Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

land, in the place of the late lord Strafford, I should have yielded obedience, not for the equipage, and the strength, and the guards which he brought with him, but for the commission which he should first have showed me from our common sovereign that sent him; and, if he could have done that from God Almighty, I would have obeyed him too in England; but that he was so far from being able to do, that, on the contrary, I read nothing but commands, and even public proclamations, from God Almighty, not to admit

him.

"Your second argument is, that he had the same right for his authority, that is the foundation of all others, even the right of conquest. Are we then so unhappy as to be conquered by the person whom we hired at a daily rate, like a labourer, to conquer others for us? Did we furnish him with arms, only to draw and try upon ⚫ur enemies (as we, it seems, falsely thought them) and keep them for ever sheathed in the bowels of his friends? Did we fight for liberty against our prince, that we might become slaves to our servant? This is such an impudent pretence, as neither he nor any of his flatterers for him had ever the face to mention. Though it can hardly be spoken or thought of without passion, yet I shall, if you please, argue it more calmly than the case deserves.

"The right, certainly, of conquest can only be exercised upon those against whom the war is declared, and the victory obtained. So that no whole nation can be said to be conquered, but by foreign force. In all civil wars, men are so far from stating the quarrel against their country, that they do it only against a person or party, which they really believe, or at least pretend, to be pernicious to it; neither can there be any just cause for the destruction of a part of the body, but when it is done for the preservation and safety of the whole. It is our country that raises men in the quarrel, our country that arms, our country that pays, them, our country that authorizes the undertaking, and by that distinguishes it from rapine and murder; lastly it is our country that directs and commands the army, and is indeed their general. So that to say, in civil wars, that the prevailing party conquers their country, is to say, the country conquers itself. And, if the general only of that party be the conqueror, the army, by which he is made so, is no less conquered than the army which is beaten, and have as little reason to triumph in that victory, by which they lose both their honour and liberty. So that, if Cromwell conquered any party, it was only that against which he was sent; and what that was must appear by his commission. It was (says that) against a company of evil counsellors, and disaffected persons, who kept the king from a good intelligence and conjunction with his people. It was not then against the people. It is so far from being so, that even of that party which was beaten, the conquest did not belong to Cromwell, but to the parliament which employed him in their service, or rather indeed to the king and parliament, for whose service (if there had been any faith in men's vows and protestations) the wars were undertaken. Merciful God! did the right of this

miserable conquest remain then in his majesty ; and didst thou suffer him to be destroyed, with more barbarity than if he had been conquered even by savages and canibals? Was it for king and parliament that we fought; and has it fared with them just as with the army which we fought against, the one part being slain, and the other fled? It appears therefore plainly, that Cromwell was not a conqueror, but a thief and robber of the rights of the king and parliament, and an usurper upon those of the people. I do not here deny conquest to be sometimes (though it be very rarely) a true title; but I deny this to be a true conquest. Sure 1 am, that the race of our princes came not in by such a one. One nation may conquer another sometimes justly; and if it be unjustly, yet still it is a true conquest, and they are to answer for the injustice only to God Almighty (having nothing else in authority above them) and not as particular rebels to their country, which is, and ought always to be, their supe- . rior and their lord. If perhaps we find usurpation instead of conquest in the original titles of some royal families abroad, (as no doubt there have been many usurpers, before ours, though none in so impudent and execrable a manner) all I can say for them is, that their title was very weak, till, by length of time, and the death of all juster pretenders, it became to be the true, because it was the only one.

