The time was lost, and William, with a smile, 1 The last great wound given to the feudal system was the Act of the 12th of Charles II, which abolished the tenure of knight's service in capite, and which Blackstone compares, for its salutary influence upon property, to the boasted provisions of Magna Charta itself. Yet even in this Act we see the effects of that counteracting spirit, that Arimanius, which has weakened every effort of the English nation towards liberty, which allowed but half the errors of Popery to be removed at the Reformation, and which planted more abuses than it suffered to be rooted out at the Revolution. The exclusion of copyholders from their share of elective rights was permitted to remain as a brand of feudal servitude, and as an obstacle to the rise of that strong counterbalance which an equal representation of property would oppose to the weight of the Crown. If the managers of the Revolution had been sincere in their wishes for reform, they would not only have taken this fetter off the rights of election, but they would have renewed the mode adopted in Cromwell's time of increasing the number of knights of the shire, to the exclusion of those rotten insignificant boroughs, which have tainted the whole mass of the constitution. Lord Clarendon calls this measure of Cromwell's. an alteration fit to be more war raotably made, and in a better time. It formed part of Mr Pitt's plan in 1783; but Mr Pitt's plan of reform was a kind of dramatic piece, about as likely to be acted as Mr Sheridan's Foresters.» The Athenians considered seduction so much more dangerous than force, that the penalty for a rape was merely a pecuniary line, while the guilt of seduction was punished with death. And though it must be owned that, during the reign of that ravisher Prerogative, the poor Constitution was treated like Miss Cunegund among the Bulgarians; yet I agree with the principle of the Athenian law, that her present state of willing self-abandonment is much more hopeless and irreclaimable, and calls for a more signal vengeance upon her seducers. It would be amusing to trace the history of Prerogative from the date of its strength under the Tudor princes, when Henry VII. and his successors taught the people (as Nathaniel Bacon says) (a) to dance to the tune of Allegiance, to the period of the Revolution, when the Throne, in its attacks upon liberty, began to exchange the noisy explosions of Prerogative for the silent and effectual air-gun of Influence. In considering it too since that memorable era, we shall find that, while the royal power has been abridged in branches where it might be made conducive to the interests of the people, it has been left in full and unshackled vigour against almost every point where the inte grity of the constitution is vuluerable. For instance, the power of chartering boroughs, to whose capricions abuse in the hands of the Stuarts we are indebted for most of the present anomalies of representation, might, a suffered to remain, have in some degree aloued for its mischief by restoring the old unchartered boroughs to their rights, and widening more equally the basis of the legislature. But, by the Act of Union with Scotland, this part of the prerogative was removed, lest Liberty should have a chance of being healed even by the rust of the spear which had wounded her. The power, however, of creating peers, which has generally been exercised for the govern ment against the cons itation, is left in free, unqualified activity; notwithstanding the example of that celebrated Bill for the limitation of this ever-budding branch of prerogative, which was proposed in the reign of George 1. under the peculiar sanction and recommendation of the Court, but which the Whigs rejected with that characteristic delicacy, which has generally prevented them, when in office themselves, from taking any uncourtly advantage of the Throue. It will be recollected, however, that the creation of the twelve peers by the Tors in Aune's reign (4 measure which Swift, like a true party man, delends) gave these upright Whigs all possible alarm for their liberties. With regard to this geuercus hit about his prerogative which scized (a) Historic, and Politic. Discourse, etc. part. i. p. 114. While Parliaments, no more those sacred things the good king George 1., bistorians have said that the paroxysm originated more in hatred to his son than in love to the constitution; (a) but no person acquainted with the annals of the three Georges, could possibly suspect any one of those gracions Monarchs either of ill-will to his beir, or indifference for the constitution. 1 They drove so fast (says Welwood of the Ministers of Charles J.), that it was no wonder that the wheels and chariot broke.. (Memoirs, p. 35.)