BOOKS.
LORD MACAULAY'S HISTORY OF' ENGLAND.*
Annn what, considering the nature of the undertaking, we must pronounce to be a not unreasonable delay, Lady Trevelyan has at length balled her task of giving to the public so much of the fifth volume of Lord Macaulay's History of En#liza as could be recovered from the mass of papers which lie left behind him at his death. That portion of the MS-. which had undergone revision, and had been brought into the form which its author intended it finally to assume, comprises two complete chapters, and the best part of a third, which carry us on without a break from December 3, 1697, immediately after the conclusion, of the Treaty of Ryswick, to the prorogation of parliament on April 11, 1700, immediately after the termination of one of the most memorable straggles between the Lords and Com- mons that is recorded. in parliamentary history. After the latter period, there is an interval- of-about sixteen months, of which the present volume contains no record; and then we have a few addi- tional pas, giving an account of the death of James IL, and of the storm of indignation which was aroused in England by Louis XTV.'s inconsiderate compliance with the wishes of Madame de Maintenon that he should acknowledge the son of the exiled monarch as the lawful successor to the English throne. In the midst of this de- scription the revised portion of the MS. comes to an abrupt close.. Lord Dfacaulayrs posthumous volume, therefore, carries on his history- to a point rather more than two years in advance of that reached at the close of the last volume published during his lifetime. This brief period, though not signalized by any such stirring events as had marked the earlier years of the reign of William 1-1I. was one of no small moment as regards the internal history of England. The King was now about to experience the necessary reaction from the popularity, always rather political than personal, which he had hitherto enjoyed. The parliament, which met on the day follo the rejoicings which celebrated the Treaty of Ryswick, showed itself inclined to offer a jealous resistance, rather than to yield a ready ac- quiescence, to. his wishes. Their first measure was to reduce the military establishment, which William, was very anxious to maintain on a war footing, to what it had been in the year 1680; and the highest sum which they could be induced to grant for the mainte- nance of the army was barely sufficient to keep up a force of 10,000 men. Lord: Macaulay, whose sympathies are, of course, entirely on the king's side throughout the whole of the struggle with his re- calcitrant commons, states the arguments by which the Court party vainly endeavoured' to overcome the prevailing jealousy of a perma- nent military force, with all the cogency of which they are suscep- tible. Not even Lord Macaulay himself, however, could have pre- vailed over the then temper of the House of Commons. The Country party next directed their attention to the large grants of Crown lands which had been bestowed by William principally upon his own countrymen; and leave was asked to bring in a bill vacating all such grants which had been made since the Revolution. The ministers cleverly chided this attack by proposing to extend the measure to all the grants made by James u. and Charles II.; an ex- tension which could not possibly be objected to, but which would have been so exceedingly inconvenient to many members of the opposition, that they thought it better to.let their own bill fall quietly through. Although William had no special reason to be grateful to this parliament for the manner in which it had dealt with him, never- theless, on its dissolution in July., 1698, he took leave of it in very complimentary terms ; observing in his speech from the throne that the services which it had rendered to the country would" give it a lasting reputation, and be a subject of emulation to parliaments which shall come after." Judging by the event, we might almost be in- duced to believe that these words were spoken ironically. In its steady and determined opposition to the royal wishes, the new par- liament, which met on December 6; left its predecessor far behind. Lord Macaulay points out that the meeting of this parliament was a very important epoch, in the history of the English Constitution. The experiment of confiding the government of the country to a snit& body of statesmen who, on all important questions, agreed with each other, and with the majority of the representatives of the people, had been forced npon William. by the capricious conduct of the House of Commons during the years immediately following the Re- volution; and from 1695- to 1698 it was found, on the whole, to work reasonably well. But the result of the general election in the latter year had been to leave the ministers in a very considerable minority. When such a state of things occurs, as it not unfrevently does, at the present day, the only consequence is that the ministry resigns, and the opposition succeeds to office. In the infancy of ministerial government, however, so simple a method of solving the difficulty had not yet been thought of. The ministers saw no necessary con- nexion between the