"Your third defence of his highness (as your highness pleases to call him) enters in most seasonably after his pretence of conquest; for then a man may say any thing. The government was broken; who broke it? It was dissolved; who dissolved it? It was extinguished; who was it, but Cromwell, who not only put out the light, but cast away even the very snuff of it? As if a man should murder a whole family, and then possess himself of the house, because it is better that he, than that only rats, should live there. Jesus God! (said I, and at that word I perceived my pretended angel to give a start and trembled, but I took no notice of it, and went on) this were a wicked pretension, even though the whole family were destroyed; but the heirs (blessed be God !) are yet surviving, and likely to out-live all heirs of their dispossessors, besides their infamy. Rode, caper, vitem, &c. There will be yet wine enough left for the sacrifice of those wild beasts, that have made so much spoil in the vineyard. But did Cromwell think, like Nero, to set the city on fire, only that he might have the honour of being founder of a new and more beautiful one? He could not have such a shadow of virtue in his wickedness; he meant only to rob more securely and more richly in midst of the combustion; he little thought then that he should ever have been able to make himself master of the palace, as well as plunder the goods of the commonwealth. He was glad to see the public vessel (the sovereign of the seas) in as desperate a condition as his own little canoe, and thought only, with some scattered planks of that great shipwreck, to make a better fisherboat for himself. But when he saw that, by the drowning of the master, (whom he himself treacherously knocked on the head, as he was swimming for his life) by the flight and dispersion of others,

and cowardly patience of the remaining company, all was abandoned to his pleasure; with the old hulk, and new mis-shapen and disagreeing pieces of his own, he made up, with much ado, that piratical vessel which we have seen him command, and which, how tight indeed it was, may best be judged by its perpetual leaking.

"First then, (much more wicked than those foolish daughters in the fable, who cut their old father into pieces, in hope by charms and witchcraft to make him young and lusty again) this man endeavoured to destroy the building, before he could imagine in what manner, with what materials, by what workmen, or what architect, it was to be rebuilt. Secondly, if he had dreamt himself to be able to revive that body which he had killed, yet it had been but the insupportable insolence of an ignorant mountebank; and thirdly (which concerns us nearest), that very new thing, which he made out of the ruins of the old, is no more like the original, either for beauty, use, or duration, than an artificial plant, raised by the fire of a chymist, is comparable to the true and natural one which he first burnt, that out of the ashes of it he might produce an imperfect similitude of his own making.

[ocr errors]

"Your last argument is such (when reduced to syllogism, that the major proposition of it would make strange work in the world, if it were received for truth; to wit, that he who has the best parts in a nation, has the right of being king over it. We had enough to do here of old with the contention between two branches of the same family what would become of us, when every man in England should lay his claim to the government? And truly, if Cromwell should have commenced his plea, when he seems to have begun his ambition, there were few persons besides, that might not at the same time have put in theirs too. But his deserts, I suppose, you will date from the same term that I do his great demerits, that is, from the beginning of our late calamities (for, as for his private faults before, I can only wish, and that with as much charity to him as to the public that he had continued in them till hisdeath, rather than changed them for those of his latter days); and therefore we must begin the consideration of his greatness from the unlucky era of our own misfortune; which puts me in mind of what was said less truly of Pompey the Great, Nostrâ miseriâ magnus es. But, because the general ground of your augmentation consists in this, that all men who are effecters of extraordinary mutations in the world, must needs have extraordinary forces of nature, by which they are enabled to turn about, as they please, so great a wheel; I shall speak first a few words upon this universal proposition, which seems so reasonable, and is so popular, before I descend to the particular examination of the eminences of that person which is in question.

"I have often observed (with all submission and resignation of spirit to the inscrutable mysteries of Eternal Providence) that when the fulness and maturity of time is come, that produces the great confusions and changes in the world, it usually pleases God to make it appear, by the manner of them, that they are not the effects of human

force or policy, but of the divine justice and pre destination; and, though we see a man, like that which we call Jack of the clock-house, striking, as it were, the hour of that fulness of time, yet our reason must needs be convinced, that the hand is moved by some secret, and, to us who stand without, invisible direction. And the stream of the current is then so violent, that the strongest men in the world cannot draw up against it; and none are so weak, but they may sail down with it. These are the spring-tides of public affairs, which we see often happen, but seek in vain to discover any certain causes:

[blocks in formation]

