BOOK vernment. The subject is in various ways of importance. 1. As Clarendon is one of our most eminent historical writers; and as the judgment we ought to entertain of the colours bestowed by him on the facts he relates, must be in a great degree regulated by the soundness or unsoundness of his principles in that respect. 2. As he may be considered as in some sort the representative of the more moderate and rational of the followers of Charles I, of those men (himself and Falkland being the most distinguished among them) who strenuously adhered to the parliament in the commencement, and who went off to the king, as soon as it was ascertained that the question between him and his adversaries would be decided by the sword. 3. By ascertaining the principles of these, the most moderate of the royalists, we shall be better enabled to perceive the debt we owe to those who, when Charles set up his standard, and resolutely appealed to the fortune of the field, nevertheless determined to persist in the line of conduct they had commenced, and to trust to the energy and courage of Englishmen for a favourable issue. We fortunately possess a book written by Clarendon, entitled A Survey of Hobbes's Leviathan, and published about the period of his death in 1673, in which his principles on the theory of politics are fully stated. The part most eminently to our purpose, is his Survey of Hobbes's Twentieth Chapter, and particularly from page 66 to page 72. In this passage Clarendon expressly adheres to the doctrine laid down in various works by sir Robert Filmer, that Adam possessed, "by the gift of his creator, the dominion over mankind, and that we cannot but look upon him, during his life, as the sole monarch of the world." This dominion by right of primogeniture descended to Seth, and after the flood to Noah. But Clarendon endeavours to escape from sir Robert Filmer's inferences in favour of absolute monarchy, by the following hypothesis. At the building of the Tower of Babel, the creator became displeased with the posterity of Noah, and not suffering them any longer to remain under an universal monarchy, made a distinct partition of the earth among his sons. "Under this division we of the western world have reason to believe ourselves of the posterity of Japhet, and that our progenitors, as they knew what region God had assigned them, did as well know under what government CHAP. they were to live." "As mankind encreased, and the age of man grew less, so that they did not live to see so great a progeny, they who had the sovereign power, exercised less of the paternal affection in their government, and looked upon those they governed as their mere subjects, not as their allies [kinsfolk]; and by degrees, according to the custom of exorbitant power, considering only the extent of their own jurisdiction, and what they might do, they treated those who were under them, not as subjects, but as slaves, who having no right to any thing but what they gave them, [they] would allow them to possess nothing but what they had no mind to have themselves.-Kings had not long delighted themselves with this exorbitant exercise of their power (for though the power had been still the saine, the exercise of it had been very moderate, whilst there remained the tenderness or memory of any relation), but they began to discern (according to their faculties of discerning, as their parts were better or worse), that the great strength they seemed to be possessed of, must in a short time end in absolute weakness, and the plenty they seemed to enjoy, would become exceeding want and beggary; that no man would build a house that his children should not inherit, nor cultivate land with good husbandry and expence, the fruit and profit whereof might be taken by another man; that whilst their subjects did not enjoy the convenience and delight of life, they could not be sure of the affection and help of them, when they should enter into a difference with one who is as absolute as themselves, but they would rather chuse to be subject to him, whose subjects lived with more satisfaction under him: in a word, that whilst they engrossed all power, and all wealth into their own hands, they should find none who would defend them in the possession of it; and that there is great difference between the subjection that love and discretion pays, and that which results only from fear and force; and that despair puts an end to that duty, which nature, and it may be conscience too, would still persuade them to pay, and to continue; and therefore that it was necessary that the subjects should find profit and comfort in obeying, as well as kings pleasure in commanding. These wise and whol II. BOOK some reflections prevailed with princes for their own benefit to restrain themselves, to make their power less absolute, that it might be more useful; to give their subjects a property that should not be invaded but in such cases, and with such and such circumstances, and a liberty that should not be restrained, but upon such terms as they could not but think reasonable. And as they found the benefit to grow from these condescensions in the improvement of civility, and those additions of delight which makes life and government the more pleasant, they inlarged the graces and concessions to their subjects, reserving all in themselves which they did not part with by their voluntary grants and promises.” "This is the original and pedigree of government, equally different from that which the levelling fancy of some men would reduce their sovereign to, upon an imagination that princes have no authority or power but what was originally given them by the people,-and from that which Mr. Hobbes hath instituted." 191 CHAPTER III. STATE OF PARTIES.-PROGRESS OF REPUBLICAN PROPOSITIONS. CHAP. III. 1646. State of THIS was a period of most critical importance to all parties in the English parliament. The independents were in reality well disposed to do without the king: their principal leaders, as well parties. as the more determined zealots of the main body of their faction, had a decided partiality to a republican government. The presbyterians on the contrary, at least on this side the Tweed, were unanimously favourable to that mixed constitution under which England had subsisted through successive centuries. The consequence of this Dissimulawas, that the independents were bound in from the free pursuit either of their theories or their tised. tion that was prac II. 1646. BOOK sentiments. The parties which divided the legislative body were very nearly balanced; and those persons, who had fought on the king's side, or who without taking arms had constantly prayed for his success, and were now as anxious as ever for his restoration and glory, though they were reduced to adopt a secret and indirect mode of proceeding, were yet capable, by throwing their weight into the scale either of the presbyterians or independents, of giving the predominance to Importance the party with which they coalesced. All these of the king. circumstances gave an importance to the individual person of Charles, which we should scarcely have been prepared to look for, in a king stripped of his followers, a solitary prisoner in the hands of his victorious subjects. Views of the two great par liament. We cannot arrive at a just judgment respecting the puzzled and entangled state of public affairs ties in par- at this time, if we do not pause a little to enquire what it was that the two great parties in the parliament according to their respective views could do, or ought to do, under the circumstances in which they were placed. Presbyte monarchy, own system The presbyterians were attached to monarchy, rians desire and desirous to restore the king. It is not to be with their imagined however that they had the slightest of church- thought of giving up the objects for which they had contended through four years of a now successful war. One of the principal of these objects was their own particular system of church govern ment. |