BOOKS.
BROWNE'S LIVES OF PRIME MINISTERS.* THE idea of "Lives of the Prime Ministers of England, from the Restoration," seems obviously suggested by Lord Campbell's " Lives of the Chancellors"; but the author assures us that such is not the ease. His work was projected "before the announce- ment of our distinguished Chief Justice's very learned and de- lightful book," but the composition was postponed on account of illness and other circumstances.
The original conception of a work is of small importance com-
pared with the manner in which it is carried out. This in the Lives of the Prime Ministers is not of the highest kind. As mere narratives of lives, they are of average ‘uality. The biographer has collected the facts relating to the family and career of his four subjects, Clarendon, Clifford, Denby, and Essex ; though, strictly speaking, Essex and even Clifford were only ex-officio First
• .sters. Mr. Browne has also stated these facts with clear-
ness, if not with any extraordinary force or neatness ; selected such personal traits as the memoirs or lampoons of the time have preserved, and, interspersed his biographies with passing notices of the time, and reflections which though sometimes harsh in character or questionable in taste have independence and at all events a limited. truth. There is none of that mastery, not merely of the life itself but of the history and the age, or that literary skill in execution, which is requisite to give novelty and effect to such a worn subject as Clarendon, or in a lesser degree to Denby. The great defect of the book is not very easy to overcome. The continuous lives of the Prime Ministers of England should con- tain a connected view of their policy in connexion with the progress of constitutional practice, as well as their measures, political leanings, or intrigues. This Mr. Browne has not attempted.; in- deed, so closely does he confine himself to the mere personal pro- ceedings of the man as distinct from the Minister' that Parlia- mentary doings are limited to their influence on the Premier's for- tunes. So much is this the case, that there is very slender trace of those great and beneficial legal reforms that distinguished the reign of Charles the Second. If the passing of the Habeas Corpus Act is recorded, we have overlooked the fact. One drawback of the book a little trouble would have remedied. The pages are 'without ,the dates of the year—an almost mechanical insertion of great utility ; and the -narrative is often confused in its chrono- logy.
1E4 owever, these lives of the four earliest Ministers of Charles the
Second accomplish one purpose. The very faults of the book distinctly impress upon the mind the utterly contemptible cha- racter of the monarch and his reign. Other kings, other minis- ters, and other periods, may have been corrupt or wicked ; but the pervading spirit of the reign had something kingly and na- tional, the leading policy often something great. The Planta- genet °ravings for the Crusades, or the conquest of Wales, France, and ,Scotland, if in some cases impolitic and in others immoral, were in harmony with the ideas of their times, if not of other times, for the national interest or glory. The efforts of . Henry the Seventh to reduce the feudal nobility-, break down the territorial properties, and encourage trade and navigation—the struggles of Henry the Eighth to overthrow the Church—contri- tributed largely to human advancement, whatever the motives of the actors might be. Of Elizabeth it is needless to speak ; and even Mary had the excuse, such as it is, of a bigoted religions conviction. The first two Stuarts at least strove for a principle, though a very mischievous principle. James the Second himself aimed at something beyond his merely personal objects. What- ever corruption or personal treachery discredited the reigns of William and Anne, there was the great principle of opposing the desies of universal empire aimed at by Louis the Fourteenth. With this idea were also combined the principles of civil and re- ligious liberty and of national freedom ; though the last were more distinctly the object of Walpole and his colleagues under the first two kings of the house of Brunswick, low and sordid as the means might be by which those principles were often upheld. But Charles the Second had no other aim than money,—not to expend upon artistical even if selfish undertakings, suoh,as parks and palaces' hut to waste on discreditable pleasures and persons, or, in the worda of Montagu, for his "pocket and his wenches." This is not impressed by these biographies, for Mr. Browne does not seem to have perceived the unity which so definite a principle would have imparted to his book. Its very faults, however, of narrowness and incompleteness, conduce to the conclusion. The limitation to the individual conduct and objects of the Minister bring out more distinctly the miserable intrigues and base com- pliances of the King. The compliances are as visible in the Min- isters ; but they were to some extent the vice of the age which hardly knew of resignation' and the maxim of their ?arty main-. main- tabling "the right divine of kings to govern wrong.' The style of Mr. Browne inclines to the florid, without attain- ing Wry great excellence in the line. Here is his character of the great Duke of Ormonde ; of whani he has in some things formed as hard a character as he has taken a. favourable view .of. Denby. " TWstfendal prinee, gallant mailer, and subtle statesman, wahone ef -the • most wonderful men of a wonderful age. Though unsuccessful against sv' -Qua, "ne•yth.P)ve Me.qf 73ngdain„feut4e1estara‘ian4o the