-But this fatal accident, if we may judge from experience, is to be imputed less to the folly and impetuosity of the drivers, than to the want of that suppling oil from the Treasury which has been found so necessary to make a government like that of England run smoothly. If Charles had been as well provided with this article as his successors have been since the happy Revolution, his Commons would never have merited from the Throne the barsh appel lation of seditious vipers, but would have been (as they are now. and I trust always will be) dutiful Commons, loyal Commons. etc. etc. and would have given him ship-money, or any other sort of money he might take a fancy to. The period that immediately succeeds a coronation has been called very aptly the Honey-moon of a reign; and if we suppose the Throne to be the wife, and the People the husband, (b) I know no better model of a matrimonial transaction, nor one that I would sooner recommend to a woman of spirit, than that which the arrangements of 1688 afford. In the first place, she must not only obtain from her husband, an allowance of pin-money or civil-list establishment, sufficient to reader her independent of his caprice, but she must also prevail on him to make her the steward of his estates, and to intrust her with the management of all his pecuniary concerns. I need not tell a woman Í sense to what spirited uses she may turn such concessions. He will soon become so time and docile under her hands, that she may make him play the strangest and most amusing tricks, such as quarrelling with bis nearest and dearest relations about a dish of tea, (c) a turban, (d) or a wafer; (e) preparing his house for defence against robbers, by putting fetters and handcuffs on two thirds of its inmates; employing C-nn-g and P-rc-v-l in his sickest moments to read to him alternately Joe Miller and the Catechism, with a thousand other divert ng inconsistencies. If her spouse have still enough of sense remaining to grumble at the ridiculous exhibition which she makes of bim, let her withhold from him now and then the rights of the Habeas Corpes Act (a mode of proceeding which the women of Athens once adopted). (1) and if the good man loves such privileges, the interruption will sen restore him to submission. If his former wife were a Papist, or had any tendency that way, I would advise my fair Sovereign, whenever he begins to argue with her unpleasantly, to shoat out. No Ponery, no Popery ! as loul as she can, into his ears, and it is astonishing what an effect it will have in disconcerting all his arguments. method was tried lately by an old woman at Northampton, and with much success. Seriously, this convenient bugbear of Popery is by ma means the least among the numberless auxiliaries which the Revolation has marshalled on the side of the Throne.-Those unskilful tyrants, Charles and James, instead of profiting wisely by that useful amberviency which has always distinguished the ministers of our religioas | (a) Cone says that this Bill was projected by Sunderland. This (b) This is contrary to the symbolical language of prophecy, in which (according to Sir baac Newton) the King is the husband, and the people the wie. Sec Faber, on the Prophecies.-1 would beg leave to suggest to Mr Faber, that his friend Sir R-cb-d M-sgrove can. in bis on proper person, supply him with an esposition of the Horns of the Beast.. (e) Ireland. (4) India. (c) America. (1) See the Lysistrata of Aristophanes.-The following is the form of suspension, as he gives it: Όπως αν ανηρ επιτυφη μάλιςα μου Κουδέποθ' ἑκουσα τ' ανδρι τῷ μας πείσομαι. Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom, Amid his ruffian spies, and doom'd to death Whom H-wk-sb-y quotes and savoury B-rch ad- And how it ebb'd, for ever ebb'd away! mires, Be slander'd thus ? shall honest St-le agree The people!-ah! that Freedom's form should stay Oh look around-though yet a tyrant's sword establishment, were blind enough to plan the ruin of this best bul- A people's blood to feed its putrid veins! in the minds of the people the interests of their religion and their liberties. During those times, therefore, No Popery was the watch- << Heavens, what a picture!»-yes, my friend, 'tis darkword of freedom, and served to keep the public spirit awake against « But can no light be found, no genuine spark the invasions of bigotry and prerogative. The Revolution, however. Of former fire to warm us? Is there none by removing this object of jealousy, has produced a reliance on the orthodoxy of the Throne, of which the Throne has not failed to take To act a Marvell's part? »2-I fear, not one. every possible advantage, and the cry of No Popery having, by this To place and power all public spirit tends, means, lost its power of alarming the people against the encroachments In place and power all public spirit ends; 3 of the Crown, has served ever since the very different purpose of Like hardy plants, that love the air and sky, strengthening the Crown against the claims and struggles of the peoWhen out, 't will thrive, but taken in, 't will die! ple. The danger of the Church from Papists and Pretenders was the chief pretext for the repeal of the Triennial Bill, for the adoption of a standing army, for the numerous suspensions of the Habeas Corpus Act, and, in short, for all those spirited infractions of the constitution by which the reigns of the last century were so eminently distinguish We have seen too, very lately, how the same scarecrow alarm has enabled the Throne to select its ministers from men, whose servility is their only claim to elevation, and who are pledged (if such an alternative could arise) to take part with the scruples of the King against the salvation of the empire. ed. Somebody has said. Quand tous les Poetes seraient noyés, ce ne serait pas grand dommage; but I am aware that this would be most uncivil language at a time when our birth-day odes and state-papers are written by such pretty poets as Mr P-e and Mr C-nn-ng. I can assure the latter, too, that I think him (like his water-proof colleague Lord C-stl-r-gh) reserved for a very different fate from that which the author I have just quoted imagines for his poetical fraternity. All I wish is, that he would change places with his brother P-e, by which means we should have somewhat less prose in our odes, and certainly less poetry in our politics. 