The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part E.: From Charles I. to Cromwell
David Hume · en
power, will lay aside the will, of invading the constitution. From what
quarter can jealousies now arise? What further security can be desired
or expected? The king's preceding concessions, so far from being
insufficient for public security, have rather erred on the other
extreme; and, by depriving him of all power of self-defence, are the
real cause why the commons are emboldened to raise pretensions hitherto
unheard of in the kingdom, and to subvert the whole system of the
constitution. But would they be content with moderate advantages, is
it not evident that, besides other important concessions, the present
parliament may be continued, till the government be accustomed to the
new track, and every part be restored to full harmony and concord? By
the triennial act, a perpetual succession of parliaments is established,
as everlasting guardians to the laws, while the king possesses no
independent power or military force by which he can be supported in his
invasion of them. No danger remains but what is inseparable from all
free constitutions, and what forms the very essence of their freedom;
the danger of a change in the people's disposition, and of general
disgust contracted against popular privileges To prevent such an evil,
no expedient is more proper than to contain ourselves within the
bounds of moderation, and to consider, that all extremes naturally and
infallibly beget each other. In the same manner as the past usurpations
of the crown, however excusable on account of the necessity or
provocations whence they arose, have excited an immeasurable appetite
for liberty; let us beware, lest our encroachments, by introducing
anarchy, make the people seek shelter under the peaceable and despotic
rule of a monarch. Authority, as well as liberty, is requisite to
government; and is even requisite to the support of liberty itself,
by maintaining the laws, which can alone regulate and protect it. What
madness, while every thing is so happily settled under ancient forms and
institutions, now more exactly poised and adjusted, to try the hazardous
experiment of a new constitution, and renounce the mature wisdom of our
ancestors for the crude whimseys of turbulent innovators! Besides the
certain and inconceivable mischiefs of civil war, are not the perils
apparent, which the delicate frame of liberty must inevitably sustain
amidst the furious shock of arms? Whichever side prevails, she can
scarcely hope to remain inviolate, and may suffer no less, or rather
greater injuries from the boundless pretensions of forces engaged in her
cause, than from the invasion of enraged troops enlisted on the side of
monarchy.