Beeson& .1%ou85ent Browne, Fig., L'L.B. „of the limes Temple,,Barrister-atslaw. Vottiosel. fteblisherhby Ilseabp. Cromwell in the field, he was able to overreach 'French and llinuoinni in the council, and ao farto deceive esen. ecclesiastical diplomatists as to leremtbis conduct in Ireland a _problem be the Popedom and a .pussle to Europe—to make a great struggle for Charles without compromising him, and to ob- tain a character for liberality witheint giving anything away—in a time of the destruction of the fortunes of his party to build up his own—to have his name and polities boasted by Protestant 'High Churchmen, and his life and virtues written by a Popish priest. Ormoude was something more than Hyde at such a crisis. He Was a man of action and of adventure. He had worn mail when Hyde was arrayed in wig and gown, and cedunt arma togai ' was not the motto of•the time. Accordingly, accompanied by the gal- lant soklier of fortune O'Neil, he embarked for England, when Cromwell was keeping that unwearied watch that is the fate of usurpation. Fully, therefore, indeed was Ormonde justified in speaking thus freely of the cha- racter of a king for whom he ventured so much. In 1658, he writes to Cla- rendon his opinion of Charles, I must now freely confess to you, that whet you have written of the King's unreasonable impatience at his stay at Bru- ges, is a greater damp to my hopes of his recovery than the strength of his enemies or the weakness and backwardness of those that profess him friend- ship. Modesty, courage, and many aocidents, may overcome those enemies, and unite and fix these friends ; but I fear his immoderate delight in empty, and effeminate, and vulgar conversation, is become an irresistible part of his nature, and will never suffer him to animate his own designs, and other's ac- tions, with that spirit which is requisite for his quality, and much more for his fortune.' Ormonde's visit to England confirmed the belief of the total ab- surdity of the rumours that had been sent from thence, and justified Hyde's statement to Mordaunt, that the party who talked so much of action had formed no particular design."
For the generations immediately succeeding his death, and per- haps till the change effected in manners and opinions by the American and French Revolutions, Clarendon was ranked in the highest grade as a statesman, an orator, and an historian. Pope in his half-jocose, but exquisite panegyric on the future Lord Mansfield, places him on a level with Cicero-
" Conspicuous scene ! another yet is nigh,
(Mine silent far) where kings and poets lie ; Where Murray (long enough his country's pride) Shall be no more than Tully, or than Hyde."
Johnson selects him as an example of the instability of greatness and power in his Vanity of Human Wishes—" What murder"d Wentworth, and what exiled Hyde." His name then served, like Wellington in these times, to fill up a sounding period for anybody who wanted it. The change in estimation is not wholly undeserved ; for Clarendon, however great, was of his age, and never soared much beyond it. As a Minister on the Restoration, his patriotism is sufficiently admitted ; probably justice has not " been done to his labours and his policy in that most diffieult of undertakings composing a restoration. The picture of him in this period by Mr. Browne is one of the best things in the book.
" As Charleals reception had the prudence, it was natural that it should have also-the pageantry of romance. Novelistsand word-painters have often, shown us that if the loyalists were amfdl in policy, they were great [in] spec- axle. It was indeed a dramatic scene for the grave and reflecting -Hyde. The peasant felt the lightness of relief from a sombre despotism, andthe peer his escape from a pretended democracy. Ambition, science, art, and learning, rebounded by the removal of an oppressive weight, and_on.that bright Mayday doubtless many more able men than Evelyn stood in the Strand, beheld it, and blessed God.' "it is haul to say whether Hyde's poverty and sufferings in exile were greater than the weight of office at home that the new state of affairs was likely to impose upon him. He knew something of the' civium ardor,' and knew that the applauding crowds around him, once the creations of their own fancy were found unfilled, would he disposed to blame themselves the last. The sagacious and strongminded Ormonde had warned him of the disposition of the King ; and the vices of the courtiers that had managed to keep alive amid the frost of poverty and exile, would, he well knew, burst into boundless luxuriance in the sun of prosperity and a court. Even at this distance of time we may form a pretty accurate notion of the weight of his undertakings, if we are to believe Burnet, that he had 'kept .a register of all the King's promises and his own, and did all that lay in his power after- wards to get them all to be performed.' Much opposition from various quarters was made to Hyde's being retained in high office about the throne. His Anglicanism was as disagreeable to the Presbyterians as his Protestant- ism to the Roman Catholics. Monk he seems to have eonsideredlis enemy, as the Queen [Mother] certainly war; and-had Charlestbeen reduced to make any strict terms as the condition of his restoration, there is little doubt but. that Hyde would have been excluded from the Chancellorship. * * * "To estimate the ability of Clarendon, it is needful to consider the stu- pendous operations of policy in which he was engaged. The minister of a monarchy restored by military power, he had now accomplished the 'extinc- tion of the army, task enough from which alone to have