Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 1Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 1
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
ecclesiastical constitution of the third, is altogether incredible. He
himself says in his letters that he looks on Episcopacy as a stronger
support of monarchical power than even the army. From causes which we
have already considered, the Established Church had been, since the
Reformation, the great bulwark of the prerogative. Charles wished,
therefore, to preserve it. He thought himself necessary both to the
Parliament and to the army. He did not foresee, till too late, that by
paltering with the Presbyterians, he should put both them and himself
into the power of a fiercer and more daring party. If he had foreseen
it, we suspect that the royal blood which still cries to Heaven every
thirtieth of January, for judgments only to be averted by salt-fish and
egg-sauce, would never have been shed. One who had swallowed the Scotch
Declaration would scarcely strain at the Covenant.
The death of Charles and the strong measures which led to it raised
Cromwell to a height of power fatal to the infant Commonwealth. No
men occupy so splendid a place in history as those who have founded
monarchies on the ruins of republican institutions. Their glory, if not
of the purest, is assuredly of the most seductive and dazzling kind. In
nations broken to the curb, in nations long accustomed to be transferred
from one tyrant to another, a man without eminent qualities may easily
gain supreme power. The defection of a troop of guards, a conspiracy of
eunuchs, a popular tumult, might place an indolent senator or a brutal
soldier on the throne of the Roman world. Similar revolutions have often
occurred in the despotic states of Asia. But a community which has heard
the voice of truth and experienced the pleasures of liberty, in which
the merits of statesmen and of systems are freely canvassed, in which
obedience is paid, not to persons, but to laws, in which magistrates are
regarded, not as the lords, but as the servants of the public, in which
the excitement of a party is a necessary of life, in which political
warfare is reduced to a system of tactics; such a community is not
easily reduced to servitude. Beasts of burden may easily be managed by a
new master. But will the wild ass submit to the bonds? Will the unicorn
serve and abide by the crib? Will leviathan hold out his nostrils to the
book? The mythological conqueror of the East, whose enchantments reduced
wild beasts to the tameness of domestic cattle, and who harnessed
lions and tigers to his chariot, is but an imperfect type of those
extraordinary minds which have thrown a spell on the fierce spirits of
nations unaccustomed to control, and have compelled raging factions to
obey their reins and swell their triumph. The enterprise, be it good
or bad, is one which requires a truly great man. It demands courage,
activity, energy, wisdom, firmness, conspicuous virtues, or vices so
splendid and alluring as to resemble virtues.
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