Page images
PDF
EPUB

court about him, of vast expense and luxury, masks, and revels, to the debauching of our prime gentry both male and female; not in their pastimes only, but in earnest, by the loose employments of courtservice, which will be then thought honourable. (8) There will be a queen of no less charge; in most likelihood outlandish and a papist, besides a queenmother such already; together with both their courts and numerous train: then a royal issue, and ere long severally their sumptuous courts; to the multiplying of a servile crew, not of servants only, but of nobility and gentry, bred up then to the hopes not of public, but of court-offices, to be stewards, chamberlains, ushers, grooms, even of the close-stool; and the lower their minds debased with court-opinions, contrary to all virtue and reformation, the haughtier will be their pride and profuseness. (9) We may well remember this not long

that the citizens should rule by vicarious succession; and how this ought to be done, Nature herself sufficiently indicates." The doctor's ingenuity in selecting a work of which such is the spirit, in order to advance the cause of royalty, cannot be sufficiently admired. (See book iv. ch. 14, 1. vii. of the original.)

(8) We have here a sufficient refutation of Johnson's notion, that in opposing monarchy, Milton looked chiefly, if not solely, at its expensiveness. He considered a king's court as a great reservoir of vice, from whence every evil and corruption of manners flowed down upon the community; and Charles II., as if to convince the world of the correctness of his theory, more than realized his worst predictions, more than justified his severest reprobation. In fact, the world never witnessed, not even in Capri, scenes more revolting or disgraceful to human nature than the English court then exhibited; proofs of which the reader may find in the Memoires de Grammont.

(9) Of this the history of our aristocracy furnishes but too

since at home; nor need but look at present into the French court, where enticements and preferments daily draw away and pervert the Protestant nobility.

11. As to the burden of expense, to our cost we shall soon know it; for any good to us deserving to be termed no better than the vast and lavish price of our subjection, and their debauchery, which we are now so greedily cheapening, and would so fain be paying most inconsiderately to a single person; who, for any thing wherein the public really needs him, will have little else to do, but to bestow the eating and drinking of excessive dainties, to set a pompous face upon the superficial actings of state, to pageant himself up and down in progress among the perpetual bowings and cringings of an abject people, on either side deifying and adoring him for nothing done that can deserve it. For what can he more than another man? who, even in the expression of a late court-poet, sits only like a great

many examples. Look back: what were the women, who were the men, from whom some of the proudest houses in the kingdom derived what are denominated their honours ? It were well had they been nothing worse than stewards, chamberlains, and grooms. To thrive in a court, no one can be ignorant what qualities are requisite. "Three kings, protested to me," says Swift, in his political romance," that in their whole reigns, they never did once prefer any person of merit, unless by mistake, or treachery of some minister, in whom they confided: neither would they do it if they were to live again; and they showed with great strength of reason, that the royal throne could not be supported without corruption, because that positive, confident, restive temper, which virtue infused into a man, was a perpetual clog to public busi." (Gulliver's Travels, part iii. c. 8.)

ness.

cipher set to no purpose before a long row of other significant figures. Nay, it is well and happy for the people, if their king be but a cipher, being ofttimes a mischief, a pest, a scourge of the nation, and which is worse, not to be removed, not to be controlled, much less accused or brought to punishment, without the danger of a common ruin, without the shaking and almost subversion of the whole land: whereas in a free commonwealth, any governor or chief counsellor offending may be removed and punished, without the least commotion.

12. Certainly then that people must needs be mad or strangely infatuated, that build the chief hope of their common happiness or safety on a single person; who, if he happen to be good, can do no more than another man; if to be bad, hath in his hands to do more evil without check, than millions of other men. The happiness of a nation must needs be firmest and certainest in full and free council of their own electing, where no single person, but reason only, sways. And what madness is it for them who might manage nobly their own affairs themselves, sluggishly and weakly to devolve all on a single person; and more like boys under age than men, to commit all to his patronage and disposal, who neither can perform what he undertakes, and yet for undertaking it, though royally paid, will not be their servant, but their lord! How unmanly must it needs be, to count such a one the breath of our nostrils, to hang all our felicity on him, all our safety,

our well-being, for which if we were aught else but sluggards or babies, we need depend on none but God and our own counsels, our own active virtue and industry! "Go to the ant, thou sluggard," saith Solomon ; "consider her ways, and be wise; which having no prince, ruler, or lord, provides her meat in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest :" which evidently shows us, that they who think the nation undone without a king, though they look grave or haughty, have not so much true spirit and understanding in them as a pismire: neither are these diligent creatures hence concluded to live in lawless anarchy, or that commended, but are set the examples to imprudent and ungoverned men, of a frugal and self-governing democracy or commonwealth safer and more thriving in the joint providence and counsel of many industrious equals, than under the single domination of one imperious lord. (10)

(10) Writers of all parties, Whigs and Tories, acknowledge, in theory, the demoralizing effect of despotic power upon those who imagine themselves called to exercise it for life. "To the causes already mentioned of the destruction of monarchy, we must add one peculiar to hereditary monarchy; the contemptible character of youths born in the purple, and their proneness to offensive insolence. The authority of such youths cannot be voluntarily endured; and thus the government, if a royalty, is effectually destroyed, and a tyranny of short duration substituted in its stead." (Arist. Polit. 1. vii. c: 10.) Gibbon, who will not be suspected of democratic preferences, could not, as an historian, refuse to perceive the pernicious effects of absolute authority in the person of the prince. (See anecdote from the “ De

13. It may be well wondered that any nation, styling themselves free, can suffer any man to pretend hereditary right over them as their lord; whenas by acknowledging that right, they conclude themselves his servants and his vassals, and so renounce their own freedom. Which how a people and their leaders especially can do, who have fought so gloriously for liberty; how they can change their noble words and actions, heretofore so becoming the majesty of a free people, into the base necessity of court flatteries and prostrations, is not only strange and admirable, but lamentable to think on. That a nation should be so valorous and courageous to win their liberty in the field, and when they have won it, should be so heartless and unwise in their counsels, as not to know how to use it, value it, what to do with it, or with themselves; but after ten or twelve years' prosperous war and contestation with tyranny, basely and besottedly to run their necks again into the yoke which they have broken, and prostrate all the fruits of their victory for nought at the feet

cline and Fall of the Roman Empire," note 74, p. 190,) "Sereffraz Khan had been educated a prince; and had the incapacity, and the servile subjection to pleasure, which that education usually implies." (Mill. Hist. of British India, iii. 140.) Again: "Suraja Dowla was educated a prince, and with more than even the usual share of princely consideration and indulgence. He had, accordingly, more than the usual share of the princely vices. He was ignorant; he was voluptuous; on his own pains and pleasures he set a value immense, on the pains and pleasures of other men no value at all; he was impatient, irascible, headstrong." (Id. p. 146.)

« PreviousContinue »