_ The members of the English Parliament are fond of comparing
themselves to the old Romans.
Not long since Mr. Shippen opened a speech in the House of Commons
with these words, "The majesty of the people of England would be
wounded." The singularity of the expression occasioned a loud
laugh; but this gentleman, so far from being disconcerted, repeated
the same words with a resolute tone of voice, and the laugh ceased.
In my opinion, the majesty of the people of England has nothing in
common with that of the people of Rome, much less is there any
affinity between their Governments. There is in London a senate,
some of the members whereof are accused (doubtless very unjustly) of
selling their voices on certain occasions, as was done in Rome; this
is the only resemblance. Besides, the two nations appear to me
quite opposite in character, with regard both to good and evil. The
Romans never knew the dreadful folly of religious wars, an
abomination reserved for devout preachers of patience and humility.
Marius and Sylla, Caesar and Pompey, Anthony and Augustus, did not
draw their swords and set the world in a blaze merely to determine
whether the flamen should wear his shirt over his robe, or his robe
over his shirt, or whether the sacred chickens should eat and drink,
or eat only, in order to take the augury. The English have hanged
one another by law, and cut one another to pieces in pitched
battles, for quarrels of as trifling a nature. The sects of the
Episcopalians and Presbyterians quite distracted these very serious
heads for a time. But I fancy they will hardly ever be so silly
again, they seeming to be grown wiser at their own expense; and I do
not perceive the least inclination in them to murder one another
merely about syllogisms, as some zealots among them once did.
But here follows a more essential difference between Rome and
England, which gives the advantage entirely to the latter--viz.,
that the civil wars of Rome ended in slavery, and those of the
English in liberty. The English are the only people upon earth who
have been able to prescribe limits to the power of kings by
resisting them; and who, by a series of struggles, have at last
established that wise Government where the Prince is all-powerful to
do good, and, at the same time, is restrained from committing evil;
where the nobles are great without insolence, though there are no
vassals; and where the people share in the Government without
confusion.
The House of Lords and that of the Commons divide the legislative
power under the king, but the Romans had no such balance. The
patricians and plebeians in Rome were perpetually at variance, and
there was no intermediate power to reconcile them. The Roman
senate, who were so unjustly, so criminally proud as not to suffer
the plebeians to share with them in anything, could find no other
artifice to keep the latter out of the administration than by
employing them in foreign wars. They considered the plebeians as a
wild beast, whom it behoved them to let loose upon their neighbours,
for fear they should devour their masters. Thus the greatest defect
in the Government of the Romans raised them to be conquerors. By
being unhappy at home, they triumphed over and possessed themselves
of the world, till at last their divisions sunk them to slavery.
The Government of England will never rise to so exalted a pitch of
glory, nor will its end be so fatal. The English are not fired with
the splendid folly of making conquests, but would only prevent their
neighbours from conquering. They are not only jealous of their own
liberty, but even of that of other nations. The English were
exasperated against Louis XIV. for no other reason but because he
was ambitious, and declared war against him merely out of levity,
not from any interested motives.
The English have doubtless purchased their liberties at a very high
price, and waded through seas of blood to drown the idol of
arbitrary power. Other nations have been involved in as great
calamities, and have shed as much blood; but then the blood they
spilt in defence of their liberties only enslaved them the more.
That which rises to a revolution in England is no more than a
sedition in other countries. A city in Spain, in Barbary, or in
Turkey, takes up arms in defence of its privileges, when immediately
it is stormed by mercenary troops, it is punished by executioners,
and the rest of the nation kiss the chains they are loaded with.
The French are of opinion that the government of this island is more
tempestuous than the sea which surrounds it, which indeed is true;
but then it is never so but when the king raises the storm--when he
attempts to seize the ship of which he is only the chief pilot. The
civil wars of France lasted longer, were more cruel, and productive
of greater evils than those of England; but none of these civil wars
had a wise and prudent liberty for their object.
In the detestable reigns of Charles IX. and Henry III. the whole
affair was only whether the people should be slaves to the Guises.
With regard to the last war of Paris, it deserves only to be hooted
at. Methinks I see a crowd of schoolboys rising up in arms against
their master, and afterwards whipped for it. Cardinal de Retz, who
was witty and brave (but to no purpose), rebellious without a cause,
factious without design, and head of a defenceless party, caballed
for caballing sake, and seemed to foment the civil war merely out of
diversion. The Parliament did not know what he intended, nor what
he did not intend. He levied troops by Act of Parliament, and the
next moment cashiered them. He threatened, he begged pardon; he set
a price upon Cardinal Mazarin's head, and afterwards congratulated
him in a public manner. Our civil wars under Charles VI. were
bloody and cruel, those of the League execrable, and that of the
Frondeurs ridiculous.
That for which the French chiefly reproach the English nation is the
murder of King Charles I., whom his subjects treated exactly as he
would have treated them had his reign been prosperous. After all,
consider on one side Charles I., defeated in a pitched battle,
imprisoned, tried, sentenced to die in Westminster Hall, and then
beheaded. And on the other, the Emperor Henry VII., poisoned by his
chaplain at his receiving the Sacrament; Henry III. stabbed by a
monk; thirty assassinations projected against Henry IV., several of
them put in execution, and the last bereaving that great monarch of
his life. Weigh, I say, all these wicked attempts, and then judge. _