I wish your lordship be not too sanguine in these expectations. It is not to be conceived how insensible the people are to the blessings they enjoy, and how easily they forget their past miseries. So that, if their principles have not taken deep root, I would not answer for their continuing much longer than it served their purpose to make a shew of them.
SIR J. MAYNARD.
I must confess, that all my experience of mankind inclines me to this opinion. I could relate to you some strange instances of the sort Mr. Somers hints at. But after all, Sir, you do not indulge these apprehensions, on account of the general fickleness of human nature. You have some more particular reasons for concluding that the system of liberty, which hath worked such wonders of late, is not likely to maintain its ground amongst us.
MR. SOMERS.
I have: and I was going to explain those reasons, if my lord of Salisbury had not a little diverted me from the pursuit of them.
It is very notorious from the common discourse of men even on this great occasion (and I wish it had not appeared too evidently in the debates of the houses), that very many of us have but crude notions of the form of government under which we live, and which hath been transmitted to us from our forefathers. I have met with persons of no mean rank, and supposed to be well seen in the history of the kingdom, who speak a very strange language. They allow, indeed, that something was to be done in the perilous circumstances into which we had fallen. But, when they come to explain themselves, it is in a way that leaves us no right to do any thing; at least, not what it was found expedient for the nation to do at this juncture. For they contend in so many words, “that the crown of England is absolute; that the form of government is an entire and simple monarchy; and that so it hath continued to be in every period of it down to the Abdication: that the Conquest, at least, to ascend no higher, invested the first William in absolute dominion; that from him it devolved of course upon his successors; and that all the pretended rights of the people, the Great Charters of ancient and modern date, were mere usurpations on the prince, extorted from him by the necessity of his affairs, and revocable at his pleasure: nay, they insinuate that parliaments themselves were the creatures of his will; that their privileges were all derived from the sovereign’s grant; and that they made no part in the original frame and texture of the English government.
In support of this extraordinary system, they refer us to the constant tenor of our history. They speak of the Conqueror, as proprietary of the whole kingdom: which accordingly, they say, he parcelled out, as he saw fit, in grants to his Norman and English subjects: that, through his partial consideration of the church, and an excessive liberality to his favoured servants, this distribution was so ill made, as to give occasion to all the broils and contentions that followed: that the churchmen began their unnatural claim of independency on the crown; in which attempt they were soon followed by the encroaching and too powerful barons: that, in these struggles, many flowers of the crown were rudely torn from it, till a sort of truce was made, and the rebellious humour somewhat composed, by the extorted articles of Running-mede: that these confusions, however, were afterwards renewed, and even increased, by the contests of the two houses of York and Lancaster: but that, upon the union of the roses in the person of Henry VII, these commotions were finally appeased, and the crown restored to its ancient dignity and lustre: that, indeed, the usage of parliaments, with some other forms of popular administration, which had been permitted in the former irregular reigns, was continued; but of the mere grace of the prince, and without any consequence to his prerogative: that succeeding kings, and even Henry himself, considered themselves as possessed of an imperial crown; and that, though they might sometimes condescend to take the advice, they were absolutely above the control, of the people: in short, that the law itself was but the will of the prince, declared in parliament; or rather solemnly received and attested there, for the better information and more entire obedience of the subject.
This they deliver as a just and fair account of the English government; the genius of which, they say, is absolute and despotic in the highest degree; as much so, at least, as that of any other monarchy in Europe. They ask, with an air of insult, what restraint our Henry VIII, and our admired Elizabeth, would ever suffer to be put on their prerogative; and they mention with derision the fancy of dating the high pretensions of the crown from the accession of the Stuart family. They affirm, that James I, and his son, aimed only to continue the government on the footing on which they had received it; that their notions of it were authorized by constant fact; by the evidence of our histories; by the language of parliaments; by the concurrent sense of every order of men amongst us: and that what followed in the middle of this century was the mere effect of POPULAR, as many former disorders had been of PATRICIAN, violence. In a word, they conclude with saying, that the old government revived again at the Restoration, just as, in like circumstances, it had done before at the UNION of the two houses: that, in truth, the voluntary desertion of the late king have given a colour to the innovation of the present year; but that, till this new settlement was made, the English constitution, as implying something different from pure monarchy, was an unintelligible notion, or rather a mere whimsy, that had not the least foundation in truth or history.”
This is a summary of the doctrines, which, I doubt, are too current amongst us. I do not speak of the bigoted adherents to the late king; but of many cooler and more disinterested men, whose religious principles, as I suppose (for it appears it could not be their political), had engaged them to concur in the new settlement. You will judge, then, if there be not reason to apprehend much mischief from the prevalence and propagation of such a system: a system, which, as being, in the language of the patrons of it, founded upon fact, is the more likely to impose upon the people; and, as referring to the practice of ancient times, is not for every man’s confutation. I repeat it, therefore; if this notion of the despotic form of our government become general, I tremble to think what effect it may hereafter produce on the minds of men; especially when joined to that false tenderness, which the people of England are so apt to entertain for their princes, even the worst of them, under misfortune. I might further observe, that this prerogative system hath a direct tendency to produce, as well as heighten, this compassion to the sovereign. And I make no scruple to lay it before you with all its circumstances, because I know to whom I speak, and that I could not have wished for a better opportunity of hearing it confuted.