"And one man then, by maliciously opening all the sluices that he can come at, can never be the sole author of all this (though he may be as guilty as if really he were, by intending and imagining to be so); but it is God that breaks up the flood-gates of so general a deluge, and all the art then and industry of mankind is not sufficient to raise up dikes and ramparts against it. In such a time it was as this, that not all the wisdom and power, of the Roman senate, nor the wit and eloquence of Cicero, nor the courage and virtue of Brutus, was able to defend their country, or themselves, against the unexperienced rashness of a beardless boy, and the loose rage of a voluptuous madman. The valour and prudent counsels on the one side are made fruitless, and the errors and cowardice on the other harmless, by unexpected accidents. The one general saves his life, and gains the whole world, by a very dream; and the other loses both at once, by a little mistake of the shortness of his sight. And though this be not always so, for we see that, in the translation of the great monarchies from one to another, it pleased God to make choice of the most eminent men in nature, as Cyrus, Alexander, Scipio, and his contemporaries, for his chief instruments and actors in so admirable a work (the end of this being, not only to destroy or punish one nation, which may be done by the worst of mankind, but to exalt and bless another, which is only to be effected by great and virtuous persons); yet, when God only intends the temporary chastisement of a people, he does not raise up his servant Cyrus (as he himself is pleased to call him), or an Alexander (who had as many virtues to do good, as vices to do harm); but he makes the Massanellos, and the Johns of Leyden, the instruments of his vengeance, that the power of the Almighty might be more evident by the weakness of the means which he chooses to demonstrate it. He did not assemble the serpents and the monsters of Africa, to correct the pride of the Egyptians; but called for his

pires.

armies of locusts out of Ethiopia, and formed those who are born for the erection of new cmnew ones of vermin out of the very dust; and | because you see a whole country destroyed by these, you will argue from thence they must needs have both the craft of foxes, and the courage of lions?

"And, I confess, I find nothing of that kind, no not any shadow (taking away the false light of some prosperity) in the man whom you extol for the first example of it. And certainly, all virtues being rightly divided into moral and intellectual, I know not how we can better judge of the former, than by men's actions; or of the latter than by their writings or speeches. As for these latter (which are least in merit, or rather which are only the instruments of mischief, where the other are wanting) I think you can hardly pick out the name of a man who ever was called great, besides him we are now speaking of, who never left the memory behind him of one wise or witty apophthegm even amongst his domestic servants or greatest flatterers. That little in print, which remains upon a sad record for him, is such, as a satire against him would not have made him say, for fear of trans

