History Of Civilisation In Europe. (continued 6)

Lecture XII. Effects Of The Reformation.

In the course of our inquiry, we have had frequent occasion to lament the disorder and anarchy of European society, and to complain of the difficulty of analysing and depicting a society so scattered, incohesive, and discordant. We have longed for, and impatiently invoked, the era of general interests, of order, and of social unity. We have now reached it, and are entering upon the epoch in which everything is summed into general facts and general ideas, upon the very epoch of order and unity. We there, however, encounter a difficulty of another kind. It has hitherto required great pains to link facts together, to place them in their proper stations, to seize what they possessed in common, and unfold some appearance of a whole. In modern Europe, things are in an opposite vein. All the elements and incidents of the social state are modified by, and act and react upon, each other; the mutual relations of men are far more numerous and complicated; and the same multiplicity and entanglement occur in their relations with the government of the state, in the relations of states amongst themselves, and in the ideas and in all the workings of the human mind. In the periods we have passed through, a great number of facts appeared isolated, alien to each other, and without reciprocal influence. Now, we have no more isolation; all things meet, commingle, and vary as they meet. Can anything be conceived more difficult than to distinguish the veritable unity amid such a diversity, to determine the bent of a movement so extended and complex, to present so prodigious a throng of different elements, all closely linked together, in a general summary; in a word, to predicate the general predominant fact which sums up and expresses a long series of facts, which is the characteristic of an epoch, and the faithful expression of its influence and its action in the history of civilisation?

We shall quickly perceive the extent of this difficulty in the great event which has now to occupy our attention.

We encountered in the twelfth century an event, religious in its origin, if rather the reverse in its nature—I mean the Crusades. Notwithstanding the vastness of the event, its long duration, and the variety of circumstances it produced, it was an easy task to unravel its general character, and to determine with some precision its unity and influence. We have at present to consider the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, that which is commonly called the Reformation. Allow me here to premise, that I shall make use of the word reformation, as of a simple and settled term, synonymous with religious revolution, and without implying a judgment of its nature. Thus on the threshold we perceive how difficult it is to assign the veritable character of that great crisis—to state in a general form what it was, and what it effected.

We must seek for the Reformation between the beginning of the sixteenth and the middle of the seventeenth century, for it was within this interval that the life, so to speak, of the event was comprised, that it took birth and ended. All historical events have in some sort a limited career. Their consequences are prolonged to infinity, they are connected with all the past and all the future, but at the same time they have a peculiar and restricted existence, in which they arise, expand, and fill with their development a certain portion of space, then shrink and retire from the stage to give place to some new occurrence.

The precise date that we assign to the origin of the Reformation is of little importance. We may take the year 1520, in which Luther burnt publicly at Wittemburg the bull of Leo X. which condemned him, and thus severed himself officially from the Roman church. It is between this year and the middle of the seventeenth century, the year 1648, the date of the treaty of Westphalia, that the life of the Reformation is comprised. Here is the proof of it. The first and greatest effect of the religious revolution was to create two classes of states in Europe—the Catholic and the Protestant—to bring them in front of each other, and engage them in war. With a variety of vicissitudes, that war lasted from the commencement of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century. It was not until the treaty of Westphalia, in 1648, that the Catholic and Protestant states came finally to a reciprocal recognition, agreed upon a mutual existence, and undertook to live in society and in peace, in spite of the diversity in religion. Dating from 1648, diversity in religion ceased to be the predominant principle in the classification of states, or in their external policy, relations, and alliances. Up till that epoch, Europe, with certain modifications, was essentially divided into a Catholic league and a Protestant league. After the treaty of Westphalia, this distinction disappeared, and states became allied or divided from very different considerations than religious dogmas. At that point, therefore, the preponderance, or rather the career, of the Reformation was stopped, although its consequences did not cease their course of development.

Let us now go hastily over this career, and, without doing more than naming events and men, let us touch upon what it contains. By this mere indication, by this dry and partial nomenclature, we shall see what must be the difficulty of summing up a series of facts, so varied and complex, into one general fact, and of determining the veritable character of the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, and assigning its station in the history of our civilisation.

The Reformation broke out during the prevalence of a great political crisis—namely, the contest between Francis I. and Charles V., between France and Spain. This contest commenced for the possession of Italy, was continued for that of the German empire, and finally raged for preponderance in Europe. It was the period in which the House of Austria rose to predominance. It was likewise at the time that England, under Henry VIII., interfered in continental politics with more regularity, consistency, and effect, than it had previously done.

Viewing the course of events in the sixteenth century in France, we find it a prey to the great religious wars between the Protestants and Catholics, which became the means and the occasion of a new attempt on the part of the great lords to regain the power which was slipping from them, and to control royalty. This was the political meaning of our religious wars, of the league, of the struggle of the Guises against the Valois, which was terminated by the accession of Henry IV.

In Spain, during the reign of Philip II., the rebellion of the United Provinces exploded. The Inquisition, under the name of the Duke of Alva, waged war against civil and religious liberty, under that of the Prince of Orange. Whilst liberty triumphed in Holland, through the perseverance and prudent measures of the Netherlander, it utterly perished in Spain itself, where absolute power, both lay and ecclesiastical, reigned supreme.

In England occurred the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth; the war between Elizabeth, the head of Protestantism, and Philip II.; the advent of James Stuart to the throne of England; and the beginning of the great quarrel of royalty and the people.

About the same period, new powers arose in the north. Sweden was reintegrated by Gustavus Vasa in 1523. Prussia was created by the secularising of the Teutonic order. [Footnote 17] The northern powers then took a place in European politics which they had not previously occupied, the importance of which was shortly to be evinced in the thirty years' war.

I return to France. There we have the reign of Louis XIII.; Cardinal Richelieu changing the internal administration of the country, entering into relations with Germany, and affording support to the Protestant party. In Germany occurred the struggle against the Turks during the latter part of the sixteenth century, and at the commencement of the seventeenth the thirty years' war, the greatest event in modern eastern Europe: then flourished Gustavus Adolphus, Wallenstein, Tilly, the Duke of Brunswick, and the Duke of Weimar, the greatest names that Germany has yet to boast of.

At the same epoch, Louis XIV. ascended the throne of France, and the Fronde commenced. In England, the revolution which dethroned Charles I. exploded.

Thus I take only the greatest events in history, events which every one knows by name, and we see how great are their number, variety, and importance. If we inquire into events of another nature, events less palpable, and which are less indicated by general allusions or names, we shall find the era in question equally replete with them. It was at this time that the greatest changes in the political institutions of almost all nations took place, that pure monarchy prevailed in the majority of the great states, whilst in Holland the most powerful republic in Europe was formed, and in England the constitutional monarchy definitively, or nearly so, triumphed. In the church, it was the era in which the ancient monastic orders lost almost all political power, and were replaced by a new order of another character, whose importance, wrongly perhaps, is held as far superior to theirs—the Jesuits. In the same epoch, the Council of Trent eradicated what might yet remain of the influence of the Councils of Constance and Basle, and secured the final triumph of the court of Rome in ecclesiastical affairs. If we leave the church, and cast an eye upon philosophy, upon the unshackled career of the human mind, we see two men arise, Bacon and Descartes, the authors of the greatest philosophical revolution which the modern world has undergone, and the chiefs of two schools disputing with each other for mastery. It was also the brilliant period of the Italian literature, and the era in which French and English literature commenced. Finally, it was the time during which the great colonies were planted, and the most active developments of the commercial system were stimulated.

Thus, whether we regard the political, ecclesiastical, philosophical, or literary events of that epoch, we find them more numerous, varied, and important, than in all the ages that had preceded it. The activity of the human mind was manifested in all directions, in the relations of men amongst themselves, in their relations with the public power, in the relationships of states, and in purely intellectual operations; in a word, it was an era of great men and great things. And during this very age, the religious revolution which engages our attention was the greatest of all its events, its predominant fact, that which gives to it its name, and determines its character. Amongst so many operative causes playing so important a part, the Reformation was the most powerfully operative, that to which all the others tended, and which modified them all, or was by them itself modified. So much so, that our present task is to characterise with truthfulness, to sum up with precision, the event which controlled all the others in an age of the most important events, the cause which effected more than all the others in an age of the most weighty causes.