created fame, but a work still more arduous was before him. In twenty years the property of England had in many districts almost changed hands. The confiscations by the Parliament and by Cromwell, the sales by the Itoyalists to support the Royal cause, the forfeitures by the executions for treason to the Govern- ment de facto, and the open and unauthorized intrusion into lands almost, deserted in the civil wars, had made the proprietorship of greet portions of the kingdom pass to other masters. The. difficulty. of Hyde petrifying the owners of conflicting interests was almost incalculable, the satisfying of such impossible. So fully was it believed by-some that the Commonwealth would be likely to-stand firm, that so much as fifteen years' purchase had been given, according to Ludlow, for the lands it had escheated. These were chiefly the property of the Crown, or of thsChurch ; and on the return , of the King the former were naturally delivered up. "The ease of the Royalists who had sold their estates was, however, piti- able in the extreme. The3r had been driven to make bargains in the heat of the civil war ; and as the fire of loyalty was no match for the coolness of the followers of the Commonwealth, their sacrifices had been proportionately great. Hamm of!thena indeed were, as malice has insinuated, led to girls easy bargains in. the hope that when the King euesseded they could resume their estates again for a yet easier price, the result did not justify their ex- pectations, and charity should leave theirdisappointment to be theirpunish- ment. Charles,. in his declaration from Bre t, had assured his adherents that this greatcerenoversy should be determined is Parliament, -which a= best juovidelor the just satisfaction of ail men who are concerned? But Parliament could not ace of ita own motion'; and Hyde had adopted an en. ,cellent maxim, that as the making those premises bad brought the King Ironic, so the -keeping of them must keep him at /mine.' The restorationof the lands of the Crown was first brought before the House, and-the.King% seal -the Quoin-Mother were.T • . But the question of the (lumen lands was ease more difficult as solve. Whons-h the King saw the justineef reenter ng on his own property on the ground that it had been confiscated by the Parliament, he did not reeo&nise an equal right in the Church, and Parliament was anxious to deal with the forfeited ecclesiastical properties as though they had no rightful proprietor. For this purpose, a King's letter was issued, doubtless by. the advice of Hyde. to the Bishops and Chapters not to lease any impropnate tithes till each vicar or curate had been assured of eighty pounds a year. The plan was one of the wisest of many that have been in every generation proposed for the reform of finance in the Church of England. The existence, indeed, of impropriate tithes, though perhaps not very unnatural in an establishment so purely secular as that to which the Church of England has been reduced, is inconsistent both with religion and good policy. Various remarkable and some unjustifiable modes of supporting churches have been in all ages devised, but the expedient of giving the patrimony of the church to a squire, or a woman, on the promise of maintaining a vicar so that he shall not actually starve, is the peculiar
v of the English Church establishment.
" In November 1660, a commission was issued to arrange for the repur- chase or final confirmation of sale of the Church property ; Charles by his letter exhorting the dignitaries to make reasonable bargains with those who had bought in the faith of the Parliament. The clergy have been blamed by several writers as anxious to make too great a market of their.power ; but it must be recollected that the Crown had thought right to reenter without purchase at all, and those who look to the value of sees and livings shortly- after the Restoration will see that the Cromwellites managed to retain a considerable quantity of the revenues. That there were instances of extortion, Clarendon admits, but the purchasers as a gene- ral rule were not in a position to claim much sympathy. Burnet, who con- siders Church property a fit subject for Parliamentary disposition, charges Clarendon with being more the Bishops' • friend than the Church's' In allowing the fines for the renewal of leases, amounting to about 1,500,0001., to go into the pockets of the incumbents. But no one can question their legal right, and it was not a time recklessly to take away pirate rights by acts of Parliament. The fact of the Church leases having fallen out was matter of accident ; and if the fines obtained for their renewal did, as Burnet asserts, bring into the Church a great deal of luxury and high living,' it was in no way attributable to the policy of Hyde. In the settle- ment of private property, the Royalists, who desired to disturb the sales of their estates, were of course greatly disappointed. The Restoration having been not a reconquest but a compromise, could not use the violence to actual contracts which they had hoped; and when they were unable to succeed in their demands, they contented themselves with the slender comfort of a sarcasm—' the Act of Indemnity and oblivion,' they said, was an act of indemnity to the King's enemies, and of oblivion of Ins friends.'"
There are some obvious mistakes in dates, and various imperfect sentences, that may puzzle readers. They are mostly found to i originate n errors of the press when read with the author's apo- logy for errata, owing to the distance from town at which the printing of the work was done."
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