2. It is a scandal (said Sir Charles Sedley in William's reign) that a Government so sick at heart as ours is should look so well in the face; and Edmund Burke has said, in the present reign, When the people conceive that laws and tribunals, and even popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends of their institution, they find in these names of degenerated establishments only new motives to discontent. Those bodies which, when full of life and beauty, lay in their arms and were their joy and comfort, when dead and putrid become more loathsome from remembrance of former endearments.-Thoughts on the present Discontents, 1770. ......... tutor haberi Principis, Augusta Caprearum in rupe sedentis JUVENAL. Sat. x. v. 92. The senate still continued, during the reign of Tiberius, to manage all the business of the public; the money was then and long after coined by their authority, and every other public affair received their sanction. We are told by Tacitus of a certain rece of men, who were parti Not bolder truths of sacred freedom hung tion. There is something very touching in what Tacitus tells us of the hopes that revived in a few patriot bosems, when the death of Augustus was near approaching, and the fond expectation with which they began .bona libertatis incassum disserere.. Ferguson says, that Caesar's interference with the rights of election made the subversion of the Republie more felt than any of the former acts of his power. -Roman Republic, book v. chap. 1. 2 Andrew Marvell, the honest opposer of the court during the reign of Charles the Second, and the last Member of Parliament who, according to the ancient mode, took wages from his constituents. How very much the Commons have changed their pay-masters!-See the State-Poems for some rude but spirited effusions of Andrew Marvell. The following artless specch of Sir Francis Winnington, in the reign of Charles the Second, will amuse those who are fully aware of the perfection which we have attained in that system of Government whose humble beginnings seem to have astonished the worthy Baronet so much. I did observe (says be) that all those who had pensions, and most of those who bad offices, voted all of a side, as they were directed as if their business in this House had by some great officer, exactly been to preserve their pensions and offices, and not to make laws for the good of them who sent them here.-He alludes to that Parliament which was called, par excellence, the Pensionary Parliament! a distinction, however, which it has long lost, and which we merely give it from old custom, just as we say The Irish Rebellion. And loud and upright, till their price be known, Are Freedom's grave old anthems to my ear, And reverence Scripture even from Satan's tongue. And ask, in purchased ditties, why it died? 2 See that smooth Lord, whom nature's plastic paius While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption. 2 Pet. ii.-I suggest, with much deference, to the expounders of Scripture-Prophecy, whether Mr. C-nn-ng is not at present fullling the prediction of the scoffers, who were to come in the last days. 2 I believe it is in following the corpse to the grave, and not at the wakes (as we call the watching of the dead,) that this elegiac howl of my countrymen is performed. Spenser says, that our howl is heathenish, and proceeds from a despair of salvation. If so, I think England may join in chorus with us at present. The Abbé de Motraye tells us, that the Jews in the East address their dead in a similar manner, and say, Hu! Ha! Ha! why did you die! Hadn't you a wife! Hadn't you a long pipe? etc. etc. (See his Travels.) I thought for a long time with Vallancey, that we were a colony of Carthaginians, but from this passage of de Motrays, and from the way in which Me P-rc-v-l would have us treated, I begin to suspect we are no better than Jews. 3 According to Xenophon, the chief circumstance which recommended eunuchs to the service of Eastern princes, was the ignominious station which they held in society, and the probability of their being, upon this account, more devoted to the will and caprice of a master, from whose notice alone they derived consideration, and in whose favour they found a refuge from the contempt of mankind. Adogo οντες οἱ ευνούχοι παρα τοις άλλοις ανθρώποις Of slavery's draught was wanting if for this That, in this hour, when patriot zeal should guide, To enemies made fiends, and friends made foes, Of that unpitying power, whose whips and chains Among the many measures which, since the Revolution, have contributed to increase the influence of the Throne, aud to feed up this - Aaron's serpent of the constitution to its present healthy and respectable magnitude, there have been few more nutritive than the Scotch and Irish Unions. Sir John Packer