It will be evident how extremely difficult it is to gather facts so various, so extensive, and so closely interwoven, into one clear historical conclusion. It is, however, necessary. When events are once consummated, when they have become history, the great and essential object with men is to find out the general facts, the connection of causes and effects. This is, so to speak, the immortal portion of history, that to which all generations have need of referring, in order to comprehend the past, and to comprehend themselves. This necessity for generalisation, for arriving at a rational deduction, is the most potent and the most glorious of all the intellectual wants; but in satisfying it, great care must be taken to guard against imperfect and precipitate generalisations. Nothing is more enticing than to yield to the pleasure of fixing immediately, and at first sight, upon the general character and permanent results of such an era or such an event. The human mind is like the human will, ever eager to come to the point, impatient of obstacles and fetters, and urgent for conclusions, willingly overlooking the facts which tease and embarrass it; but whilst disregarding them, it cannot destroy them, and they still subsist to convict it some day of error, and to condemn its precipitancy. There is but one means by which the human mind can escape this danger, and that is, by courageously and patiently devoting itself to the study of facts, before generalising and forming conclusions. Facts are to the thought what the rules of morality are to the inclination. It is bound to ascertain them, and bear their weight; and it is only when it has fulfilled this duty, and when it has formed an accurate idea of its extent, that it is permitted to expand its wings, and take flight to the lofty region whence it may behold all things in their entirety and their results. If it insists upon mounting too quickly, and without having gained a knowledge of all the territory which it has thence to contemplate, the chances of error and failure are beyond calculation. It happens as in the solution of an arithmetical question, where a preliminary mistake leads to others, ad infinitum. Thus in history, if in the first labour all the facts have not been properly investigated, if the taste for precipitate generalisation has been indiscreetly indulged, it is impossible to assign limits to the consequent absurdities.

By so emphatically dilating on this point, I am in some degree prejudicing myself. I have been necessarily restricted in this inquiry to attempts at generalising, to giving general summaries of facts which we have not had leisure to study closely. Having now arrived at an epoch in which this task is much more difficult than at any other time, and when the chances of error are far greater, I have judged it my duty to be explicit in laying down these positions, so that my own deductions may be exposed to their test. Having done this, I shall now proceed to attempt upon the Reformation what I have done upon other events—namely, to endeavour to distinguish its predominant fact, to describe its general character; in a word, to assign the station and the part of this great occurrence in the progress of European civilisation.

It will be recollected in what state we left Europe at the end of the fifteenth century. We witnessed in its course two great experiments at religious revolution or reform; an experiment at legal reform by the councils, and one at revolutionary reform by the Hussites in Bohemia: both of them we saw stifled and failing in effect; and yet we were made aware that it was impossible to extinguish the spirit, and that it was sure to reproduce itself under one form or another—that, in fact, what the fifteenth century had essayed, the sixteenth would inevitably accomplish. It is not my intention to recount the details of the religious revolution of the sixteenth century; I suppose them to be almost universally known. I am concerned merely with its general influence upon the destinies of the human race.

When investigations have been made into the causes which originated this great event, the adversaries of the Reformation have imputed it to accidents, to evils in the course of civilisation—for example, to the sale of indulgences being intrusted to the Dominicans, which rendered the Augustines jealous; and as Luther was an Augustine, that this, therefore, was the determining motive of the Reformation. Others have attributed it to the ambition of the sovereigns, to their rivalship with the ecclesiastical power, and to the greediness of the lay nobles, who were anxious to get possession of the property of the church. It has been thus wished to explain the religious revolution solely by the worst features in mankind and in human affairs—by private interests and personal passions.

On the other hand, the friends and partisans of the Reformation have attempted to account for it by the mere necessity for effective reform in the abuses of the church; they have represented it as a redressing of religious grievances, as an undertaking conceived and executed with the sole design of reconstituting the primitive and pure church. Neither the one nor the other of these explanations appears to me well founded. The second has more truth than the first; at least it is more noble, more in accordance with the extent and importance of the event, but yet I do not conceive it at all more exact. In my opinion, the Reformation was neither an accident, the consequence of some great chance, or of some personal interest, nor a simple exhibition of religious improvement, the fruit of an imaginary perfection of humanity and truth. There was a cause more powerful than all these would imply, and which rises superior to all the particular causes. It was a great explosion for the liberty of the human understanding, an uncontrollable demand for its free exercise of thought and judgment, by its own powers alone, upon facts and ideas which Europe previously received, or was held bound to receive, from the hands of authority. It was a grand undertaking for the enfranchisement of human thought, and, to call things by their proper names, a rebellion of the human understanding against power in spiritual matters. Such is, as far as I can judge, the veritable character, the general and predominant character, of the Reformation.

When we inquire into the state, at this epoch, of the human mind, on the one hand, and into that of the spiritual power of the church, which had the government of the human mind, on the other, we are struck with a twofold fact.

With regard to the human understanding, we perceive a much greater activity, a much greater craving for development, than it had ever felt. This increased activity was the result of various causes, which had been accumulating for ages. For example, there had been times in which heresies sprang up, occupied some space, and fell to be replaced by others; and there had been times in which philosophical opinions held the same course as heresies. The labours of the human mind, both in the religious and philosophical sphere, had been accumulating from the eleventh to the sixteenth century; and the moment was at last come in which they were destined to have a result. Furthermore, all those means of instruction, instituted or authorised in the bosom of the church itself, were far from being fruitless. Schools had been founded, and from these schools issued men not barren in knowledge, whose number increased daily. These men at length insisted upon thinking for themselves, and for their own guidance, for they felt themselves more fortified than they had ever previously been. Finally came that revival and youthful vigorousness imparted to the human intellect by the restoration of antiquity, of which I have before described the progress and effects.

All these united causes communicated a highly energetic movement, an imperative necessity for advancement, to the mind of man in the sixteenth century.

The situation of the spiritual power, which exercised government over the human understanding, was very different; it had fallen, on the contrary, into a state of inertness and stagnation. The political influence of the church, or of the court of Rome, was much attenuated; the European society was no longer in its exclusive possession, but had passed under the dominion of lay governments. Nevertheless, the spiritual power preserved all its pretensions, all its prominence, and all its external importance. There happened to it what has more than once occurred to old governments. The majority of the complaints that were alleged against it were scarcely better founded than in many such outcries. It is not true that the court of Rome was highly tyrannical in the sixteenth century, or that the abuses, properly so called, were more numerous or glaring than they had been at other times. On the contrary, the ecclesiastical government had never perhaps been more easy, more tolerant, or more disposed to let things take their course, provided the rights it had hitherto enjoyed were so far recognised as not to render them inoperative, provided it were assured its previous existence, and were paid its accustomed dues. It would willingly have left the human mind undisturbed, if the human mind would have been equally complacent with it. But it is precisely when governments have least vigour, when they do least mischief, that they are attacked, because men can then do so, whereas formerly they could not.

It is therefore evident, from the mere examination of the state of the human mind at this era, and of that of its government, that the character of the Reformation must have been a new burst of liberty, a grand rebellion of human intellect. This was undoubtedly the predominant cause, that which rose above all the others; a cause more influential than all the interests either of nations or of sovereigns, than the demand for reform, properly so called, than the desire for the redress of those grievances which were complained of at that period.

I will suppose that after the Reformation had broken out for some years, when it had paraded all its pretensions, and inventoried all alleged grievances, the spiritual power had suddenly fallen into agreement with it, and had said, 'Well, so be it, I will reform all; I will revert to an order of things more just and religious. I will suppress all annoyances, arbitrary interferences, and tributes; even in matters of faith I will modify, re-interpret, and return to the primitive meanings. But the grievances being thus redressed, I will preserve my position; I will be, as formerly, the government of the human mind, with the same power and the same rights.' Would the religious revolution have been satisfied with these terms, and stopped in its course! I think not; I believe firmly that it would have continued its career, and that, after demanding reform, it would have claimed liberty. The crisis of the sixteenth century was not simply a reforming one; it was essentially revolutionary. It was impossible to remove from it that character in any instance, or its inherent merits and defaults; it had all the consequent effects of such a character.

Let us cast a glance at the consequences of the Reformation; let us see what it mainly, and above all things, effected in the different countries in which it was developed. It is to be observed that it was developed in very various and distinct situations, in the midst of very unequal chances. Now, if we find that, if in spite of the diversity of situations and the inequality of chances, it everywhere followed an identical bent, achieved an identical result, and preserved an identical character, it will be clear that this character, which thus surmounted all the diversities of situation, and all the inequalities of chance, must be the fundamental character of the event, and that the result thus obtained must be that which it essentially aimed at.

