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

delight of the House of Lords. His

conversation overflowed with thought, fancy, and wit. His

political tracts well deserve to be studied for their literary

merit, and fully entitle him to a place among English classics.

To the weight derived from talents so great and various he united

all the influence which belongs to rank and ample possessions.

Yet he was less successful in politics than many who enjoyed

smaller advantages. Indeed, those intellectual peculiarities

which make his writings valuable frequently impeded him in the

contests of active life. For he always saw passing events, not in

the point of view in which they commonly appear to one who bears

a part in them, but in the point of view in which, after the

lapse of many years, they appear to the philosophic historian.

With such a turn of mind he could not long continue to act

cordially with any body of men. All the prejudices, all the

exaggerations, of both the great parties in the state moved his

scorn. He despised the mean arts and unreasonable clamours of

demagogues. He despised still more the doctrines of divine right

and passive obedience. He sneered impartially at the bigotry of

the Churchman and at the bigotry of the Puritan. He was equally

unable to comprehend how any man should object to Saints' days

and surplices, and how any man should persecute any other man for

objecting to them. In temper he was what, in our time, is called

a Conservative: in theory he was a Republican. Even when his

dread of anarchy and his disdain for vulgar delusions led him to

side for a time with the defenders of arbitrary power, his

intellect was always with Locke and Milton. Indeed, his jests

upon hereditary monarchy were sometimes such as would have better

become a member of the Calf's Head Club than a Privy Councillor

of the Stuarts. In religion he was so far from being a zealot

that he was called by the uncharitable an atheist: but this

imputation he vehemently repelled; and in truth, though he

sometimes gave scandal by the way in which he exerted his rare

powers both of reasoning and of ridicule on serious subjects, he

seems to have been by no means unsusceptible of religious

impressions.


He was the chief of those politicians whom the two great parties

contemptuously called Trimmers. Instead of quarrelling with this

nickname, he assumed it as a title of honour, and vindicated,

with great vivacity, the dignity of the appellation. Everything

good, he said, trims between extremes. The temperate zone trims

between the climate in which men are roasted and the climate in

which they are frozen. The English Church trims between the

Anabaptist madness and the Papist lethargy. The English

constitution trims between Turkish despotism and Polish anarchy.

Virtue is nothing but a just temper between propensities any one

of which, if indulged to excess, becomes vice. Nay, the

perfection of the Supreme Being himself consists in the exact

equilibrium of attributes, none of which could preponderate

without disturbing the whole moral and physical order of the

world.20 Thus Halifax was a Trimmer on principle. He was also a

Trimmer by the constitution both of his head and of his heart.

His understanding was keen, sceptical, inexhaustibly fertile in

distinctions and objections; his taste refined; his sense of the

ludicrous exquisite; his temper placid and forgiving, but

fastidious, and by no means prone either to malevolence or to

enthusiastic admiration. Such a man could not long be constant to

any band of political allies. He must not, however, be confounded

with the vulgar crowd of renegades. For though, like them, he

passed from side to side, his transition was always in the

direction opposite to theirs. He had nothing in common with those

who fly from extreme to extreme, and who regard the party which

they have deserted with all animosity far exceeding that of

consistent enemies. His place was on the debatable ground between

the hostile divisions of the community, and he never wandered far

beyond the frontier of either. The party to which he at any

moment belonged was the party which, at that moment, he liked

least, because it was the party of which at that moment he had

the nearest view. He was therefore always severe upon his violent

associates, and was always in friendly relations with his

moderate opponents. Every faction in the day of its insolent and

vindictive triumph incurred his censure; and every faction, when

vanquished and persecuted, found in him a protector. To his

lasting honour it must be mentioned that he attempted to save

those victims whose fate has left the deepest stain both on the

Whig and on the Tory name.


