The History of England, from the Accession of James the Second - Volume 1, Thomas Babington Macaulay [ebook pc reader txt] 📗

age would have seemed incredible;

how a gigantic commerce gave birth to a maritime power, compared

with which every other maritime power, ancient or modern, sinks

into insignificance; how Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at

length united to England, not merely by legal bonds, but by

indissoluble ties of interest and affection; how, in America, the

British colonies rapidly became far mightier and wealthier than

the realms which Cortes and Pizarro had added to the dominions of

Charles the Fifth; how in Asia, British adventurers founded an

empire not less splendid and more durable than that of Alexander.


Nor will it be less my duty faithfully to record disasters

mingled with triumphs, and great national crimes and follies far

more humiliating than any disaster. It will be seen that even

what we justly account our chief blessings were not without

alloy. It will be seen that the system which effectually secured

our liberties against the encroachments of kingly power gave

birth to a new class of abuses from which absolute monarchies are

exempt. It will be seen that, in consequence partly of unwise

interference, and partly of unwise neglect, the increase of

wealth and the extension of trade produced, together with immense

good, some evils from which poor and rude societies are free. It

will be seen how, in two important dependencies of the crown,

wrong was followed by just retribution; how imprudence and

obstinacy broke the ties which bound the North American colonies

to the parent state; how Ireland, cursed by the domination of

race over race, and of religion over religion, remained indeed a

member of the empire, but a withered and distorted member, adding

no strength to the body politic, and reproachfully pointed at by

all who feared or envied the greatness of England.


Yet, unless I greatly deceive myself, the general effect of this

chequered narrative will be to excite thankfulness in all

religious minds, and hope in the breasts of all patriots. For the

history of our country during the last hundred and sixty years is

eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual

improvement. Those who compare the age on which their lot has

fallen with a golden age which exists only in their imagination

may talk of degeneracy and decay: but no man who is correctly

informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or

desponding view of the present.


I should very imperfectly execute the task which I have

undertaken if I were merely to treat of battles and sieges, of

the rise and fall of administrations, of intrigues in the palace,

and of debates in the parliament. It will be my endeavour to

relate the history of the people as well as the history of the

government, to trace the progress of useful and ornamental arts,

to describe the rise of religious sects and the changes of

literary taste, to portray the manners of successive generations

and not to pass by with neglect even the revolutions which have

taken place in dress, furniture, repasts, and public amusements.

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below

the dignity of history, if I can succeed in placing before the

English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of

their ancestors.


The events which I propose to relate form only a single act of a

great and eventful drama extending through ages, and must be very

imperfectly understood unless the plot of the preceding acts be

well known. I shall therefore introduce my narrative by a slight

sketch of the history of our country from the earliest times. I

shall pass very rapidly over many centuries: but I shall dwell at

some length on the vicissitudes of that contest which the

administration of King James the Second brought to a decisive

crisis.1


Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated the greatness

which she was destined to attain. Her inhabitants when first they

became known to the Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the

natives of the Sandwich Islands. She was subjugated by the Roman

arms; but she received only a faint tincture of Roman arts and

letters. Of the western provinces which obeyed the Caesars, she

was the last that was conquered, and the first that was flung

away. No magnificent remains of Latin porches and aqueducts are

to be found in Britain. No writer of British birth is reckoned

among the masters of Latin poetry and eloquence. It is not

probable that the islanders were at any time generally familiar

with the tongue of their Italian rulers. From the Atlantic to the

vicinity of the Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries, been

predominant. It drove out the Celtic; it was not driven out by

the Teutonic; and it is at this day the basis of the French,

Spanish and Portuguese languages. In our island the Latin appears

never to have superseded the old Gaelic speech, and could not

stand its ground against the German.


The scanty and superficial civilisation which the Britons had

derived from their southern masters was effaced by the calamities

of the fifth century. In the continental kingdoms into which the

Roman empire was then dissolved, the conquerors learned much from

the conquered race. In Britain the conquered race became as

barbarous as the conquerors.