Now, wherever the religious revolution of the sixteenth century prevailed, if it did not work out the complete enfranchisement of the human mind, it procured it a new and considerable increase of liberty. It undoubtedly left thought subject to all the risks of liberty or servitude as to political institutions, but it abolished or disarmed the spiritual power, the systematic and formidable government of the thought. This result the Reformation attained amid the most opposite combinations. In Germany there was no political liberty, nor did the Reformation introduce it; indeed it rather strengthened than weakened the power of princes, and was more adverse to the free institutions of the middle ages than favourable to their development. Nevertheless, it aroused and sustained a liberty of thought in Germany greater perhaps than anywhere else. In Denmark, a country where absolute power prevailed, where it penetrated even into the municipal institutions, as well as into the general ones of the state, the influence of the Reformation wrought the enfranchisement and free exercise of thought in all its directions. In Holland, amidst a republic, and in England, under a constitutional monarchy, and in spite of a religious tyranny long of a very harsh order, the emancipation of the human intellect was likewise accomplished. Finally, in France, in a situation which seemed the least favourable to the effects of the religious revolution, in a country where it had been subdued, there even it was a principle of intellectual independence and freedom. Up till 1685—that is to say, until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes—the Reformation held a legal existence in France. During that long space of time it wrote and discussed, and provoked its adversaries to write and discuss also. This fact alone, this war of pamphlets and conferences between the old and the new opinions, disseminated in France a liberty much more real and active than is generally imagined; a liberty which conduced to the prosperity of science and morality, and to the improvement of the French clergy, as well as to the advantage of thought in general. Let us look at the discussions of Bossuet with Claude, and at the whole of the religious polemics at that period, and then ask ourselves whether Louis XIV. would have sanctioned a similar display of liberty upon any other topic. Thus the Reformation and the opposite party enjoyed more liberty in France in the seventeenth century than was allowed to any person or thing besides. The religious spirit was then much bolder, and treated its questions with far less reserve, than the political spirit, even of Fenelon in his Telemachus. This state of things did not cease until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Now, from 1685 to the outburst of the human intellect in the eighteenth century, there were not forty years; and the influence of the religious revolution in furtherance of intellectual liberty had scarcely ceased, when that of the philosophical revolution commenced.

Thus we see that wherever the Reformation penetrated, wherever it played an important part, whether victorious or vanquished, it had, as a general, predominant, and invariable result, a prodigious advancement to the activity and liberty of thought, a grand tendency to the emancipation of the human understanding from thraldom.

And not only had the Reformation this constant result, but it aspired to none other; wherever that was obtained, it was contented, and very rarely sought for anything further, so much was it the groundwork of the event, its primitive and fundamental character! Thus in Germany, so far from demanding political liberty, it accepted, I will not say political servitude, but the absence of freedom. In England, it consented to the hierarchical constitution of the clergy, and the existence of a church as full of abuses as ever the Roman church was, and much more servile to power. How came it to pass that the Reformation, so fierce and stubborn in many respects, thus showed itself so accommodating and supple? Because it had achieved the general fact to which it tended—the abolition of the spiritual power, and the enfranchisement of human thought. I repeat, wherever it attained that object, it easily reconciled itself to all systems and situations.

Now let us take the reverse side of this examination, and let us see what happened in those countries where the religious revolution did not penetrate, or was early stifled, or was unable to gain any development. History shows that the human mind was not enfranchised: two great countries, Spain and Italy, distinctly attest the fact. Whilst in those portions of Europe where the Reformation has held an important station, the human intellect has taken, in the three last centuries, an activity and freedom previously unknown, in those where it has not penetrated it has fallen in the same epoch into weakness and inertness; insomuch, that the trial and the counter-trial have been made, as it were, simultaneously, and produced analogous results.

Therefore the essential character of the Reformation, the most general consequence of its influence, the predominant fact of its destiny, was the outburst of thought and the abolition of absolute power in spiritual matters.

I call it a fact, and I say so designedly. The emancipation of the human intellect was in reality, in the course of the Reformation, a fact rather than a principle, a result rather than an intention. The Reformation in this respect, I think, performed more than it had undertaken, more perhaps than it even wished. Unlike many other revolutions which have remained greatly in arrear of what they intended, in which the event has fallen far short of the design, the consequences of the Reformation surpassed its views. It is greater as an event than as a system; what it effected it did not fully foresee, nor would have fully avowed.

What were the reproaches which its adversaries constantly fulminated against the Reformation? Which of its results did they cast, so to speak, in its teeth to reduce it to silence?

Two principal ones: 1st, the multiplicity of sects, the boundless license of the understanding, the destruction of all spiritual authority, and the dissolution of the religious society as a whole; 2nd, tyranny and persecution. 'You provoke license,' said they to the reformers; 'you produce it; and when it appears, you wish to restrain and repress it. And how do you repress it? By the harshest and most violent measures. You also persecute heresy, and by virtue of an illegitimate authority.'

Survey and sum up all the great attacks directed against the Reformation, severing the purely dogmatical questions, and these are the two fundamental upbraidings to which it will be found they always reduce themselves.

The reformed party was greatly embarrassed at these accusations. When the multiplicity of sects was objected to it, instead of avowing the fact, and asserting the legitimacy of their free development, it anathematised sectarians, deplored their appearance, and denied them. Was it taxed with persecution? It defended itself with some perplexity; it alleged necessity; and had, as it said, the right to repress and punish error, for it was in possession of the truth. Its dogmas and institutions were alone legitimate; and if the Roman church had no authority to punish the reformers, it was because it was in the wrong as against them.

And when it was not its enemies, but its own offspring, that upbraided the dominant party in the Reformation with its persecutions, when the sectarians, whom it anathematised, said to it, 'We only do what you have done; we only separate ourselves as you have separated yourselves,' it was still more puzzled to find an answer, and very frequently only replied by additional rigour.

Thus, in fact, whilst labouring for the destruction of absolute power in spiritual matters, the religious revolution of the sixteenth century was ignorant of the true principles of intellectual liberty. It was busy enfranchising the human mind, and still pretending to govern it by the law; in practice it was giving prevalence to free examination, whilst in theory it was merely purposing to substitute a legitimate for an illegitimate power. It did not rise to the first cause, nor descend to the last consequences, of its own work. Hence it fell into a twofold fault. On the one hand, it neither knew nor respected all the rights of the human thought; at the moment that it clamoured for them, for its own behoof, it violated them with others. On the other hand, it was unable rightly to estimate the rights of authority in the intellectual order of things: I do not speak of coercive authority, which could possess no rights in such matters, but of the purely moral authority, acting upon the understanding alone, and merely by way of influence. The greater part of the reformed countries were deficient in a good organisation of the intellectual society, and in regulating the action of old and general opinions. They could not reconcile the rights and demands of past times or tradition with those of liberty; and the cause was undoubtedly owing to this circumstance, that the Reformation never fully comprehended and accepted either its own principles or its own consequences.

Thence, also, it was invested with a certain aspect of inconsistency and narrow-mindedness which frequently gave a hold and advantage over it to its adversaries. These latter knew perfectly well both what they were doing and what they desired; they traced their conduct to certain principles, and avowed all their consequences. There has never been a government more consistent and systematic than that of the Roman church. In practice, the court of Rome has greatly vacillated and yielded, much more than the Reformation; but in principle, it has far more completely followed out its own system, and held a conduct infinitely more coherent in all its parts. This perfect knowledge of what is done, and what is wished to be done, this complete and thoughtful adoption of a doctrine and a design, give considerable strength to a party. The religious revolution of the sixteenth century presented in its progress a striking example of it. It is well known that the principal power instituted to contest with it was the order of Jesuits. Take a glance at their history: they everywhere failed; and wherever they interfered to any extent, they brought misfortune upon the cause they meddled with. In England, a race of kings was their victims; in Spain, the people. The eternal nature of things, the development of modern civilisation, and the liberty of the human understanding, all those powers against which the Jesuits were called upon to struggle, rose up against them, and vanquished them. And not only did they miscarry, but what were the means they were constrained to employ? No lustre or grandeur marked their actions; they performed no brilliant events, nor did they put in movement imposing masses of men; they transacted matters by under-hand, obscure, and subordinate modes—ways which were not at all calculated to strike the imagination, or to secure for them that public sympathy which is attracted by great circumstances, whatever may be their principle and design. The party against which they strove, on the contrary, was not only victorious, but conquered with renown, effecting great things by great means; it aroused the people, strewed Europe with illustrious men, and changed in the face of day the fate and constitution of states. In fact, every thing was against the Jesuits, both fortune and appearances; neither the good sense which decides success, nor the imagination which has need of pomp, were consulted in their career. And yet nothing is more certain than that they had greatness; a great idea is attached to their name, their influence, and their history. It is because they knew what they were doing, and what they wished to do; because they had a full and clear conception of the principles upon which they acted, and of the object to which they conduced—that is to say, they had grandeur of thought and of intention, which saved them from the ridicule which is always attached to repeated reverses and despicable means. Where, on the contrary, the event was greater than the design, where a knowledge of the first principles and final results of the action seemed to be wanting, there remained something imperfect, inconsistent, and contracted, which placed the very conquerors in a sort of rational and philosophical inferiority that has sometimes made its influence be felt in events. This was, I conceive, the weak side of the Reformation in the contest between the two spiritual systems, the old and the new, which frequently embarrassed its situation, and prevented it from defending itself as efficiently as it ought to have done.