said, in a debate upon the former question, that he would submit it to the House, whether mea who had basely betrayed their trust, by giving up their independent constitution, were fit to be admitted into the English House of Commons. But Sir John would have known, if he had not been out of place at the time, that the pliancy of such materials was not among the least of their recommendations. Indeed the promoters of the Scotch Union were by no means disappointed in the leading object of their measure, for the triomphant majorities of the Court-party in Parliament may be dated from the admission of the 45 and the 16 Once or twice, upon the alteration of their law of treason and the imposition of the malt-tax (measures which were in direct violation ef the Act of Union), these worthy North Britons arrayed themselves is opposition to the Court; but finding this effort for their country unavailing, they prudently determined to think thenceforward of them selves, and few men have kept to a Izudable resolution more firmly. -The effect of Irish representation upon the liberties of England will be no less perceptible and no less permanent. We are told that Cesar's code of morality was contained in the following lines of Euripides, which that great man very frequently repeated: Είπερ γαρ αδικειν χρή τυραννίδος περι Καλλιστον αδίκειν· This appears to be also the moral code of Bonaparte. When the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated, Charles the First, as a tribute to his memory, continued all his creatures in the same nai dia TOUTO deσTOTOU ETTIKOUрou arpoodeorras. (4)-posts and favours which they had enjoyed under their patres, and But I doubt whether even an Eastern Prince would have chosen an entire Administration upon this principle. 4 Does Lord C-stl-r-gh remember the reforming Resolutions of his early days? And in the cup an Union shall be thrown. HAMLET. Three Cs were branded in the Sibylline books, as fatal to the peace and liberties of Rome. Teid xarа xaniora (Coraclius Sylla, Cornelius Cinna, and Cornelius Lentulus) (b) And three Cs will be remembered in Ireland as long as C-und-n and cruelty, Cl-re and corruption, C-st--gh and contempt, are alliteratively and appropriately associated. (a) See a pamphlet on the Union, by a Philosopher.. (b) See a Treatise by Pontus De Thiard, De recta Nominum Impositione, p. 43. much in the same manner do we see the country sacrified to the manes of a Minister at present. It is invidious perhaps to look for parallels in the reign of Charles the First, but the expedient of threatening the Commons with dissulation, which has lately been played off with so much eclat, appears to have been frequently resorted to at that period. In one instance Hams tells us, that the King sent his Lord Keeper (not his Jester) to menace the House, that, unless they dispatched a certain Bill for subsidies, they must expect to sit no longer. By similar threats the excise upon beer and ale was carried in Charles the Second's reign. It is edifying to know, that though Mr C-nn-ng despises Puffendorf, he has no objection to precedents derived from the Courts of the Suart. (a) From Aratus (v. 715), a poet who wrote upon astronomy, though, as Cicero assures us, he knew nothing whatever about the subjerijust as the great Harvey wrote De Generatione, though he bad 21 little to do with the matter as my Lord Viscount C. Made Ireland first, in wild, adulterous trance, Turn false to England's bed and whore with France! So weak to save, so vigorous to destroy! Such are the men that guard thy threaten'd shore, INTOLERANCE. PART THE FIRST. When Heaven was yet the Pope's exclusive trade, Which wizard D-gen-n's gather'd sweets exhale! This clamour, which pretends to be raised for the safety of Reli-As H-wk-sb'ry proses, or as Ireland bleeds! gion, has almost worn out the very appearance of it, and rendered us not only the most divided but the most immoral peopic upon the face of the earth.. ADDISON, Freeholder, No. 37. START not, my Friend, nor think the Muse will stain The following prophetic remarks occur in a letter written by Sir Robert Talbot, who attended the Duke of Bedford to Paris in 1761. Talking of states which have grown powerful in commerce, he says, According to the nature and common course of things, there is a confederacy against them, and consequently in the same proportion as they increase in riches, they approach to destruction. The address of our King William, in making all Europe take the alarm at France, has brought that country before us near that inevitable period. We must necessarily have our turn, and Great Britain will attain it as soon as France shall have a declaimer with organs as proper for that political purpose as were those of our William the Third....... With out doubt, my Lord, Great Britain must lower her fight. Europe will remind us of the balance of commerce, as she has reminded France of the balance of power. The address of our statesmen will immortalize them by contriving for us a descent which shall not be a fall, by making us rather resemble Holland than Carthage and Venice.. Letters on the French Nation. The king-deposing doctrine, notwithstanding its many mischievous absurdities, was of no little service to the cause of political liberty, by inculeating the right of resistance to tyrants, and asserting the will of the people to be the only true fountain of power. Bellarmine, the most violent of the advocates for papal authority, was one of the first to maintain (see De Pontif. lib. i. cap 7). • That Kings have not their authority or office immediately from God nor his law, but only from the law of nations; and in King James's « Defence of the Rights of Kings against Cardinal Perron, we find his Majesty expressing strong indignation against the Cardinal for having asserted that to the deposing of a King the consent of the people must be obtained. And thou, my Friend-if, in these headlong days, suit the convenience of their oppressors, and they have been repre The Sella Stercorarias of the Popes.