"It is easy to apply this general observation to the particular case of our troubles in England: and that they seem only to be meant for a temporary chastisement of our sins, and not for a total abolishment of the old, and introduction of a new government, appears probable to me from these considerations, as far as we may be bold to make a judgment of the will of God in future events. First, because he has suffered nothing to settle or take root in the place of that, which hath been so unwisely and unjustly removed, that none of these untempered mortars can hold out against the next blast of wind, nor any stone stick to a stone, till that which these foolish builders have refused, be made again the head of the corner. For, when the indisposed and long-tor-gressing too much the rules of probability. mented commonwealth has wearied and spent I know not what you can produce for the jusitself almost to nothing, with the chargeable, tification of his parts in this kind, but his various, and dangerous experiments of several having been able to deceive so many partimounte-banks, it is to be supposed, it will cular persons, and so many whole parties; have the wit at last to send for a true physi- which if you please to take notice of for the cian, especially when it sees (which is the se- advantage of his intellectuals, I desire you cond consideration) most evidently (as it now to allow me the liberty to do so too when I begins to do, and will do every day more and am to speak of his morals. The truth of more, and might have done perfectly long since) the thing is this, that if craft be wisdom, and that no usurpation (under what name or predissimulation wit, (assisted both and improved text soever) can be kept up without open force, with hypocrisies and perjuries) I must not nor force without the continuance of those op- deny him to have been singular in both; but pressions upon the people, which will at last so gross was the manner in which he made tire out their patience, though it be great even use of them, that, as wise men ought not to to stupidity. They cannot be so dull (when po- have believed him at first, so no man was fool verty and hunger begins to wet their under-enough to believe him at last: neither did any standing) as not to find out this no extraor- man seem to do it, but those who, thought dinary mystery, that it is madness in a na- they gained as much by that dissembling, as tion to pay three millions a year for the he did by his. His very actings of godliness maintaining of their servitude under tyrants, grew at last as ridiculous, as if a player by putwhen they might live free for nothing under ting on a gown, should think he represented their princes. This, I say, will not always lie excellently a woman, though his beard at the hid, even to the slowest capacities; and the same time were seen by all the spectators. If next truth they will discover afterwards is, you ask me, why they did not hiss, and exthat a whole people can never have the will, plode him off the stage; I can only answer, that without having at the same time the power, they durst not do so, because the actors and the to redeem themselves. Thirdly, it does not door-keepers were too strong for the company. look (me thinks) as if God had forsaken the I must confess that by these arts (how grossly family of that man, from whom he has raised soever managed, as by hypocritical praying and up five children, of as eminent virtue, and all silly preaching, by unmanly tears and whinother commendable qualities, as ever lived ings, by falsehoods, and perjuries even diaboliperhaps (for so many together, and so young) cal) he had at first the good-fortune (as men in any other family in the whole world. Es- call it, that is, the ill-fortune) to attain his pecially, if we add hereto this consideration, ends; but it was because his ends were so that by protecting and preserving some of unreasonable, that no human reason could forethem already through as great dangers as ever see them; which made them, who had to do were past with safety, either by prince or with him, believe, that he was rather a wellprivate person, he has given them already meaning and deluded bigot, than a crafty and (as we may reasonably hope it to be meant) malicious impostor: that these arts were a promise and earnest of his future favours. helped by an indefatigable industry, (as you And lastly (to return closely to the discourse term it) I am so far from doubting, that I infrom which I have a little digressed) because tended to object that diligence, as the worst of his I see nothing of those excellent parts of na- crimes. It makes me almost mad, when I hear ture, and mixture of merit with their vices, in a man commended for his diligence in wickedthe late disturbers of our peace and happiness. If I were his son, I should wish to Mess, that uses to be found in the persons of God he had been a more lazy person, and that

he might have found him sleeping at the hours when other men are ordinarily waking, rather than waking for those ends of his when other men were ordinarily asleep. How diligent the wicked are, the Scripture often tells us, "Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood," Isai. lix. 7. " He travels with iniquity," Psal. vii. 14. "He deviseth unischief upon his bed," Psal. xxxiv. 4. "They search out iniquity, they accomplish a diligent search," Psal. Ixiv. 6. and in a multitude of other places. And would it not scem ridiculous, to praise a wolf for his watchfulness, and for his indefatigable industry in ranging all night about the country, whilst the sheep, and perhaps the shepherd, and perhaps the very dogs too are all asleep;

| the empire; it was boldly done, to set the me tropolis of the whole world on fire, and undaunt edly play upon his harp whilst he saw it burning; I could reckon up five hundred boldnesses of that great person (for why should not he, too, be called so?) who wanted, when he was to die, that courage which could hardly have failed any woman in the like necessity.

"It would look (I must confess) like envy, or too
much partiality, if I should say that personal
kind of courage had been deficient in the man we
speak of; I am confident it was not and yet
I may venture, I think, to affirm, that no man
ever bore the honour of so many victories, at the
rate of fewer wounds and dangers of his own body;
and though his valour might perhaps have given
a just pretension to one of the first charges in an
army, it could not certainly be a sufficient ground
for a title to the command of three nations.
"What then shall we say? that he did all this by
witchcraft? He did so, indeed, in a great measure,

The chartreux wants the warning of a bell
To call him to the duties of his cell;
There needs no noise at all t' awaken sin,
Th' adulterer and the thief his larum has by a sin that is called like it in the scriptures.

within.