I might consider the religious revolution of the sixteenth century under several other aspects. I have said nothing, nor intend to say anything, upon its purely dogmatical phase, upon what it effected in religion, properly so called, or as to the relations of the human soul with God and eternity; but I might exhibit it in the variety of its relations with the social order, deducing throughout results of immense importance. For example, it recalled religion to the bulk of the laymen, to the world of the faithful; previously, religion was, so to speak, the exclusive domain of the clergy, of the ecclesiastical order, who distributed its consolations, but alone disposed of the groundwork, and almost solely possessed the right to speak of it. The Reformation caused religious doctrines to re-enter into general circulation, and it reopened the field of faith to believers, into which they had lost their right to penetrate. It had, at the same time, a second result: it banished, or nearly so, religion from politics; it restored independence to the temporal power. At the very same moment that religion re-entered, so to speak, into the possession of the faithful, it parted from the government of society. In the reformed countries, notwithstanding the diversity of ecclesiastical constitutions—in England even, where that constitution is more akin to the ancient order of things—the spiritual power has no longer any serious idea of directing the temporal.

I might enumerate many other consequences of the Reformation, but I must restrain myself, and be satisfied with having brought out its principal character—the emancipation of the human understanding, and the abolition of absolute power in the spiritual order of things; an abolition which undoubtedly was not complete, but nevertheless the greatest advance in that direction which had been made up to our own time.

Before concluding, I shall say a few words upon the striking similarity of destiny that is observable between the civil and the religious societies, in the revolutions to which they have been subjected in the history of modern Europe.

The Christian society commenced, as I before explained when speaking of the church, by being a perfectly free society, formed solely by virtue of a common creed, without institutions, without government, properly so called, regulated merely by moral and fluctuating powers, according to the wants of the moment. Civil society also commenced in Europe, partially at least, by bands of barbarians; a society perfectly free, in which each remained because he wished it, without laws or instituted powers. Upon the termination of that state, which could not be reconciled with any great social development, the religious society placed itself under a government essentially aristocratical; it was governed by the clergy, the bishops, councils, and ecclesiastical aristocracy. A fact of the same nature occurred in the civil society, upon issuing out of barbarism, it falling equally under the domination of an aristocracy or lay-feudalism. The religious society left the aristocratic form to enter that of pure monarchy; for such was the purport of the triumph of the court of Rome over the councils and over the European ecclesiastical aristocracy. The same revolution was accomplished in civil society; it was also by the destruction of the aristocratical power that royalty prevailed and took possession of the European world. In the sixteenth century, an insurrection broke out in the bosom of the religious society against the system of pure monarchy, against absolute power in spiritual things. This revolution drew in its train, established and consecrated, the spirit of free inquiry in Europe. In our own days, we have witnessed a similar event in the civil order. The temporal absolute power has been equally attacked and vanquished. Thus we see that the two societies have gone through the same vicissitudes, and suffered the same revolutions; but the religious society has always been in the van in this career.

We are now in possession of one of the great facts of modern society—the spirit of free inquiry, or the liberty of the human understanding. We have also seen that, at the same time, political centralisation prevailed almost everywhere. In my next lecture I shall treat of the English Revolution—that is to say, of the event in which the spirit of free examination and pure monarchy, both the results of the progress of civilisation, found themselves for the first time in array.

Lecture XIII. Effects Of The English Revolution.

We have seen that, in the course of the sixteenth century, all the elements and facts of the ancient European society had gathered into two essential facts—the spirit of free inquiry, and the centralisation of power. The one prevailed in the religious society, and the other in the civil. Thus the emancipation of the human mind and pure monarchy achieved their triumphs at the same time.

A struggle between these two facts was pretty sure at some period to take place, for there was something contradictory between them; the one was the defeat of absolute power in spiritual affairs, and the other its victory in temporal affairs; the one promoted the decay of the old ecclesiastical monarchy, and the other perfected the ruin of the old liberties of feudal and borough times. Their simultaneousness continued, as we have seen, until the revolutions of the religious society marched quicker than those of the civil; the first came forth at the period of the enfranchisement of individual thought, whilst the last only declared itself at the instant of the concentration of all the powers into one general power. The coincidence in time of the two facts, therefore, far from accruing from their similarity, did not even moderate their contradictory natures. They were each an advance in the course of civilisation, but advances linked to different situations, and of distinct moral dates, so to speak, although coincident in time. That they should clash with each other before they succeeded in blending harmoniously, was inevitable.

Their first battle-field was England. The principle of the English Revolution was the struggle of free inquiry, the fruit of the Reformation, against the ruin of all political liberty, the fruit of the success of pure monarchy; an attempt to abolish absolute power in temporal as well as in spiritual affairs. Such is the character of that revolution in the course of our civilisation.

Why did this contest occur in England rather than elsewhere? Why were the revolutions of a political character more nearly simultaneous with those of a moral character in that country than on the continent?

The English royalty had undergone the same vicissitudes as the continental; in the reign of the Tudors, it reached a pitch of concentration and energy which it had never before known. I do not mean to say that the practical despotism of the Tudors was more violent, or more hurtful to England, than that of their predecessors had been. There were, I have no doubt, quite as many acts of tyranny, exactions, and violations of right under the Plantagenets as under the Tudors, and perhaps more. I am also of opinion that at this epoch the government of monarchy on the continent was more rough and arbitrary than in England. The new fact under the Tudors consisted in absolute power becoming systematic; royalty pretended to a primitive, indefeasible sovereignty, and assumed a tone and held a language which it had not previously ventured upon. The theoretical pretensions of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., were far different from those put forth by Edward I. or Edward III., although practically the power of these last-named kings was neither less arbitrary nor extensive. I repeat, it was the principle or rational system of the monarchy which changed in England, during the sixteenth century, rather than its practical power; royalty claimed to be absolute and superior to all laws, even to those which it declared itself willing to respect.

On the other hand, the religious revolution was not accomplished in England as upon the continent; it was the work of the kings themselves. Not that the seeds of a popular reform had not long existed there also, and even put forth some shoots, which in all probability would have grown rapidly to maturity, but Henry VIII. took the initiative, and royalty led the way to revolution. It thence resulted, at least in the beginning, that as a reform of ecclesiastical abuses and tyranny, as a liberation of the human mind, the English reformation was much less complete than on the continent. It was made, as a matter of course, in the interests of its authors. The king and the retained episcopacy divided the spoils, both of wealth and of power, of the preceding government, the papacy. The consequence was not long in being felt. It was said that the reformation was made, whilst the greater part of the motives which had rendered it desirable still subsisted. It reappeared, therefore, under the popular form, clamouring against the bishops as it had exclaimed against the court of Rome, and accusing them of being so many popes. Whenever the general fate of the religious revolution was jeopardised, whenever it was a question of war against the ancient church, all portions of the reformed party rallied together, and confronted the common enemy; but the danger being over, the internal struggle recommenced, the popular reformation renewed its attack on the royal and aristocratical reformation, denounced its abuses, complained of its tyranny, and called upon it to keep its promises, and not to reproduce the power which it had so recently subverted.

About the same epoch, a movement for liberation, a craving for political liberty formerly unfelt, or at least not strongly, arose in the civil society. In the course of the sixteenth century, the commercial prosperity of England increased with extreme rapidity, and at the same time territorial wealth or landed property changed hands to a great extent. Sufficient attention has not been paid to the fact contained in the increased division of landed estates in the sixteenth century, in consequence of the ruin of the feudal aristocracy, and from many other causes which it would be too tedious to enumerate here. All authorities show us the number of landed proprietors prodigiously augmenting, and estates passing in a great measure into the possession of the gentry or small nobility, and the burgesses. The high nobility, or House of Lords, was at the commencement of the seventeenth century not nearly so rich as the House of Commons. There was therefore a great development of industrial resources and a great mutation in landed property at one and the same time. Contemporary with these two facts came up a third, the new movement of mind. The reign of Elizabeth is perhaps the era of the greatest literary and philosophical activity in England, the epoch of fertile and bold thoughts. The Puritans pushed unhesitatingly to all the consequences of a narrow but strong doctrine; other spirits, less moral and more liberal, careless of principle or system, welcomed with eagerness all ideas which promised satisfaction to their curiosity or aliment to their zeal for knowledge. Wherever the intellectual movement is hailed with delight, liberty soon becomes a necessity, and it promptly passes from the public mind into the government.

In some of the continental countries where the Reformation had broken out, a desire of the same nature, a certain longing for political liberty, had indeed manifested itself also, but the means of success were wanting to this new spirit; it knew not where to fix itself, finding no basis either in institutions or manners, but remaining vague and uncertain, seeking in vain how to set about satisfying itself. In England, it happened quite otherwise: there the spirit of political liberty, which reappeared in the sixteenth century, consequent upon the Reformation, had a basis and means of action in the ancient institutions, and in the whole social state.