tenure of office and the support of a majority of the House, and persisted in endeavouring to carry on the go- vernment in the face of an overwhelmimg opposition. The evils necessarily resulting from this state of discord, which lasted till 1705, are dwelt upon by Lord Macaulay With extraordinary ability and power. The first act of the new parliament was to reduce the army from ten to seven thousand men, all of whom were to be natural-born English subjects. The King, whose convictions on this point had undergone no alteration, was exceedingly offended by the passing of this measure ; but he was even more deeply wounded by its final Clause, the effect of which was to compel him to part with the regi- . roe History of England from the Accession of Lames 111 By Lord Macaulay. Volume V. Edited by his Sister, Ladyrrevelyan. Longman and Co. 'ment of Blue Dutch Foot Guards,.to which he was, naturally, most. warmly attached. So bitterly did, he resent what he regarded as at once an act of suicidal folly and a personal insult to himself, that he actually came to the resolution of retiring from the government of' England; and though. he was induced by the solicitations of Lord Chan- color Somers, aided by his own cooler reflections, to abandon that determination, he could not resist the temptation of making one more fruitless effort to obtain permission to retain his favourite regiment., as a personal favour-to himself. The Commons then returned to the charge on the subject of the royal grants of Crown lands ; and, on sending up the Land-tax bill to the Lords, appended to it a clause empowering seven commissioners to inquire into the disposition of the property forfeited in Ireland during the late troubles. The Lords did not withhold their assent, though they protested against the for- cible manner in which it had been wrung fronr them, and the lin was passed; the King observing, in one of his private letters, " thisi commission will give us plenty of trouble this winter." William: then prorogued the parliament on May 4, 1699, in a speech which contained no word either of- thanks or praise, and concluded with' the wish "that no mischief might happen in the mean time." The Houses met again on November 18. The Commons. opened the session with a fruitless attempt to deprive Somers of the Chancellor-. ship, and Burnet of the office of preceptor to the Duke of Glen.- cester ; and then turned their attention to the report of the com- mission on Irish forfeitures. This report, which was signed by four out of the seven commissioners, censured the manner in which. WU- Ham had disposed of the forfeited lands, and recommended not only the resumption, of all his grads, but also a considerable extension of. the original confiscations. A. special clause was appended to it, calling attention to a grant which had been made by. William to 'Elizabeth Villiers, his old. mistress; an act of liberality for which Lord Ma- caulay; with more zeal than discretion,, ventures to offer a faint de- fence. The Commons immediately introduced and passed a bill adopting the recommendations of the commissioners on every point;. and, knowing that if it were sent up alone the Lords would refuse to pass it, they had recourse to their old expedient of tacking it on to a money-bill. On this occasion, however, the Lords made a stand., and returned the bill to the Commons after having introduced several amendments into the appended clauses. The Commons steadily refused to yield, and sent back the bill to the Lords, who persisted in. adhering to their amendments. The intense excitement which pre- vailed during the next three or four days is described by Lord' Macaulay in a passage which will almost bear comparison with his. celebrated account of the trial of the Seven Bishops. The majority in the Lords was said to be mainly composed of prelates, illegitimate, sons of Charles IL, and needy and greedy courtiers; and the cry in all places of public resort was that the nation would be ruined by the three B's—Bishops, Bastards, and Beggars. At length the Lora. gave way, and the 'bill was passed; and,, on the very next day, April 11, 1700, the parliament was prorogued by the royal command. In the foregoing sketch,, we have confined ourselves exclusively to the struggle between the King and the House of Commons.. Although this is unquestionably the main feature of the period whose history is contained in the present volume, there are, of course, many other events, the- narration of which gives, full scope to Lord Ma- caulay's' unrivalled powers. The account of the Treaty of Partition arranged between England and France for the purpose of settling the impending question of the succession, to the throne of Spain, affords. him an opportunity of introducing a brilliant description of the con., dition of the Spanish empire and court, and, of the state of the wretched monarch whose death was koked forward to with such anxious expectation by the whole of Europe. The portrait of Charles IL of Spain is admirably executed, and we wish that we had space to transfer it to our columns ; but we- must content ourselves with that of his minister, Cardinal Portocarrero, whom Louis my.. had succeeded in gaining over to his interests.