All the chiefs who founded Teutonic dynasties in the continental

provinces of the Roman empire, Alaric, Theodoric, Clovis, Alboin,

were zealous Christians. The followers of Ida and Cerdic, on the

other hand, brought to their settlements in Britain all the

superstitions of the Elbe. While the German princes who reigned

at Paris, Toledo, Arles, and Ravenna listened with reverence to

the instructions of bishops, adored the relics of martyrs, and

took part eagerly in disputes touching the Nicene theology, the

rulers of Wessex and Mercia were still performing savage rites in

the temples of Thor and Woden.


The continental kingdoms which had risen on the ruins of the

Western Empire kept up some intercourse with those eastern

provinces where the ancient civilisation, though slowly fading

away under the influence of misgovernment, might still astonish

and instruct barbarians, where the court still exhibited the

splendour of Diocletian and Constantine, where the public

buildings were still adorned with the sculptures of Polycletus

and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious pedants,

themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, could still

read and interpret the masterpieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes,

and of Plato. From this communion Britain was cut off. Her shores

were, to the polished race which dwelt by the Bosphorus, objects

of a mysterious horror, such as that with which the Ionians of

the age of Homer had regarded the Straits of Scylla and the city

of the Laestrygonian cannibals. There was one province of our

island in which, as Procopius had been told, the ground was

covered with serpents, and the air was such that no man could

inhale it and live. To this desolate region the spirits of the

departed were ferried over from the land of the Franks at

midnight. A strange race of fishermen performed the ghastly

office. The speech of the dead was distinctly heard by the

boatmen, their weight made the keel sink deep in the water; but

their forms were invisible to mortal eye. Such were the marvels

which an able historian, the contemporary of Belisarius, of

Simplicius, and of Tribonian, gravely related in the rich and

polite Constantinople, touching the country in which the founder

of Constantinople had assumed the imperial purple. Concerning all

the other provinces of the Western Empire we have continuous

information. It is only in Britain that an age of fable

completely separates two ages of truth. Odoacer and Totila, Euric

and Thrasimund, Clovis, Fredegunda, and Brunechild, are

historical men and women. But Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and

Rowena, Arthur and Mordred are mythical persons, whose very

existence may be questioned, and whose adventures must be classed

with those of Hercules and Romulus


At length the darkness begins to break; and the country which had

been lost to view as Britain reappears as England. The conversion

of the Saxon colonists to Christianity was the first of a long

series of salutary revolutions. It is true that the Church had

been deeply corrupted both by that superstition and by that

philosophy against which she had long contended, and over which

she had at last triumphed. She had given a too easy admission to

doctrines borrowed from the ancient schools, and to rites

borrowed from the ancient temples. Roman policy and Gothic

ignorance, Grecian ingenuity and Syrian asceticism, had

contributed to deprave her. Yet she retained enough of the

sublime theology and benevolent morality of her earlier days to

elevate many intellects, and to purify many hearts. Some things

also which at a later period were justly regarded as among her

chief blemishes were, in the seventh century, and long

afterwards, among her chief merits. That the sacerdotal order

should encroach on the functions of the civil magistrate would,

in our time, be a great evil. But that which in an age of good

government is an evil may, in an ago of grossly bad government,

be a blessing. It is better that mankind should be governed by

wise laws well administered, and by an enlightened public

opinion, than by priestcraft: but it is better that men should be

governed by priestcraft than by brute violence, by such a prelate

as Dunstan than by such a warrior as Penda. A society sunk in

ignorance, and ruled by mere physical force, has great reason to

rejoice when a class, of which the influence is intellectual and

moral, rises to ascendancy. Such a class will doubtless abuse its

power: but mental power, even when abused, is still a nobler and

better power than that which consists merely in corporeal

strength. We read in our Saxon chronicles of tyrants, who, when

at the height of greatness, were smitten with remorse, who

abhorred the pleasures and dignities which they had purchased by

guilt, who abdicated their crowns, and who sought to atone for

their offences by cruel penances and incessant prayers. These

stories have drawn forth bitter expressions of contempt from some

writers who, while they boasted of liberality, were in truth as

narrow-minded as any monk of the dark ages, and whose habit was

to apply to all events in the history of the world the standard

received in the Parisian society of the eighteenth century. Yet

surely a system which, however deformed by superstition,

introduced strong moral restraints into communities previously

governed only by vigour of muscle and by audacity of spirit, a

system which taught the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was,

like his meanest bondman, a responsible being, might have seemed

to deserve a more respectful mention from philosophers and

philanthropists.


The same