There is no person who is ignorant of the first origin of the free institutions of England, or how the coalition of the great barons, in 1215, wrested from King John Magna Charta. It is not so generally known that the great charter was renewal and confirmed at repeated intervals by the majority of the kings. There were more than thirty confirmations of it between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. And not only was the charter confirmed, but new statutes were made in order to strengthen and develop it. It continued to subsist, therefore, without break or interval. At the same time the House of Commons was formed, and had taken its place in the supreme institutions of the country. It was under the race of the Plantagenets that it veritably took root; not that it played any great part in the state at that epoch, for the government, properly so called, did not come within the scope of its functions, even as a mere influence; it interfered only when it was called upon by the king, and almost always did so with reluctance and hesitation, as if fearing to engage and compromise itself, and displaying no eagerness to augment its power. But when it concerned the defence of private rights, the fortunes or dwellings of the citizens, individual liberty, in a word, the House of Commons upon such occasions performed its mission with great energy and constancy, and established all the principles which have become the basis of the English constitution.

After the Plantagenets, and especially under the Tudors, the House of Commons, or rather the whole parliament, presents itself under another aspect. It ceased to defend individual liberty so strenuously as under the Plantagenets. Arbitrary arrests, and violations of private rights, became much more frequent, and were oftener passed over in silence. As a counterpoise, the parliament held a greater place in the general government of the state. Henry VIII., for instance, needing a public support or instrument in order to change the religion of the country, and to regulate the succession to the throne, made use of the parliament, and especially of the House of Commons. Under the Plantagenets it had been an instrument of resistance, an assertor of private rights; under the Tudors it became an instrument of government, a participator in general politics; so that, at the end of the sixteenth century, although it had served or suffered almost all descriptions of tyranny, its importance had nevertheless greatly increased; its power was founded—that power upon which, in truth, representative government is based.

Therefore, when we refer to the state in which the free institutions of England stood at the end of the sixteenth century, we find the following facts:—First, certain maxims and principles of liberty, which had been constantly recorded, and of which the country and the legislature had never lost sight; secondly, certain precedents or examples of liberty, greatly mingled, it is true, with contrary precedents and examples, but sufficing to legitimate and give efficacy to remonstrances, and to support the advocates of liberty in the struggle commenced against arbitrary power or tyranny; thirdly, certain special and local institutions, fruitful as seeds of liberty, as juries, the right of assembly, and of being armed, and the independence of the municipal administrations and jurisdictions; fourthly, and finally, the parliament and its power, of which royalty had more need than ever, as it had alienated the greater part of its independent revenues, its domains, feudal rights, &c. and was obliged to have recourse, for its own sustenance, to the vote of the country.

The political state of England in the sixteenth century was thus quite different from that of the continent. In spite of the tyranny of the Tudors, and in spite of the systematic predominance of pure monarchy, there was nevertheless a substantial basis and assured means of action for the new spirit of liberty.

Two national demands were therefore coincident at this epoch in England. On the one hand, a demand for religious revolution and liberty amidst the reformation already introduced; and on the other, a demand for political liberty amidst the pure monarchy then in progress. These two spirits were also enabled to adduce, for their own advancement, what had previously occurred in either the one or the other direction. As was natural, they formed an alliance. The party bent on the pursuit of religious reform, invoked political liberty to the succour of its faith and its conscience against the king and the bishops; and the friends of political liberty courted the aid of the popular reformation. The two parties united to struggle against absolute power in temporal and in spiritual affairs—a power altogether concentrated in the hands of the king. Such was the origin and meaning of the English revolution.

It was essentially consecrated to the defence or the conquest of liberty. To the religious party it was a means, to the political party an object; but with both, the question at issue was one of liberty, and they were obliged to pursue it in common. There was not any real religious quarrel between the Episcopal and the Puritanical parties; the contest was not joined upon dogmas, upon objects of faith, properly so called; not that there were not between them substantial differences of opinion upon important and grand points, but that was not the principal and capital matter in dispute between them. Practical liberty was what the Puritan party wished to wrest from the Episcopal party, and it was for that it struggled. There was, undoubtedly, also a religious party, which had a system to found, and peculiar dogmas, an ecclesiastical discipline and constitution of its own, to make prevalent—namely, the Presbyterian party; but although it laboured to attain its objects with all its might, it was not in a condition to put forward all its claims in these respects. Placed upon the defensive, oppressed by the bishops, and unable to effect anything without the sanction of the political reformers—its necessary allies and chiefs—liberty was for it the predominant interest; it was, indeed, the general interest and common object of all the parties which co-operated in the movement, however great their diversity. Taking everything, therefore, into consideration, the English revolution was essentially political. It was accomplished amidst a religious people, and in a religious age, and religious ideas and passions served it as instruments; but its fundamental purpose and definitive end were political—the establishment of liberty, and the abolition of absolute power.

I shall go through the different phases of this revolution, and decompose it into the great parties which followed each other in it. I will afterwards connect it with the general course of European civilisation, and denote its place and influence therein. It will be seen by the detail of facts, as it appeared at first sight, that it was really the earliest shock of the free spirit of inquiry with pure monarchy, the earliest explosion of the antagonistic principles of those two great powers.

Three principal parties came forward in this influential crisis; three revolutions were in some sort continued and successively produced upon the stage. In each party, in each revolution, two several parties were allied and marched in conjunction—the one of a political, and the other of a religious cast. The first took the lead, and the second followed, but each was necessary to the other; insomuch that the twofold character of the event is distinctly marked in all its phases.

The first party which appeared—that under whose banner all the others at first ranged themselves—was the party aiming at legal reform. When the English revolution commenced, when the Long Parliament assembled in 1640, everyone said, and many sincerely believed, that a legal reform would meet all difficulties, and that there was sufficient in the ancient laws and usages of the country to afford a remedy for all abuses, and to establish a system of government in perfect conformity with the public desire. This party loudly blamed, and was sincerely anxious to prevent illegal taxation, arbitrary imprisonments, and all acts, in fact, condemned by the recognised laws of the land. At the base of its ideas was the belief in the sovereignty of the king—that is to say, in absolute power. A secret instinct forewarned it that there was in that dogma something false and dangerous, so it would willingly have avoided allusion to it; but urged to extremity, and forced to explain itself, it admitted that there resided in royalty a power superior to all human origin and all control, and defended it when needful. It held, at the same time, that this sovereignty, absolute in principle, was bound to respect in its exercise certain rules and forms, and that there were certain limits beyond which it could not go; and furthermore, that these rules, forms, and limits were sufficiently established and guaranteed in Magna Charta, in the confirmative statutes, and in the old common law of the country. Such was its political creed.

In religious matters, the legal party thought that episcopacy had greatly encroached, that the bishops had too much power, that their jurisdiction was too extensive, and that it was necessary to restrict it, and keep guard over its exercise. Nevertheless, it strongly adhered to episcopacy, not only as an ecclesiastical institution, and as a system of church government, but also as a necessary support to the royal prerogative, and as a means for defending and sustaining the supremacy of the king in religious affairs. The doctrines of the sovereignty of the king, in the political order of things, to be exercised according to legal recognised forms and within the like limits, and of the supremacy of the king in religious matters, administered and supported by episcopacy, were maintained in the twofold system of the legal party. Its chief men were Clarendon, Colepepper, Lord Capel, and even Lord Falkland, although a warmer advocate for popular liberties, and it reckoned in its ranks almost all the great lords who were not servilely devoted to the court.

Behind them advanced a second party, which I will call that of political revolution. This held that the ancient guarantees, the ancient legal barriers, had been, and were, insufficient; that a great change, a veritable revolution, was required, not in the forms, but in the real essence, of the government; that it was necessary to deprive the king and his council of their independent power, and place political preponderance in the House of Commons; and that the government, properly so called, belonged to that assembly and its chiefs. This party did not investigate its own ideas or intentions so clearly or systematically as I have done, but these were the main features of its political doctrines and tendencies. Instead of the absolute sovereignty of the king, or of pure monarchy, it rested its belief in the sovereignty of the House of Commons as representing the country. Under this idea was concealed that of the sovereignty of the people, an idea of which the party was far from estimating all the bearings, or from intending all the consequences, but which suggested itself to it, and was embraced under the form of the sovereignty of the House of Commons.

The religious party of the Presbyterians was closely united with the party of political revolution. The Presbyterians wished to effect a revolution in the church analogous to that which their allies meditated in the state. They wished to have the church governed by assemblies (presbyteries), and to lodge religious power in a hierarchy of assemblies working into each other, as their allies wished to lodge political power in the House of Commons. But the Presbyterian revolution was more bold and complete, for it aimed at changing the form, as well as the groundwork, of church government, whilst the political party aspired only to displace influences and preponderance, and did not contemplate any overthrow in the form of the institutions.

