Whether England would be the wiser and the happier if, instead of being separated from the Continent by a channel, she were separated by an ocean, is a question which we leave to the philosopher; but there can be no doubt of the nature of its answer by the historian. It will be found, that the national character had degenerated in every period when that intercourse increased, and that it resumed its vigour only in the periods when that intercourse was restricted.
It would not be difficult to exemplify this principle, from the earliest times of English independence. But our glance shall be limited to the era of the Reformation, when England began first to assume an imperial character.
Elizabeth was always contemptuous of the foreigner, and boasted of the defiance; the national mind never rose to a higher rank than in her illustrious reign. James renewed the connexions of the throne with France, and Charles I. renewed the connexion of the royal line. It may have been for the purpose of checking the national contagion of the intercourse, that rebellion was suffered to grow up in his kingdom. But whatever might be the origin, the effect was, to break off the intercourse with France and her corruptions, and to exhibit a new energy and purity in the people. Cromwell raised a sudden barrier against France by his political system, and the nation recovered its daring and its character in its contempt for the foreigner.
In the reign of Charles II. the intercourse was resumed, and corruption rapidly spread from France to the court, and from the court to the people. England, proud and powerful under the Protectorate, became almost a rival to France in infidelity and profligacy in the course of the Reign. Again the war of William with France closed the Continent upon the national intercourse, and the manliness of the national character partially revived. But with the death of Anne the intercourse was renewed, and the result was a renewal of the corruption. The war of the French Revolution again and utterly broke off the intercourse for the time; and it is undeniable, that the national character suddenly exhibited a most singular and striking return to the original virtues of the country—to its fortitude, to its patriotism, and to the purity of its religious feelings.
The period from the Treaty of Utrecht to the war of the French Revolution, has always appeared to us a blot on the annals of England. It is true that it contained many names of distinction, that it exhibited a graceful and animated literature, that it was characterised by striking advances in national power, and that towards its close it gave the world a Chatham, as if to reconcile us to its existence and throw a brief splendour over its close.
But no period of British history developed more unhappily those vices which naturally ripen in the hot bed of political intrigue. The names of Harley, Bolingbroke, Walpole, and Newcastle, might head a general indictment against the manliness, the integrity, and the honour of England. The low faithlessness of Harley, who seems to have been carrying on a Jacobite correspondence at the foot of the throne—the infamous treachery of his brother-minister, St John—the undenied and undeniable corruption of Walpole, and the half-imbecility which made the chicane of Newcastle ridiculous, while his perpetual artifice alone saved his imbecility from overthrow,—altogether form a congeries, which, like the animal wrecks of the primitive world, almost give in their deformity a reason for its extinction.
There can be no question of the perpetual villany which then assumed the insulted name of politics; none, of the utter sacrifice of public interests to the office-hunting avarice of all the successive parties; none, of the atrocious corruptibility of them all; none, of that general decay of religion, morals, and national honour, which was the result of a time when principle was laughed at, and when the loudest laugher passed for the wisest man of his generation.
The cause was obvious. Charles II. had brought with him from France all the vices of a court, where the grossest licentiousness found its grossest example in the person of the sovereign. Profligate as private life naturally is in all the dominions of a religion where every crime is rated by a tariff, and where the confessional relieves every man of his conscience, the conduct of Louis XIV. had made profligacy the actual pride of the throne.
The feeble and frivolous Charles was more a Frenchman than an Englishman; more a courtier than a king; and fitter to be a page in the seraglio than either.
The royal robe on the shoulders of such a monarch, instead of concealing his vices, only made them glitter in the national eyes; and the morals of England might have been irretrievably stained, but for that salutary judgment which interposed between the people and the dynasty, and by driving James into an ignominious exile, placed a man of principle on the throne. Unfortunately, the reign of William was too busy and too brief to produce any striking change in the habits of the people. His whole policy was turned to the great terror of the time, the daring ambition of France. He fought on the outposts of Europe. All his ideas were Continental. The singular constitution of his nature gave him the spirit of a warrior, combined with the seclusion of a monk. Solitary even in camps, what must he be in the trivial bustle of a court?—and, engrossed with the largest interests of nations, what interest could he attach to the squabbles of rival professors of licentiousness, to giving force to a feeble drama, or regulating the decorum of factions equally corrupt and querulous, and long since equally despised and forgotten?