncultured as that which prevailed during the wars of York and Lancaster--_i.e._ about two centuries earlier. But those, with which I introduced this article, are still worse; because they involve an erroneous view of constitutional history, and a most comprehensive act of ingratitude: the great men of the Long Parliament paid a heavy price for their efforts to purchase for their descendants a barrier to irresponsible power and security from the anarchy of undefined regal prerogative: in these efforts most of them made shipwreck of their own tranquillity and peace; that such sacrifices were made unavailingly (as it must have seemed to themselves), and that few of them lived to see the 'good old cause' finally triumphant, does not cancel their claims upon our gratitude--but rather strengthen them by the degree in which it aggravated the difficulty of bearing such sacrifices with patience. But whence come these falsifications of history? I believe, from two causes; first (as I have already said) from the erroneous tone impressed upon the national history by the irritated spirit of the clergy of the established church: to the religious zealotry of those times--the church was the object of especial attack; and its members were naturally exposed to heavy sufferings: hence their successors are indisposed to find my good in a cause which could lead to such a result. It is their manifest right to sympathize with their own order in that day; and in such a case it is almost their duty to be incapable of an entire impartiality. Meantime they have carried this much too far: the literature of England must always be in a considerable proportion lodged in their hands; and the extensive means thus placed at their disposal for injuriously coloring that important part of history they have used with no modesty or forbearance. There is not a page of the national history even in its local subdivisions which they have not stained with the atrabilious hue of their wounded remembrances: hardly a town in England, which stood a siege for the king or the parliament, but has some printed memorial of its constancy and its sufferings; and in nine cases out of ten the editor is a clergyman of the established church, who has contrived to deepen 'the sorrow of the time' by the harshness of his commentary. Surely it is high time that the wounds of the 17th century should close; that history should take a more commanding and philosophic station; and that brotherly charity should now lead us to a saner view of constitutional politics; or a saner view of politics to a more comprehensive charity. The other cause of this falsification springs out of a selfishness which has less claim to any indulgence--viz. the timidity with which the English Whigs of former days and the party to whom They [4] succeeded, constantly shrank from acknowledging any alliance with the great men of the Long Parliament under the nervous horror of being confounded with the regicides of 1649. It was of such urgent importance to them, for any command over the public support, that they should acquit themselves of an sentiment of lurking toleration for regicide, with which their enemies never failed to load them, that no mode of abjuring it seemed sufficiently emphatic to them hence it was that Addison, with a view to the interest of his party, thought fit when in Switzerland, to offer a puny insult to the memory of General Ludlow; hence it is that even in our own days, no writers have insulted Milton with so much bitterness and shameless irreverence as the Whigs; though it is true that some few Whigs, more however in their literary than in their political character, have stepped forward in his vindication. At this moment I recollect a passage in the writings of a modern Whig bishop--in which, for the sake of creating a charge of falsehood against Milton, the author has grossly mis-translated a passage in the _Defensio pro Pop. Anglicano_: and, if that bishop were not dead, I would here take the liberty of rapping his knuckles--were it only for breaking Priscian's head. To return over to the clerical feud against the Long Parliament,--it was a passage in a very pleasing work of this day (_Ecclesiastical Biography_) which suggested to me the whole of what I have now written. Its learned editor, who is incapable of uncandid feelings except in what concerns the interests of his order, has adopted the usual tone in regard to the men of 1640 throughout his otherwise valuable annotations: and somewhere or other (in the Life of Hammond, according to my remembrance) he has made a statement to this effect--That the custom prevalent among children in that age of asking their parents' blessing was probably first brought into disuse by the Puritans. Is it possible to imagine a perversity of prejudice more unreasonable? The unamiable side of the patriotic character in the seventeenth century was unquestionably its religious bigotry; which, however, had its ground in a real fervor of religious feeling and a real strength of religious principle somewhat exceeding the ordinary standard of the 19th century. But, however palliated, their bigotry is not to be denied; it was often offensive from its excess; and ludicrous in its direction. Many harmless customs, many ceremonies and rituals that had a high positive value, their frantic intolerance quarrelled with: and for my part I heartily join in the sentiment of Charles II.--applying it as he did, but a good deal more extensively, that their religion 'was not a religion for a gentleman:' indeed all sectarianism, but especially that which has a modern origin-- arising and growing up within our own memories, unsupported by a grand traditional history of persecutions--conflicts--and martyrdoms, lurking moreover in blind alleys, holes, corners, and tabernacles, must appear spurious and mean in the eyes of him who has been bred up in the grand classic forms of the Church of England or the Church of Rome. But, because the bigotry of the Puritans was excessive and revolting, is _that_ a reason for fastening upon them all the stray evils of omission or commission for which no distinct fathers can be found? The learned editor does not pretend that there