Thus the chiefs of the political party were not all favourable to the Presbyterian organisation of the church. Several of them— Hampden and Holles, for example—would have preferred a moderate episcopacy, restricted to functions purely ecclesiastical, and permitting increased liberty of conscience. However, they gave in to it, for they could not spare their fanatical allies.

A third party demanded still more. This alleged that it was necessary to change at once the groundwork and the form of the government, that the whole political constitution was vicious and disastrous. This party threw aside the past history of England, and rejected all national institutions and traditions, in order to found a new government upon pure theory, in as far at least as it conceived a theory. It was not only a revolution in the government that it designed to accomplish, but also a social revolution. The party of which I have just spoken, the party of political revolution, was anxious to introduce great changes into the relations of the parliament with the crown, and wished to extend the power of the houses, especially of the Commons, to invest them with the right of nomination to great public offices, and with the supreme direction of general affairs; but its schemes of reform went not beyond these points. It had no idea of changing, for instance, the electoral, the judicial, the administrative, or the municipal system of the country. The republican party meditated all these changes, publicly asserted their necessity, and designed, in a word, to remodel not only the public powers, but the social relations, and the distribution of private rights.

Like the preceding, this party also was composed of a religious and of a political portion. In the latter class were the real theoretical republicans, Ludlow, Harrington, Milton, &c. By their side were ranged the republicans from circumstances and interest, the principal chiefs of the army—Ireton, Cromwell, and Lambert— all more or less sincere in their first impulse, but soon controlled and led by personal views and the necessities of their situation. Around them was rallied the religious republican party, composed of all the enthusiastic sects which recognised no power as legitimate but that of Jesus Christ, and, whilst waiting for His coming, desired the government of His elect. At the tail of the party was a rather considerable number of libertines and fantastical dreamers, the former promising themselves a career of licentiousness, the latter equality of goods and universal suffrage.

In 1653, after twelve years of contest, all these parties had successively appeared and failed in their designs. They ought at least to have been convinced of this result, and it is certain that the public was so. The legal party, quickly thrust aside, had seen the ancient constitution and laws spurned and trampled under foot, and innovations penetrating on all sides. The party of political revolution witnessed parliamentary forms perish in the novel use to which it was wished to apply them; after twelve years of domination, it saw the House of Commons reduced, by the successive expulsion of the Royalists and the Presbyterians, to a very small number of members, despised and detested by the public, and utterly incapable of governing. The republican party seemed to have succeeded best; it had, in appearance, remained master of the field of battle; the House of Commons counted scarcely more than fifty or sixty members, all republicans. They might believe and call themselves masters of the country; but the country resolutely refused to allow itself to be governed by them, and they were incapable of giving effect to their will in any quarter; they had no means of action either on the army or the people. No social bond or safety any longer subsisted; justice was not rendered, or, if it were, it was not justice; its administration was directed by party-spirit, chance, or malice. And not only was there an absence of all safety in the relations of society, but there was none even on the high roads; they were covered with robbers and brigands. Thus physical as well as moral anarchy prevailed, and the House of Commons and the republican council of state were utterly inefficient to preserve order.

The three great parties of the Revolution, then, had been successively called upon to conduct it, to govern the country according to their ability and theories; and they had been found incapable of doing so; they had all three completely failed, and were writhing powerless. 'It was then,' says Bossuet, 'that a man was found who left nothing to fortune that he could place beyond its reach by counsel and foresight;' an expression quite erroneous, and which all history belies. No man ever left more to fortune than Cromwell; none ever exposed more to hazard, or proceeded with more temerity, without design or object, but the determination to go as far as fate would permit him. Cromwell is characterised by a boundless ambition and an admirable skill in converting each day and each circumstance into a means of progression, the art of turning fortune to account, without presuming to direct it. He displayed qualities such as perhaps no man who has pursued a career at all analogous ever evinced; he was suited for all the phases, the most distinct and varied, of the revolution. He was equally a man for the first as for the last of its periods: in the beginning, the instigator of insurrection, the promoter of anarchy, and the most fierce revolutionist in England; subsequently, the man of reaction, the re-establisher of order and of social organisation; thus playing by himself alone all the parts which, in the usual course of revolutions, are divided amongst the greatest actors. We cannot say that Cromwell was a Mirabeau; he wanted eloquence, and in the first years of the Long Parliament, although highly active, he made no figure. But he was successively Danton and Bonaparte. He had more than any other contributed to prostrate power, and he raised it up because none other could assume and wield it. Some government was requisite, and all aspirants to the conduct of one miserably failed; but he succeeded. Once master of the government, this man, whose ambition had shown itself so daring and insatiable, who had always advanced, pushing fortune before him, and stayed by no barrier, exhibited a good sense, prudence, and perception of the practicable, sufficient to control his most violent desires. There is no doubt he had a keen relish for absolute power, and felt a strong inclination to place the crown upon his head, and bequeath it to his family. This latter purpose he abandoned, when he became timeously aware of the peril it would expose him to; and with regard to absolute power, although he practically exercised it, he was of too sound an intellect not to comprehend that the feeling of his age was utterly repugnant to it, that the revolution in which he had co-operated, and which he had followed in all its phases, had been directed against despotism, and that the irrepressible desire of England was to be governed by a parliament, and according to parliamentary forms. Therefore he, the despot, by taste and in fact, endeavoured to have a parliament, and to govern after a parliamentary fashion. He addressed himself successively to all parties; he attempted to form a parliament with the religious enthusiasts, with the republicans, with the Presbyterians, and with the officers of the army. He tried all possible means to constitute a parliament which could and would act with him. He sought in vain: all parties, when once seated in Westminster, wished to wrest from him the power he exercised, and to govern in their turn. I will not affirm that Cromwell's principal motive was not his personal interest and gratification, but there is not the least doubt that if he had thrown up his power, he must necessarily have resumed it the next day; for Puritans or royalists, republicans or officers, none others than Cromwell himself were conditioned to govern with any order or justice. The experiment, in fact, had been made. It was impossible to permit the parliament—that is, the parties sitting in parliament—to assume an empire which they could not preserve. Such, then, was the situation of Cromwell; he governed by a system which he knew perfectly well was hateful to the country, and he exercised a power acknowledged to be necessary, but which was acceptable to no one. His sway was not considered by any party as a definitive, established government. The royalists, the Presbyterians, and the republicans, the army itself, the party which was the most devoted to him, were all convinced that he was only a transitory master. At bottom, he never reigned over the minds of men; he was never anything in their eyes but a make-shift, a necessity of the moment. The Protector, absolute master of England, was obliged all his life to make use of force to retain power. No party could govern as he was able to do, yet none looked upon him with a kindly or favourable eye; on the contrary, he was constantly attacked by all.

At his death, the republicans alone were in so compact an order as to lay hands on power. They did so, and succeeded no better than they had formerly done. It was not from any want of confidence in themselves, at least so far as the fanatics of the party were concerned. A pamphlet of Milton, published at that epoch, remarkable for talent and enthusiasm, is entitled, 'An Easy and Prompt Method for Establishing the Republic' The self-conceit of these men was as great as ever. They shortly relapsed into that impossibility of governing which they had previously evinced. Monk assumed the conduct of the event which all England was breathlessly expecting. The Restoration was effected.

The restoration of the Stuarts was a truly national occurrence. It presented itself with the advantages of an ancient government, reposing on the traditions and cherished remembrances of the country, and at the same time with the favourable auspices of a new government, exposed to no recent trial, and the faults and weight of which had not been lately experienced. The ancient monarchy was the only system of government, which for twenty years had not been condemned for its incapacity and its bad success in the administration of the country. These two causes rendered the Restoration popular: it was opposed only by the dregs of the violent parties; the public rallied around it with great good-will. In the opinion of the country at large, it was the only chance and means of forming a legal government, the fact which was most ardently desired by the community. This was also what the Restoration undertook to effect, the promise of a legal government was precisely what it held out.

The first royalist party which took the management of affairs, after the return of Charles II., was in fact the legal party, represented by its ablest chief, the high chancellor Clarendon. From 1660 to 1667, Clarendon was prime minister, and possessed of the greatest influence in England. Clarendon and his friends reappeared with their ancient system, the absolute sovereignty of the king, restrained within legal limits, controlled in matters of taxation by the parliament, and in matters of private right and individual liberty by the tribunals of justice; but possessing, in the practice of government, properly so called, an almost entire independence, and the most decisive preponderance, to the exclusion, or even in spite of, the wishes of the majority in parliament, and especially of those of the House of Commons. On other points, they evinced a proper respect for legal order, a solicitude for the interests of the country, a noble sentiment of its dignity, and a moral tone highly grave and honourable. Such was the character of Clarendon's administration for seven years.

