University of Virginia Library

This was the dying request of some high-minded Spaniard of old, unwilling, even in the grave, as it were, to look on the misfortunes of his country.

‘After every allowance has been made,’ says Hallam, speaking of the Long Parliament from a date so early as August, 1641, ‘he must bring very heated passions to the records of those times, who does not perceive in the conduct of that body a series of glaring violations, not only of positive and constitutional, but of those higher principles which are paramount to all immediate policy’: (Const. Hist. ch. ix).

A clear and impartial sketch of Strafford's trial will be found in Ranke (B. viii): who deals dispassionately and historically with an event much obscured by declamation in popular narratives. Even in Hallam's hand the balance seems here to waver a little.

—In regard to the main issue at stake in the Civil War, and the view taken of it throughout this book, let me here once for all remark that no competent and impartial student of our history can deny a fair cause to each side, whatever errors may have been committed by Charles and by the Parliament, or however fatal for some fifteen years to liberty and national happiness were the excesses and the tyranny into which the victorious party gradually, and as it were inevitably, drifted. ‘No one,’ says Ranke (whom I must often quote, because to this distinguished foreigner we owe the single, though too brief, narrative of this period in which history has been hitherto, treated historically, that is, without judging of the events by the light either of their remote results, or of modern political party), ‘will make any very heavy political charge against Strafford on the score of his government of Ireland, or of the partisan attitude which he had taken up in the intestine struggle in England in general; for the ideas for which he contended were as much to be found in the past history of England as were those which he attacked:’ —and Hampden's conduct may claim analogous justification. If the Parliament could appeal to those mediaeval precedents which admitted the right of the people through their representatives, to control taxation and (more or less) direct national policy, Charles, (and Strafford with him), might as lawfully affirm that they too were standing ‘on the ancient ways’ on the royal supremacy undeniably exercised by Henry II or Edward I, by Henry VIII and by Elizabeth. Both parties could equally put forward the prosperity of England under these opposed modes of government: Patriotism, honour, conscience, were watchwords which either might use with truth or abuse with profit. If the great struggle be patiently studied, the moral praise and censure so freely given, according to a reader's personal bias, will be found very rarely justified. There was far, very far, less of tyranny or of liberty involved in the contest, up to 1642, than partisans aver. To the actual actors (not as retrospectively criticized by us) it is a fair battle on both sides, not a contest ‘between light and darkness.’

We, looking back after two centuries, are of course free to recognize, that one effect of the Tudor despotism had been to train Englishmen towards ruling themselves;—we may agree that the time had come for Lords and Commons to take their part in the Kingdom. But no proof, I think it may be said, can be shown that this great idea, in any conscious sense, governed the Parliaments of James and Charles. It is we who,—reviewing our history since the definite establishment of the constitutional balance after 1688, and the many blessings the land has enjoyed,—can perceive what in the seventeenth century was wholly hidden from Commonwealth and from King. And even if in accordance with the common belief, we ascribe English freedom and prosperity and good government to the final triumph of the popular side, yet deeper consideration should suggest that such retrospective judgments are always inevitably made under our human entire ignorance what might have been the result had the opposite party prevailed. Who should say how often, in case of these long and wide extended struggles,—political and dynastic,—the effects which we confidently claim as propter hoc, are only post hoc in the last reality?

Waiving however these somewhat remote and what many will judge over-sceptical considerations, this is certain, that unless we can purify our judgment from reading into the history of the past the long results of time;—from ascribing to the men of the seventeenth century prophetic insight into the nineteenth;—unless, in short, we can free ourselves from the chain of present or personal prepossessions;—no approach can be made to a fair or philosophical judgment upon such periods of strife and crisis as our Civil War preeminently offers.