" Portocarrero was one of a men of men of whom we, happily for ns, have
seen very little, but whose influe oe nlheclrseolo iti?he countlie.iewas,IkeSixtushe Fourth andAexaierthe Sixth, a politician made out of an impious priest. Such politicians are generally worse than the worst of the laity, more merciless than any ruffian that can be found in camps, more dishonest than any pettifogger who haunts the tribunals. The sanctity of their profession has an unsanctifying influence on them. The lessons of the nursery, the habits of boyhood and of early youth, leave in the minds of the great majority of avowed infidels some traces of religion, which, in seasons of mourning and of sickness, become plainly discernible. But it is scarcely possible that any such trace should remain in the mind of the hypocrite who, during many years, is constantly going through what he considers as the mummery of preaching, saying mass, baptizing, shriving. When an ecclesiastic of this sort mixes in the contests of men of the world, he is indeed much to be dreaded as an enemy, but still more to be dreaded as an ally. From the pulpit where he daily employs his eloquence to embellish what he regards as fables, from the altar whence he deny looks down with secret scorn on the prostrate dupes who believe that he can turn a drop of wine into blood, from the confessional where he daily studies with cold and scientific attention the morbid anatomy of guilty consciences, he brings to courts some talents which may move the envy of the more cunning and un- scrupulous of lay courtiers, a rare skill in reading characters and. in managing tempers, a rare art of dissimulation, a rare dexterity in insinuating. what it is not safe to affirm or to propose in explicit terms. There are two feelings which often prevent an unprincipled layman from becoming utterly depraved and de- spicable—domestic feeling, and chivalrous feeling. His heart may be softened by the endearments of a family. His pride may revolt from the thought. of doing what does not become a gentleman. But neither with the domestic feeling. nor with the chivalrous feeling has the wicked priest any sympathy. His gown excludes him from the closest and most tender of human relations, and at the same time dispenses him from the observation of the fashionable code of honour."
Many historians agree in regarding the Partition Treaty as one of the most impudent encroachments that tyranny and' injustice ever planned; and it has not unfrequently been compared to that by which' the partition of Poland was finally arranged. Lord Macaulay.,
however, boldly undertakes its defence. The Spanish monarchy was, he says, merely an ill-governed empire' entirely destitute of any com- mon national character whatever. Its partition, therefore, resembled that which "is effected by setting loose a drove of slaves who had been fastened together with collars and handcuffs, and whose union has produced only pain, inconvenience, and mutual disgust." That of Poland, on the other hand, "was such a partition as is effected by hacking a living body limb from limb." He argues at some length that the consent of England to the arrangement involved no breach of faith with the House of Austria; and then proceeds to assert the general policy and necessity of that consent in the following cogent and forcible terms : "If the whole Spanish monarchy should pass to the House of Bourbon, it was highly probable that in a few years England would cease to be great and free, and that Holland would be a mere province of France. Such a danger England and Holland might lawfully have averted by war ; and it would be absurd to say that a danger which may be lawfully averted by war cannot law- fully be averted by peaceable means. If nations are so deeply interested in a question that they would be justified in resorting to arms for the purpose of settling it, they must surely be sufficiently interested in it to be justified in resorting to amicable arrangements for the purpose of settling it. Yet, strange to say, a multitude of writers who have warmly praised the English and Dutch Governments for waging a long and bloody war in order to prevent the question of the Spanish succession from being settled in a manner prejudicial to them, have severely blamed those Governments for trying to attain the same end with- out the shedding:of a drop of blood, without the addition of a crown to the taxa- tion of any country in Christendom, and without a moment's interruption of the trade of the world by land or by sea."
Among the other events described by Lord Macaulay in the volume now before us, are the destruction of Whitehall by fire, caused by the carelessness of a laundress : "the patriotic journalists and pamphleteers of that time did not fail," he observes, "to note that she was a Dutchwoman ;" the embassy of the Duke of Portland to Paris ; and the visit of Peter the Great to England. The latter event, especially, is admirably narrated. Lord Macaulay dwells upon the striking contrast between the rude simplicity of the Czar's ap- pearance and habits, and the mixture of filth and splendour which ordinarily characterised the suite of the Russian ambassador, who used to "come to the state-balls, dropping pearls and vermin." But perhaps the most interesting episode in the whole volume is the ac- count of Paterson's ill-fated expedition to the Isthmus of Darien. Lord Macaulay gives a very minute history of this enterprise, going back some years in order to trace its origin and progress in full de- tail. The view which he takes of it is entirely unfavourable. He regards it as an utterly indefensible and irrational scheme, proposed by a man who was honest, indeed, but absolutely devoid of judgment ; and he entirely repudiates the idea that any wrong was done to Scot- land by the refusal of England to support an undertaking which could not fail to involve her in a war with Spain. The whole account of the affair is, in a literary point of view, equal to anything that has ever proceeded from Lord. Macaulay's pen. As a sample of its style we will quote the statement of the considerations which induced the Scotch people, ordinarily so cautious, to throw themselves with such warmth and eagerness into Paterson's design:
"Scotland was, indeed, not blessed with a mild elimate or a fertile soil. But the richest spots that had ever existed on the face of the earth had been spots quite as little favoured by nature. It was on a bare rock, surrounded by deep sea, that the streets of Tyre were piled up to a dizzy height. On that sterile crag were woven the robes of Persian satraps and Sicilian tyrants: there were fashioned silver bowls and chargers for the banquets of kings: and there Pome- ranian amber was set in Lydian gold to adorn the necks of queens. In the warehouses were collected the fine linen of Egypt and the odorous gums of Arabia ; the ivory of India, and the tin of Britain. In the port lay fleets of great ships which had weathered the storms of the Enable and the Atlantic. Powerful and wealthy colonies in distant parts of the world looked up with filial reverence to the little island ; and despots, who trampled on the laws and outraged the feelings of all the nations between the Hydaspes and the Egesn, condescended to court the population of that busy hive. At a later period, on a dreary bank formed by the soil which the Alpine streams swept down to the Adriatic, rose the palaces of Venice. Within a space which would not have been thought large enough for one of the parks of a rude northern baron were col- lected riches far exceeding those of a northern kingdom. In almost every one of the private dwellings which fringed the Great Canal were to be seen plate, mirrors, jewellery, tapestry, paintings, carving, such as might move the envy of the master of Holyrood. In the arsenal were munitions of war sufficient to maintain a contest against the whole power of the Ottoman Empire. And, before the grandeur of Venice had declined, another commonwealth, still less favoured, if possible, by nature, had rapidly risen to a power and opulence which the whole civilized world contemplated with envy and admiration. On a desolate marsh overhung by fogs and exhaling diseases, a marsh where there was neither wood nor stone, neither firm earth nor drinkable water, a marsh from which the ocean on one side and the Rhine on the other were with diffi- culty kept out by art, was to be found the most prosperous community in Europe. The wealth which was collected within five miles of the Stadthouse of Amsterdam would purchase the fee simple of Scotland. And why should this be? Was there any reason to believe that nature had bestowed on the Phce- nician, on the Venetian, or on the Hollander, a larger measure of activity, of ingenuity, of forethought, of self-command, than on the citizen of Edinburgh or Glasgow? The truth was that, in all those qualities which conduce to success in life, and especially in commercial life, the Scot had never been surpassed ; perhaps he had never been equalled. All that was necessary was that his energy should take a proper direction; and a proper direction Paterson under- took to give."
But while we do full justice to the splendid powers of description so lavishly displayed throughout the whole of this episode, we are far from giving an unqualified assent to the conclusions at which Lord Macaulay arrives. To state the reasons for our dissent would require far more space than is at our disposal on the present occasion. But his is evidently an ex parts statement throughout. His sneers at "the nest of buccaneers, and "the squatters who had occupied Darien," are sufficient proofs of the animus with which he regards the whole enterprise. We recommend the reader to compare the account of the Darien expedition with that of the affair of Captain Kidd, which is given in the following chapter. It would be by no means difficult, by dwelling skilfully on its most unfavourable points, to obtain from anyone who was not previously familiar with the facts of the case a full assent to the interpretation which the enemies of Somers strove to put upon the latter transaction; and yet there are few facts in history more firmly established than that the Chancellor was entirely blameless throughout the whole affair. In addition to the revised portion of Lord Macaulay's MS. the present volume contains a brief account of the death of William III, which Lady Trevelyan has deciphered, with some difficulty, from a rough sketch of the last two months of his reign, which she found among her brother's papers. This she has given precisely as it stood, without any attempt to connect it with the preceding chapters. Ira fact, throughout the whole volume, she has carefully abstained from making even the smallest addition to, or alteration in, the original manuscript. In this forbearance she has shown an entirely wise and commendable discretion. We quite agree with her in preferring "that the last thoughts of the great mind which has passed away from us should be preserved sacred from any touch but his own." That Lord Macaulay's History should never be completed was, in- deed, from the first, a necessary consequence of the magnitude of the scale on which it was commenced. But not even from the finished
work could we obtain a clearer idea of the i magnificence of its pro- portions and the delicacy of its execution than s afforded us by the fragment which we now possess. There will always be a variety of opinions as to the intrinsic value of a history which is written with a strong political bias ; but no difference of sentiments on this point can affect the universal estimate of the transcendent literary merit of Lord Macaulay's greatest work.
Previous page