But the fundamental ideas upon which this administration rested, the absolute sovereignty of the king, and the government raised beyond the sphere of the influence of parliament, were antiquated and dead in the public mind. Notwithstanding the reaction of the first moments of the Restoration, twenty years of parliamentary dominion had placed them beyond resuscitation. A new element shortly burst out in the heart of the royalist party, personified in the Deists, rakes, or libertines, who participated in the ideas of the time, partook the belief that power was vested in the Commons, and caring little for legal order, or the absolute sovereignty of the king, were anxious only for their own success, and sought it wherever they perceived any means of influence or power to exist. They formed a party which allied itself with the discontented national party, and Clarendon was overthrown.

Then came a new system of government, carried on by that portion of the royalist party that I have just described. The rakes or libertines formed the ministry that is styled the ministry of the Cabal, and several of the administrations that succeeded it. Let us see what were their characteristics. No solicitude as to principles, laws, or rights; no regard for justice or truth; the adoption of such means of success as each occasion presented; if success depended on the influence of the Commons, everything was prostituted to gain it; if it were necessary to disregard the Commons, it was done without scruple, asking their pardon the next moment. Corruption was tried one day, cajolery with the nation the next: no care was evinced for the general interests of the country, for its dignity or its honour; in a word, it was a government essentially selfish and immoral, scorning all doctrines and views of public advantage; but at bottom, and in the practice of affairs, sufficiently intelligent and liberal. Such was the character of the Cabal, of the ministry of the Earl of Danby, and of the whole English government from 1667 to 1679. In spite of its immorality, and its disdain for principles and the true interests of the country, this government was less odious and unpopular than the ministry of Clarendon had been. And why? Because it was more in the spirit of the age, and understood better the sentiments of the people, even whilst it mocked them. It was not antiquated and foreign to the feelings of the country like that of Clarendon; and though it did the nation much greater injury, it was less distasteful to it.

At last there came a moment when corruption, servility, and disregard for the public rights and honour were pushed to such a point, as to render farther sufferance impossible. There was a general outcry against the government of the libertines. A national and patriotic party was formed in the House of Commons. The king was induced to call its chiefs to the council. Then came into the direction of affairs Lord Essex, the son of him who had commanded the first parliamentary armies during the civil war, Lord Russell, and a man who, without having any of their virtues, was far superior to them in political ability, Lord Shaftesbury. Thus placed at the head of affairs, the national party gave tokens of its incapacity; it knew not how to gain the moral force of the country; it was unable to conciliate the interests, habits, and prejudices either of the king, of the court, or of the persons with whom it had to transact business. It conveyed to no one, either to king or people, any great idea of its talents or energy. After remaining a short time in power, it sank. The virtues of its chiefs, their generous courage, the nobleness of their deaths, have exalted them in history, and justly placed them in the highest rank; but their political capacity did not equal their virtue, and they knew not how to exercise the power which had been unable to corrupt them, or make the cause triumphant for which they could lay their heads on the block.

Let us see in what state the English Restoration was after the failure of this attempt. It had, like the Revolution, in some sort tried all parties and administrations—the legal, the corrupt, and the national—and none had succeeded. The country and the court found themselves in a situation almost analogous to that in which England was in 1653 at the close of the revolutionary storm. Recourse was had to the same expedient: what Cromwell had done for lessening the evils of the Revolution, Charles II. did for the advantage of his crown—he plunged into the career of absolute power.

James II. succeeded his brother. Then a second question was added to that of absolute power—the question of religion. James wished to make papistry dominant as well as despotism. Thus we see, as at the commencement of the Revolution, a religious rising and a political rising, both directed against the government. It has been often asked what would have happened if William III. had not been in existence, or if he had not come with his Hollanders to put an end to the quarrel between James II. and the English people? I am decidedly of opinion that the same event would have been accomplished. The whole of England, excepting a very small party, was aroused at that epoch against James, and most assuredly the Revolution of 1688 would have been effected under one form or another. But that crisis was hastened by causes more influential than the internal state of England. It was a European event as well as an English. It is at this point that the English Revolution is connected by facts themselves, independently of the influence which its example has exercised, to the general course of European civilisation.

Whilst the struggle was breaking out in England which I have just alluded to—the war of absolute power against civil and religious liberty—one of the same kind was proceeding on the continent, very different as to the actors, the forms it assumed, and the theatre of action, but at bottom the same, and for the same cause. The pure unmixed monarchy of Louis XIV. was striving to become a universal monarchy; at least it gave occasion for the apprehension, and in fact Europe was impressed with that fear. A league amongst certain status in Europe was formed to oppose this attempt, and the chief of that league was the head of the party for securing religious and civil liberty in Europe—William, Prince of Orange. The Protestant republic of Holland, with William as its leader, undertook to resist the pure monarchy represented and led on by Louis XIV. The apparent question at issue was not as to civil and religious liberty in the interior of states, but of the independence of those states. Louis XIV. and his opponents had no idea that they were contesting between them the same question that was at stake in England. Their struggle was maintained, not as between parties, but as between states; it was carried on by war and diplomacy, and not by political party movements and revolutions. But at bottom it was the same question that was agitated.

When, therefore, James II. recommenced in England the contest between absolute power and liberty, it occurred in the midst of the general war which was going forward in Europe between Louis XIV. and the Prince of Orange, the representatives of two great systems fighting on the Scheldt as well as on the Thames. The league against Louis XIV. was so strong, that several sovereigns entered it, either publicly, or in a concealed but effective manner, who were assuredly greatly averse to the flourishing of civil and religious liberty. The Emperor of Germany and Pope Innocent XI. supported William against Louis XIV. And William passed into England, less to serve the internal interests of that country, than to draw it fully into the league against Louis. He took this new kingdom as an additional force which he needed, and which his adversary had previously made use of against him. So long as Charles II. and James II. had reigned, England had belonged to Louis XIV.; it was he who had disposed of its force, and had invariably directed it against Holland. England was therefore drawn from the party of pure and universal monarchy, to become the main instrument and support of religious liberty. This is the European side of the Revolution of 1688, and it is by this connection that it took a station in the events of Europe considered as a whole, independently of the part it played by its example, and the influence it exercised over the minds of men in the following century.

Thus we see, as I stated at the commencement, that the true meaning and essential character of this revolution was the attempt to abolish absolute power in temporal as well as in spiritual matters. This fact is to be found in all the phases of the Revolution, in its first period up to the Restoration, and in the second up to the crisis of 1688, whether we consider it in its interior development as to England, or in its relations with Europe in general.

It remains for us to study the same great event—the struggle between pure monarchy and free inquiry on the continent, or at least its causes and approaches. This will be the object of my next and last lecture.

Lecture XIV. Cause And Effects Of The French Revolution.

I endeavoured in my last lecture to determine the veritable character and political purport of the English Revolution. We have seen that it was the first encounter of the two great facts, into which the whole civilisation of primitive Europe had gathered in the course of the sixteenth century—namely, pure monarchy on the one hand, and the spirit of free inquiry on the other. These two powers came to blows for the first time in England. It has been thence attempted to deduce a radical difference between the social state of England and that of the continent; it has been alleged that no comparison was possible between regions of so distinct a destiny, and that the English people had lived in a moral atmosphere of their own, in a moral isolation as complete as their geographical.

There has been, it is true, an important difference between the English and the continental civilisations, which it behoves us to investigate. We have already had a glimpse of it in the course of our inquiry. The different principles and elements of society have been developed in England in some degree simultaneously and abreast, much more so at least than on the continent. When I endeavoured to determine the peculiar character of the European civilisation, as compared with the ancient and Asiatic civilisations, I made it appear that the first was varied, copious, and complex; that it had never fallen under the dominion of any exclusive principle; and that the different elements of the social state had been there brought into juxtaposition, conflict, and mutual modifications, and had been constantly obliged to act and exist in common. This fact—the general characteristic of European civilisation—has been especially the feature of English civilisation; it has been there elicited with most coherency and palpability. In that country the civil and religious orders—aristocracy, democracy, royalty, local and central institutions, moral and political development—have progressed and expanded in conjunction and pell-mell, so to speak; if not with parallel rapidity, always, at least, at a short distance from each other. Under the sway of the Tudors, for example, in the most brilliant career of pure monarchy, we see the democratic principle, the popular power, break through and intrench itself almost at the same time. The revolution of the seventeenth century exploded, at once a political and religious movement. The feudal aristocracy appeared in it but in a very enfeebled state, and betraying various symptoms of decay; yet it was still enabled to preserve a station in it, to play an important part, and secure itself a share in its results. There are the same features in the whole course of English history; no ancient element ever completely perishes, nor does any new element ever exclusively triumph; no special principle ever gains absolute dominion. There is always a simultaneous development of the different powers, and arrangement between their pretensions and respective interests.

