The occasion was at length presented. The immediate cause of the French revolution[506] must be sought in the plains of America. When Great Britain was involved with her American colonies, France ungraciously interposed in the quarrel. She paid the price of her interference in a manner that she little anticipated. The Marquis de la Fayette there first acquired his ardour for the cause of liberty; and, crossing the Atlantic, carried back with him the spirit into France, and in a short time lighted up a flame which has since spread so great a conflagration.
But whence sprung the Revolution in America?
To solve this momentous question, we must overlook the more immediate causes, and extend our inquiry to the political and religious discussions of the times of James I. and Charles I. and II. It is in that unfortunate period of polemical controversy and excitement, that the foundation of events was laid which have not even yet spent their strength; and that the philosophical inquirer, whose sole object is the attainment of truth, will find it.
The Puritans proposed to carry forth the principle of the Reformation to a still further extent. The proposition was rejected, their views were impugned, and the freedom of religious inquiry was impeded by vexatious obstructions. They found no asylum at home; they sought it abroad, and on the American continent planted the standard of civil and religious liberty. The times of Charles I. followed. There was the same spirit, and the same results. The Star Chamber and the High Commission Court supplied new victims to swell the tide of angry feeling beyond the Atlantic. It was persecution that first peopled America. Time alone was wanting to mature the fruits. The reign of Charles II. completed the eventful crisis. The Act of Uniformity excluded, in one day, two thousand ministers, (many of whom were distinguished for profound piety and learning) from the bosom of the Church of England; and thus, by the acts of three successive reigns, the spirit of independence was established in America, and dissent in England, from which such mighty results have since followed.
We have indulged in these remarks, because we wish to show the tendency of that high feeling, which originating, as we sincerely believe, in a cordial attachment to our Church, endangers, by mistaking the means, the stability of the edifice which it seeks to support. We think this feeling, though abated in its intenseness, still exists; and, cast as we now are into perilous times, when Churches and States are undergoing a most scrutinizing inquiry, we are deeply solicitous that the past should operate as a beacon for the future. If the Church of England is to be preserved as a component part of our institutions, and in its ascendancy over the public mind, the members of that Church must not too incautiously resist the spirit of the age, but seek to guide what they cannot arrest. Let the value and necessity of an Established Church be recognized by the evidence of its usefulness; let the pure doctrines of the Gospel be proclaimed in our pulpits; and a noble ardour and co-operation be manifested in the prosperity of our great Institutions,—our Bible, Missionary, and Jewish societies. She will then attract the favour, the love, and the veneration of the poor, and diffuse a holy and purifying influence among all classes in the community. Her priests will thus be clothed with righteousness, and her saints shout for joy. To her worshippers we may then exclaim, with humble confidence and joy, "Walk about Zion, and go round about her; tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces, that ye may tell it to the generation following. For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even unto death."[507]
We now resume the correspondence of Cowper.
TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.
The Lodge, Jan. 3, 1790.
My dear Sir,—I have been long silent, but you have had the charity, I hope and believe, not to ascribe my silence to a wrong cause. The truth is, I have been too busy to write to anybody, having been obliged to give my early mornings to the revisal and correction of a little volume of Hymns for Children, written by I know not whom. This task I finished but yesterday, and while it was in hand wrote only to my cousin, and to her rarely. From her, however, I knew that you would hear of my well-being, which made me less anxious about my debts to you than I could have been otherwise.
I am almost the only person at Weston known to you who have enjoyed tolerable health this winter. In your next letter give us some account of your own state of health, for I have had many anxieties about you. The winter has been mild; but our winters are in general such, that, that when a friend leaves us in the beginning of that season, I always feel in my heart a perhaps, importing that we have possibly met for the last time, and that the robins may whistle on the grave of one of us before the return of summer.