XXVII. Law-Mississippi Scheme. South Sea Bubble, &c. 242 295 323 349 378 LECTURES ON MODERN HISTORY. LECTURE XVIII. TOW CHARLES II. "OWARDS the close of my last lecture I alluded to the opening scenes of the Restoration. I then reminded you of the remark that political reasoners have always made on occasions of this nature, that as mankind are ever in extremes, their resistance or rebellion no sooner ceases and changes into obedience, than their obedience becomes servility; and that such renewals of an ancient government form an epoch of all others the most critical and dangerous to the liberties of a people. The scenes that took place every where in the metropolis and through the kingdom, during the first stages of the Restoration, certainly confirmed such general conclusions. To a certain degree, so did even the proceedings of the Restoration parliament. Still it must be allowed that more care was taken of the liberties of the subject by the House of Commons than the general principles of human nature would have led us to expect; and this, as I then observed, is an important merit that belongs to the Presbyterians, who constituted so large a portion of its members, particularly to Sir Matthew Hale, the judge so justly celebrated. Hale is understood not to have been wanting to his country at this memorable period. He endeavoured to take proper securities for the constitution; to come to some understanding with the king on this subject before he was finally restored; but all proposals of this kind were overruled. You will do well, therefore, to observe the events that followed in consequence of these securities not having been taken. You will observe the conduct of the king through the whole of his reign, and finally the revolution that at length became necessary, in the short space of less than thirty years; and that, at this revolution, the patriotic party did only take such securities as Sir Matthew Hale would probably have proposed at the Restoration. You will then make your own inferences with respect to the propriety of all principles of general confidence, when interests so delicate, so fugitive, so important, are concerned, as those of civil liberty. Men of peaceable dispositions and refined minds are always the first to countenance these principles of general confidence in rulers and government; they are the very men, as I have once before observed, who should be the last; for they are the very men who of all others would stand most aghast, when things are at last driven to the dreadful alternative either of asserting the liberties of a people by force, or losing them for ever. We now proceed to the history of the reign. The first parliament, the convention or restoration parliament, was soon dissolved, and a new and regular parliament was immediately summoned, and met in May, 1661. This was the Pensionary parliament, as it was called, the parliament that sat afterwards for so many years. Great exertions had been made by Clarendon in the elections, and it is understood that only about fifty-three of the Presbyterian interest were returned. The settlement of the nation after the rebellion was the great work before them, and was in fact entrusted to Lord Clarendon. This settlement was principally to be directed to two main points. In the first place, the state of the property was to be adjusted. Great transmutations had taken place, amid the rapine and confiscations, forced sales and purchases, which had been made under the authority of parliament and the protectorate. The adherents of the king were visibly those who had suffered during the commotions. This subject is left in great perplexity by the account of Clarendon; but, comparing this account with other representations, to be found in a note in Harris's Life of Charles II., vol. i., page 370, on the whole it may be concluded that such property as had been torn from the royal party, and was still in any very visible and distinguishable shape, was after some delay and management seized upon by the state and restored to its original owners. The crown lands, for instance, the church lands, were taken from those who had purchased and held on parliamentary titles, and some of the estates of the great families were recovered; but on the whole the good sense and legal education of Clarendon, and the natural fears of the king lest his throne should be endangered, concurred in producing the acts of indemnity and oblivion. These were passed in the restoration parliament, and immediately confirmed on the meeting of the new parliament. By these acts men seem to have been in general secured in the possession of their estates and property, as they then stood, with such exceptions as I have alluded to, and such an endless subject of contention was for ever put to rest. The next great subject was one of even more difficulty, the final settlement of the church. The church government had become Presbyterian; was it to remain so? Was it to be modified? The circumstances were these. In England intolerance had run, as in other countries, its natural course; first, between the Papists and Protestants, as you will see in Foxe's Martyrs, and Dodd's Church History. The Church of England under Elizabeth had waged war also with the Puritans, still more so under James I., and again, yet more violently, under the direction and councils of Charles I. and Laud. All this you will see in Neal's History of the Puritans (you will easily make out from the prefaces what the chapters contain). In the great rebellion, however, it had happened that the Presbyterians had established themselves, and they persecuted the members of the Church of England in their turn. On this head Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy may be consulted. A few pages of the work, where the author gives a general computation of the numbers who suffered, and a few more where he describes the different cases, will be a sad and sufficient specimen of the subject. Finally, under these mutual injuries the members of the Church of England, who had been so distressed and overcome, were now once more triumphant by the event of the Restoration. |