The History of England Volume VI. David Hume
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guards at the door of the house, who allowed none but subscribers to enter. Most of the members, after some hesitation, submitted to this condition; but retained the same refractory spirit, which they had discovered in their first debates. The instrument of government was taken in pieces, and examined, article by article, with the most scrupulous accuracy: Very free topics were advanced with the general approbation of the house: And during the whole course of their proceedings, they neither sent up one bill to the protector, nor took any notice of him. Being informed, that conspiracies were entered into between the members and some malcontents officers; he hastened to the dissolution of so dangerous an assembly. By the instrument of government, to which he had sworn, no parliament could be dissolved, till it had sitten five months; but Cromwel pretended, that a month contained only twenty-eight days, according to the method of computation practised in paying the fleet and army. The full time, therefore, according to this reckoning, being elapsed; the parliament was ordered to attend the protector, who made them a tedious, confused, angry harangue, and dismissed them. Were we to judge of Cromwel’s capacity by this, and indeed by all his other compositions, we should be apt to entertain no very favourable idea of it. But in the great variety of human geniuses, there are some, which, though they see their object clearly and distinctly in general; yet, when they come to unfold its parts by discourse or writing, lose that luminous conception, which they had before attained. All accounts agree in ascribing to Cromwel a tiresome, dark, unintelligible elocution, even when he had no intention to disguise his meaning: Yet no man’s actions were ever, in such a variety of difficult incidents, more decisive and judicious.
The electing of a discontented parliament is a proof of a discontented nation: The angry and abrupt dissolution of that parliament is always sure to encrease the general discontent. The members of this assembly, returning to their counties, propagated that spirit of mutiny, which they had exerted in the house. Sir Harry Vane and the old republicans, who maintained the indissoluble authority of the long parliament, encouraged the murmurs against the present usurpation; though they acted so cautiously as to give the protector no handle against them. Wildman and some others of that party carried still farther their conspiracies against the protector’s authority. The royalists, observing this general ill will towards the establishment, could no longer be retained in subjection; but fancied, that every one, who was dissatisfied like them, had also embraced the same views and inclinations. They did not consider, that the old parliamentary party, though many of them were displeased with Cromwel, who had dispossessed them of their power, were still more apprehensive of any success to the royal cause; whence, besides a certain prospect of the same consequence, they had so much reason to dread the severest vengeance for their past transgressions.
Insurrection of the royalists.
11th of March.
In concert with the king a conspiracy was entered into by the royalists throughout England, and a day of general rising appointed. Information of this design was conveyed to Cromwel. The protector’s administration was extremely vigilant. Thurloe, his secretary, had spies every where. Manning, who had access to the king’s family, kept a regular correspondence with him. And it was not difficult to obtain intelligence of a confederacy, so generally diffused among a party, who valued themselves more on zeal and courage, than on secrecy and sobriety. Many of the royalists were thrown into prison. Others, on the approach of the day, were terrified with the danger of the undertaking, and remained at home. In one place alone the conspiracy broke into action. Penruddoc, Groves, Jones, and other gentlemen of the west, entered Salisbury with about 200 horse; at the very time when the sheriff and judges were holding the assizes. These they made prisoners; and they proclaimed the king. Contrary to their expectations, they received no accession of force; so prevalent was the terror of the established government. Having in vain wandered about for some time, they were totally discouraged; and one troop of horse was able at last to suppress them. The leaders of the conspiracy, being taken prisoners, were capitally punished. The rest were sold for slaves, and transported to Barbadoes.
The easy subduing of this insurrection, which, by the boldness of the undertaking, struck at first a great terror into the nation, was a singular felicity to the protector; who could not, without danger, have brought together any considerable body of his mutinous army, in order to suppress it. The very insurrection itself he regarded as a fortunate event; since it proved the reality of those conspiracies, which his enemies, on every occasion, represented as mere fictions, invented to colour his tyrannical severities. He resolved to keep no longer any terms with the royalists, who, though they were not perhaps the most implacable of his enemies, were those whom he could oppress under the most plausible pretences, and who met with least countenance and protection from his adherents. He issued an edict with the consent of his council, for exacting the tenth penny from that whole party; in order, as he pretended, to make them pay the expences, to which their mutinous disposition continually exposed the public. Without regard to compositions, articles of capitulation, or acts of indemnity, all the royalists, however harassed with former oppressions, were obliged anew to redeem themselves by great sums of money; and many of them were reduced by these multiplied disasters to extreme poverty. Whoever was known to be disaffected, or even lay under any suspicion, though no guilt could be proved against him, was exposed to the new exaction.
In order to raise this imposition, which commonly passed by the name of decimation, the protector instituted twelve major-generals; and divided the whole kingdom of England into so many military jurisdictions.y These men, assisted by commissioners, had power to subject whom they pleased to decimation, to levy all the taxes imposed by the protector and his council, and to imprison any person who should be exposed to their jealousy or suspicion; nor was there any appeal from them but to the protector himself and his council. Under colour of these powers, which were sufficiently exorbitant, the major-generals exercised an authority still more arbitrary, and acted as if absolute masters of the property and person of every subject. All reasonable men now concluded, that the very masque of liberty was thrown aside, and that the nation was for ever subjected to military and despotic government, exercised not in the legal manner of European nations, but according to the maxims of eastern tyranny. Not only the supreme magistrate owed his authority to illegal force and usurpation: He had parcelled out the people into so many subdivisions of slavery, and had delegated to his inferior ministers the same unlimited authority, which he himself had so violently assumed.
State of Europe.
A government, totally military and despotic, is almost sure, after some time, to fall into impotence and languor: But when it immediately succeeds a legal constitution, it may, at first, to foreign nations appear very vigorous and active, and may exert with more unanimity that power, spirit, and riches, which had been acquired under a better form. It seems now proper, after so long an interval, to look abroad to the general state of Europe, and to consider the measures, which England, at this time, embraced in its negotiations with the neighbouring princes. The moderate temper and unwarlike genius of the two last princes, the extreme difficulties under which they laboured at home, and the great security which they enjoyed from foreign enemies, had rendered them negligent of the transactions on the continent; and England, during their reigns, had been, in a manner, overlooked in the general system of Europe. The bold and restless genius of the protector led him to extend his alliances and enterprizes to every part of Christendom; and partly from the ascendant of his magnanimous spirit, partly from the situation of foreign kingdoms, the weight of England, even under its most legal and bravest princes, was never more sensibly felt than during this unjust and violent usurpation.
A war of thirty years, the most signal and most destructive that had appeared in modern annals, was at last finished in Germany;z and by the treaty of Westphalia, were composed those fatal quarrels, which had been excited by the palatine’s precipitate acceptance of the crown of Bohemia. The young palatine was restored to part of his dignities and of his dominions.a The rights, privileges, and authority of the several members of the Germanic body were fixed and ascertained: Sovereign princes and free states were in some degree reduced to obedience under laws: And by the valour of the heroic Gustavus, the enterprizes of the active Richelieu, the intrigues of the artful Mazarine, was in part effected, after an infinite expence of blood and treasure, what had been fondly expected and loudly demanded from the feeble efforts of the pacific James, seconded by the scanty supplies of his jealous parliaments.
Sweden,