-The Right Honourable and learned Doctor will find an engraving of this chair in Spanheim's • Disquisitio Historica de Papa Fomina (p. 118); and I recommend it as a model for the fashion of that seat which the Doctor is about to take in the Privy-Council of Ireland. for by these words (says James) the people are exalted above the King, and made the judges of the King's deposing p. 424.-Even in Mariana's celebrated book, where the nonsense of bigotry does not interfere, there are some liberal and enlightened ideas of government, of the restraints which should be imposed upon Royal power, of the subordination of the Throne to the interests of the people, etc. etc. (De Rege et Regis Institutione. See particularly lib. i. cap. 68, and 9.)-It is rather remarkable, ton, that England should be indebted to another Jesuit, for the earliest defence of that principle upon which the Revolution was founded, namely, the right of the people to change, * When Innocent X. was entreated to decide the controversy bethe succession (See Doleman's Conferences, written in support tween the Jesuits and the Jansenists, he answered, that he had been of the tule of the Infanta of Spain against that of James I.)-When bred a Lawyer, and had therefore nothing to do with divinity,-It Englishmen, therefore, say that Popery is the religion of slavery, they were to be wished that some of our English pettifoggers knew their should not only recollect that their Loasted Constitution is the work element as well as Pope Innocent X. and bequest of Popish ancestors, they should not only remember the laws of Edward III. under whom (says B-lingbroke) the constitution of our Parliaments, and the whole form of our Government, became reduced into better form, but they should know that even the errors of Popery have leaned to the cause of liberty and that Papists, how ever mistaken their motives may have been, were the first promulgators of the doctrines which led to the Revolution.-Bat, in truth, the political principles of the Roman Catholics have generally been made to 3 The breach of faith which the managers of the Irish Union have been guilty of, in disappointing those hopes of emancipation which they excited in the bosoms of the Catholics, is no new trait in the annals of English policy. A similar deceit was practised to facilitate the Union with Scotland, and hopes were held out of exemption from the Corporation and Test Acts, in order to divert the Parliament of that country from encumbering the measure with any stipulation to that effect. 194 And oh my friend, wert thou but near me now, So smooth, so godly, yet so devilish too, Not the C-md-n who speaks thus of Ireland. Atque uno verbo dicam, sive lernes fecunditatem, sive maris et portuum opportunitatem, sive incolas respicies qui bellicosi sunt ingeniosi, corporum lineamentis conspicui, mirifica carnis mollitie et propter musculorum teneritatem agilitate incredibil, a multis dotibus ita felix est insula, ut non male dixerit Gyraldus, naturam hoc Zephyri regnum benigniori oculo respexisse.'. 2 The example of toleration, which Bonaparte has given, will pro- No canon of Constance or Lateran ever dained heretics more effec- (a) See l'Histoire Naturelle et Polit, du Royaume de Siam, etc. Tyrants by creed, and torturers by text, absurd decrees of old councils and Popes, than their science is in- There is a singular work upon the Souls of the Pagans, by one Mr Fox, in his Speech on the Repeal of the Test Act (1790). condemns the intermisture of religion with the political constitution of a state: What purpose (he asks) can it serve, except the balefa! | purpose of communicating and receiving contamination Under such an alliance corruption must alight upon the one, and slavery overwhelm the other. Locke, too, says of the connexion between Church and State, The He jumbles boundaries on both sides are fixed and immovable. heaven and earth together, the things most remote and opposite, who mixes these two secieties, which are in their original, end, business, and in every thing, perfectly distinct and iulinitely different from eati other. First Letter on Toleration. The corruptions of Christianity may be dated from the period of ins! establishment under Constantine, nor could all the splendour slakh it then acquired stone for the peace and purity which it lost. (a) Virgilius, surnamed Solivagus, a native of Ireland, who maintained, in the 8th century, the doctrine of the Antipodes, and was anathematized accordingly by the Pope. John Scotus Frigens, anothe Irishman, was the first that exci Vrote againt transubstantiation. |