"And, if the diligence of wicked persons be so much to be blamed, as that it is only an emphasis and exaggeration of their wickedness, I see not how their courage can avoid the same censure. If the undertaking bold, and vast, and unreasonable designs can deserve that honourable name, I am sure, Faux and his fellow gun-powder friends, will have cause to pretend, though not an equal, yet at least the next place of honour: neither can I doubt but if they too had succeeded, they would have found their applauders and admirers. It was bold unquestionably for a man in defiance of all human and divine laws (and with so little probability of a long impunity) so publicly and so outrageously to murder his master; it was bold with so much insolence and affront to expel and disperse all the chief partners of his guilt, and creators of his power; it was bold to violate so openly and so scornfully all acts and constitutions of a nation and afterwards even of his own making; it was bold to assume the authority of calling, and bolder yet of breaking, so many parliaments: it was bold to trample upon the patience of his own and provoke that of all neighbouring countries; it was bold, I say, above all boldnesses, to usurp this tyranny to himself: and impudent above all impudences, to endeavour to transmit it to his posterity. But all this boldness is so far from being a sign of manly courage, (which dares not transgress the rules of any other virtue) that it is only a demonstration of brutish madness or diabolical possession. In both which last cases there used frequent examples to appcar of such extraordinary force as may justly seem more wonderful and astonishing than the actions of Cromwell; neither is it stranger to believe that a whole nation should not be able to govern him and a mad army, than that five or six men should not be strong enough to bind a distracted girl. There is no man ever succeeds in one wickedness, but it gives him the boldness to attempt a greater. It was boldly done of Nero to kill his mother, and all the chief nobility of

But, truly, and unpassionately reflecting upon the advantages of his person, which might be thought to have produced those of his fortune, I can espy no other but extraordinary diligence and infinite dissimulation; and believe he was exalted above his nation, partly by his own faults, but chiefly for ours.

"We have brought him thus briefly (not through all his labyrinths) to the supreme usurped authority; and because you say it was great pity he did not live to command more kingdoms, be pleased to let me represent to you, in a few words, how well I conceive he governed these. And we will divide the consideration into that of his foreign and domestic actions. The first of his foreign, was a peace with our brethren of Holland (who were the first of our neighbours that God chastised for having had so great a hand in the encouraging and abetting our troubles at home): who would not imagine at first glimpse that this had been the most virtuous and laudable deed, that his whole life could have made any parade of? but no man can look upon all the circumstances, without perceiving, that it was purely the sale and sacrificing of the greatest advantages that this country could ever hope, and was ready to reap, from a foreign war, to the private interests of his covetousness and ambition, and the security of his new and unsettled usurpation. No sooner is that danger past, but this Beatus Pacificus is kindling a fire in the northern world, and carrying a war two thousand miles off westwards. Two millions a year (besides all the vails of his protectorship) is as little capable to suffice now either his avarice or his prodigality, as the two hundred pounds were, that he was born to. He must have his prey of the whole Indies both by sea and land, this great alligator. To satisfy our Anti-Solomon (who has made silver almost as rare as gold, and gold as precious stones in his new Jerusalem) we must go, ten thousand of his slaves, to fetch him riches from his fantastical Ophir. And, because his flatterers brag of him as the most fortunate prince (the Faustus, as well as Sylla, of our nation, whom God never forsook in any of his undertakings) I desire them to consider, how,

since the English name was ever heard of, it never received so great and so infamous a blow as under the imprudent conduct of this unlucky Faustus; and herein let me admire the justice of God in this circumstance, that they who had enslaved their country (thongh a great army, which I wish may be observed by ours with trembling) should be so shamefully defeated by the hands of forty slaves. It was very ridiculous to see how prettily they endeavoured to hide this ignominy under the great name of the Conquest of Jamaica; as if a defeated army should have the impudence to brag afterwards of the victory, because, though they had fled out of the field of battle, yet they quartered that night in a village of the enemy's. The war with Spain was a necessary consequence of this folly; and how much we have gotten by it let the custom-house and exchange inform you; and, if he please to boast of the taking a part of the silver fleet, (which indeed nobody else but he, who was the sole gainer, has cause to do) at least, let him give leave to the rest of the nation (which is the only loser) to complain of the loss of twelve hundred of her ships.