He had greatly distinguished himself in opposition, and had thus

drawn on himself the royal displeasure, which was indeed so

strong that he was not admitted into the Council of Thirty

without much difficulty and long altercation. As soon, however,

as he had obtained a footing at court, the charms of his manner

and of his conversation made him a favourite. He was seriously

alarmed by the violence of the public discontent. He thought that

liberty was for the present safe, and that order and legitimate

authority were in danger. He therefore, as was his fashion,

joined himself to the weaker side. Perhaps his conversion was not

wholly disinterested. For study and reflection, though they had

emancipated him from many vulgar prejudices, had left him a slave

to vulgar desires. Money he did not want; and there is no

evidence that he ever obtained it by any means which, in that

age, even severe censors considered as dishonourable; but rank

and power had strong attractions for him. He pretended, indeed,

that he considered titles and great offices as baits which could

allure none but fools, that he hated business, pomp, and

pageantry, and that his dearest wish was to escape from the

bustle and glitter of Whitehall to the quiet woods which

surrounded his ancient mansion in Nottinghamshire; but his

conduct was not a little at variance with his professions. In

truth he wished to command the respect at once of courtiers and

of philosophers, to be admired for attaining high dignities, and

to be at the same time admired for despising them.


Sunderland was Secretary of State. In this man the political

immorality of his age was personified in the most lively manner.

Nature had given him a keen understanding, a restless and

mischievous temper, a cold heart, and an abject spirit. His mind

had undergone a training by which all his vices had been nursed

up to the rankest maturity. At his entrance into public life, he

had passed several years in diplomatic posts abroad, and had

been, during some time, minister in France. Every calling has its

peculiar temptations. There is no injustice in saying that

diplomatists, as a class, have always been more distinguished by

their address, by the art with which they win the confidence of

those with whom they have to deal, and by the ease with which

they catch the tone of every society into which they are

admitted, than by generous enthusiasm or austere rectitude; and

the relations between Charles and Lewis were such that no English

nobleman could long reside in France as envoy, and retain any

patriotic or honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the

bad school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple,

shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all

principles. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier: but

with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were zealous

for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance. Yet they

had sturdy English hearts which would never have endured real

despotism. He, on the contrary, had a languid speculative liking

for republican institutions which was compatible with perfect

readiness to be in practice the most servile instrument of

arbitrary power. Like many other accomplished flatterers and

negotiators, he was far more skilful in the art of reading the

characters and practising on the weaknesses of individuals, than

in the art of discerning the feelings of great masses, and of

foreseeing the approach of great revolutions. He was adroit in

intrigue; and it was difficult even for shrewd and experienced

men who had been amply forewarned of his perfidy to withstand the

fascination of his manner, and to refuse credit to his

professions of attachment. But he was so intent on observing and

courting particular persons, that he often forgot to study the

temper of the nation. He therefore miscalculated grossly with

respect to some of the most momentous events of his time. More

than one important movement and rebound of the public mind took

him by surprise; and the world, unable to understand how so

clever a man could be blind to what was clearly discerned by the

politicians of the coffee houses, sometimes attributed to deep

design what were in truth mere blunders.


It was only in private conference that his eminent abilities

displayed themselves. In the royal closet, or in a very small

circle, he exercised great influence. But at the Council board he

was taciturn; and in the House of Lords he never opened his lips.


The four confidential advisers of the crown soon found that their

position was embarrassing and invidious. The other members of the

Council murmured at a distinction inconsistent with the King's

promises; and some of them, with Shaftesbury at their head, again

betook themselves to strenuous opposition in Parliament. The

agitation, which had been suspended by the late changes, speedily

became more violent than ever. It was in vain that Charles

offered to grant to the Commons any security for the Protestant

religion which they could devise, provided only that they would

not touch the order of succession. They would hear of no

compromise. They would have the Exclusion Bill, and nothing but

the Exclusion Bill. The King, therefore, a few weeks after he had

publicly promised to take no step without the advice of his new

Council, went down to the House of Lords without mentioning his

intention in Council, and prorogued the Parliament.


The day of that prorogation, the twenty-sixth of May, 1679, is a

great era in our history. For on that day the Habeas Corpus Act

received the royal assent. From the time of the Great Charter the

substantive law respecting the personal liberty of Englishmen had

been nearly the same as at present: but it had been inefficacious

for want of a stringent system of procedure. What was needed was

not a new light, but a prompt and searching remedy; and such a

remedy the Habeas Corpus Act supplied. The King would gladly have

refused his consent to that measure: but he was about to appeal

from his Parliament to his people on the question of the

succession, and he could not