Upon the continent, the march of civilisation has been much less complex and less complete. The various elements of society—the religious order, the civil order, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy—have not been developed conjointly, and side by side, but successively. Each principle or system has had in some sort its day. Such an age, for instance, belongs, I shall not say exclusively, for that would be going too far, but with a marked preponderance, to the feudal aristocracy, another to the monarchical principle, and another to the democratic principle. Compare the French with the English middle ages, the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries of French history with the corresponding centuries of English. It will be found that, in the epoch in question, feudalism was almost absolutely paramount in France, and royalty and democracy nearly nullified. In England, on the contrary, although the feudal aristocracy held the chief sway, royalty and democracy evinced themselves both vigorous and important. Royalty triumphed in England under Elizabeth, as in France under Louis XIV.; but how many measures was she compelled to keep!—how many restrictions, sometimes from the aristocracy, sometimes from the democracy, had she to endure! Thus in England each system or principle has had its era of strength and prosperity; but never so completely or so exclusively as on the continent. The conqueror, for the time being, has always been constrained to tolerate the presence of its rivals, and to allow each its portion.

To this difference in the march of the two civilisations, are attached advantages and inconveniences which have, in fact, manifested themselves in the history of the two countries. There is no doubt, for instance, but that this simultaneous development of the various social elements has greatly contributed to accelerate the arrival of England at the object of all society—that is to say, at the establishment of a government at once regular and free, with a despatch unknown to any continental state. It is precisely of the essence of government to respect all interests and all powers, to reconcile them, and make them exist and prosper in community. Now, such was, by the concurrence of a multitude of causes, the early disposition and relation of the different elements of English society; therefore a general and somewhat regular government had there less difficulty in being constituted. In the same manner, liberty is in its essence the simultaneous manifestation and action of all interests, rights, powers, and social elements. England was therefore much nearer to its attainment than the majority of other states. From the same causes, the formation of a national sound sense, and of a general comprehension of public affairs, was necessarily more quickly effected there. Sound sense in political affairs consists in knowing how to grasp all facts in the mind, rightly appreciate them, and apportion to each its due influence; in the English social state it became a necessity, a result natural from the course of civilisation.

As a set-off, each principle or system having had its turn, having triumphed in a more complete and exclusive manner in the continental states, the development has been made on a greater scale, and with more grandeur and display. Royalty and the feudal aristocracy, for example, have appeared upon the continental stage with much more hardihood, extension, and freedom. All the political experiments, so to speak, have had a broader basis, and been more complete. It has thence resulted that political ideas, I mean general ideas, and not the application of practical sense to the conduct of affairs, but political ideas and doctrines, have been raised much higher, and deployed with far more rational vigour. Each system having in some sort presented itself alone and prominently, and having remained for a length of time on the stage, has enabled men to contemplate it in its entirety, to trace it back to its first principles, to follow it to its remotest consequences, and to fully unfold its theory. Whoever observes, with any degree of attention, the English genius, is struck with a double fact. On the one hand, he perceives a soundness of practical sense and ability, and on the other, an absence of general ideas and of elevation of mind on theoretical questions. Whether it is an English work on history, or jurisprudence, or any other matter, that we open, we very rarely find the great and fundamental reasons of things at all treated of. In all things, and especially in political sciences, pure doctrine, philosophy, science, properly so called, have flourished more luxuriantly on the continent than in England; their flights, at all events, have been much more bold and vigorous. And we cannot doubt that the different character of the development of civilisation in the two regions has mainly conduced to this result.

Thus, whatever may be thought of the inconveniences or the advantages which this difference has drawn in its train, it in itself is a real and incontestable fact, and the very circumstance which most profoundly distinguishes England from the continent. But although the various social principles or elements have been developed in that country more simultaneously, and on the continent more successively, it does not follow that at bottom the route and the object have not been the same. Considered in their whole extent, the continent and England have gone through the same great phases of civilisation, events have in each pursued the same course, and the same causes have led to the same effects. This, indeed, convincingly appeared in the picture I presented of civilisation up to the sixteenth century, and it will be equally perceptible in the portraiture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The development of the spirit of free inquiry and of pure monarchy, almost simultaneous in England, were accomplished on the continent at pretty long intervals; but they have been accomplished, and the two powers, after having successively enjoyed a marked predominance, have in the same manner joined battle. Therefore, upon the whole, the general march of the societies has been the same; and although there may be some substantial differences, the resemblance is deeply-seated. A rapid glance at modern times will remove all doubt upon the subject.

On a survey of the history of Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the mind is irresistibly driven to acknowledge that France led the van of European civilisation. On commencing this inquiry, I asserted the fact, and attempted to assign its cause. We shall find it more prominent at this period than before.

The principle of pure monarchy, or absolute royalty, had prevailed in Spain under Charles V. and Philip II., before being developed in France under Louis XIV. In the same manner the principle of free inquiry had reigned in England in the seventeenth century, before its development in France in the eighteenth. Nevertheless, the principle of monarchy did not proceed from Spain, nor that of free inquiry from England, when each pervaded Europe. The two systems remained, as it were, confined to the countries where they had appeared. They must first pass through France, to extend their conquests; in a word, it was necessary that pure monarchy and freedom of inquiry should become French, in order to become European. This communicative character of the French civilisation, this social genius of France, which have been evinced at all eras, shone especially in that upon which we are now engaged. As this fact has been brought out with equal truth and brilliancy upon other occasions more distinctly devoted to an investigation into the influence of French literature and philosophy in the eighteenth century, I need not linger upon it. It has been demonstrated that philosophical France had more authority over Europe, on the point of liberty itself, than free England, and that the French civilisation has shown itself much more active and contagious than that of any other country. It is not necessary for me to enlarge upon the details establishing the fact, and I have only alluded to it to defend the propriety of my restricting the picture of modern European civilisation to France. There are doubtless many differences between the civilisation of France at that epoch, and that of the other states of Europe, which it would be essential to inquire into, if I had pretended to give a full history; but I am obliged to omit many things, even nations and ages, so to speak, in the course I have chalked out for myself. So I shall proceed to concentrate my attention upon the progress of French civilisation—the image, although an imperfect one, of the general progress of things in Europe.

The influence of France in Europe presented itself, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under very different aspects. During the first, it was the French government which acted upon Europe, and which marched at the head of general civilisation. During the second, the preponderance was owing no longer to the government, but to French society, to France herself. At first it was Louis XIV. and his court, afterwards France and its opinions, which governed the minds of men, and drew their attention. In the seventeenth century, there were certainly nations who, as nations, appeared more prominently on the scene, and took a greater part in events, than the French nation. Thus, during the thirty years' war, the German nation, and during the Revolution, the English nation, exercised, on their respective destinies, a greater influence than the French did, at the same period, on theirs. Likewise, in the eighteenth century, there were governments stronger, enjoying greater consideration, and more feared than the French government. There can be little question that Frederic II., Catherine II., and Maria-Theresa, had more weight in Europe than Louis XV. Yet at both epochs it was France which was at the head of European civilisation—first through its government, and afterwards through itself; now through the political action of its masters; and again through its own intellectual development.

Therefore, in order fully to comprehend the prevailing influence on the course of civilisation in France, and consequently in Europe, we must study the French government in the seventeenth century, and French society in the eighteenth. It is necessary to shift the ground and the representation, as time works its changes on the stage and the actors.

Generally speaking, when the subject of discussion is the government of Louis XIV., and the causes of his power and influence in Europe, his renown, his conquests, his magnificence, and the literary glory of his time alone are spoken of. To external causes alone is the attention directed, and to them is ascribed the European preponderance of the French government.

I am of opinion that this preponderance had a deeper groundwork and graver causes. We can scarcely believe that it was solely through victories, or pompous ceremonies, or even through the master-works of genius, that Louis XIV. and his government played at that epoch the prominent part which it would be absurd to deny them.

Every one is aware of the effect produced in France by the consular government thirty years ago, and of the state in which it found the country. Without, an impending foreign invasion, and continual reverses suffered by the French armies; within, the almost complete dissolution of power, and of the nation; no revenues, no public order, in a word, a society prostrated and disorganised—such was France at the accession of the consular government. The prodigious and skilful activity of that government soon assured the safety of the territory, restored the national honour, reorganised the administration of affairs, remodelled legislation, and, in a word, gave fresh birth to society under the aegis of power.

Now, the government of Louis XIV., when it commenced, effected something analogous. With great differences in time, proceedings, and forms, it pursued and attained almost the same results.