"But because it may here perhaps be answered, that his successes nearer home have extinguished the disgrace of so remote miscarriages, and that Dunkirk ought more to be remembered for his glory, than St. Domingo for his disadvantage; I must confess, as to the honour of the English courage, that they were not wanting upon that occasion (excepting only the fault of serving at least indirectly against their master) to the upholding of the renown of their warlike ancestors. But for his particular share of it, who sate still at home, and exposed them so frankly abroad, I can only say, that, for less money than he in the short time of his reign exacted from his fellowsubjects, some of our former princes (with the daily hazard of their own persons) have added to the dominion of England, not only one town, but even a greater kingdom than itself. And this being all considerable as concerning his enterprizes abroad, let us examine in the next place, how much we owe him for his justice and good government at home.

"And, first, he found the commonwealth (as they then called it) in a ready stock of about 800,000 pounds; he left the commonwealth (as he had the impudent raillery still to call it) some two millions and an half in debt. He found our trade very much decayed indeed, in comparison of the golden times of our late princes; he left it as much again more decayed than he found it : and yet not only no prince in England, but no tyrant in the world, ever sought out more base or infamous means to raise monies. I shall only instance in one that he put in practice, and another that he attempted, but was frighted from the execution (even he) by the infamy of it. That which he put in practice was decimation; which was the most impudent breach of all public faith

By decimation, is here meant, not the putting to death of every tenth man (which is the usual sense of this term), but the levying of the tenth penny on the estates of the Royalists. The word is so used by sir John Denham, HURD.

that the whole nation had given, and all private capitulations which himself had made, as the nation's general and servant, that can be found out (I believe) in all history, from any of the most barbarous generals of the most barbarous people. Which, because it has been most excellently and most largely laid open by a whole book written upon that subject, I shall only desire you here to remember the thing in general, and to be pleased to look upon that author, when you would recollect all the particulars and circumstances of the iniquity. The other design, of raising a present sum of money, which he violently pursued, but durst not put in execution, was by the calling in and establishment of the Jews at London; from which he was rebuked by the universal outcry of the divines, and even of the citizens too, who took it ill, that a considerable number at least amongst themselves were not thought Jews enough by their own Herod. And for this design, they say, he invented (oh Antichrist! Пogov and ô Hongos! to sell St. Paul's to them for a synagogue, if their purses and devotions could have reach'd to the purchase. And this indeed, if he had done only to reward that nation, which had given the first noble example of crucifying their king, it might have had some appearance of gratitude: but he did it only for love of their mammon; and would have sold afterwards for as much more St. Peter's (even at his own Westminster) to the Turks for a mosquito. Such was his extraordinary piety to God, that he desired he might be worshipped in all manners, excepting only that heathenish way of the Common-prayer book. But what do I speak of his wicked inventions for getting money; when every penny, that for almost five years he took every day from every man living in England, Scotland, and Ireland, was as much robbery, as if it had been taken by a thief upon the highways? Was it not so? or can any man think that Cromwell, with the assistance of his forces and moss-troopers, had more right to the command of all men's purses, than he might have had to any one's whom he had met and been too strong for upon a road? And yet, when this came, in the case of Mr. Coney3, to be disputed by a legal trial, he (which was the highest act of tyranny that ever was seen in England) not only discouraged and threatened, but violently imprisoned the counsel of the plaintiff; that is, he shut up the law itself a close prisoner, that no man might have relief from, or access to it. And it ought to be remembered, that this was done by those men, who a few years before had so bitterly decried, and openly opposed, the king's regular and formal way of proceeding in the trial of a little ship-money.

But, though we lost the benefit of our old courts of justice, it cannot be denied that he set up new ones; and such as they were, that as no virtuous prince before would, so no ill one durst, erect. What, have we lived so many hundred years under such a form of justice as has been able regularly to punish all men that offended against it; and is it so deficient just now, that we must seek out new ways how to proceed

3 Which the reader may see in lord Clare 'don, H. R. vol. iii. fol. p. 596. HURD.

« AnteriorContinuar »