David Hume

“ A contradiction, open and direct, to all past professions, would make them pass, in the eyes of the whole nation, for the most shameless hypocrites, enlisted, by no other than mercenary motives, in the cause of the most perfidious traitor. Principles, such as they were, had been encouraged in them by every consideration, human and divine; and though it was easy, where interest concurred, to deceive them by the thinnest disguises, it might be found dangerous at once to pull off the mask, and to show them in a full light the whole crime and deformity of their conduct. ”

“ The view of past calamities no longer presented dismal prognostics of the future: it tended only to enhance the general exultation for those scenes of happiness and tranquillity which all men now confidently promised themselves. The royalists, the Presbyterians, forgetting all animosities, mingled in common joy and transport, and vowed never more to gratify the ambition of false and factious tyrants by their calamitous divisions. The populace more outrageous in their festivity, made the air resound with acclamations, and illuminated every street with signals of jollity and triumph. ”

“ So obvious indeed was the king’s present inability to invade the constitution, that the fears and jealousies which operated on the people, and pushed them so furiously to arms, were undoubtedly not of a civil, but of a religious nature. The distempered imaginations of men were agitated with a continual dread of Popery, with a horror against prelacy, with an antipathy to ceremonies and the liturgy, and with a violent affection for whatever was most opposite to these objects of aversion. ”

“ Hating monarchy while a subject, despising liberty while a citizen, though he retained for a time all orders of men under a seeming obedience to the parliament, he was secretly paving the way, by artifice and courage, to his own unlimited authority. ”

“ To be sacrificed to the interest, policy, and ambition of the great, is so much the common lot of the people, that they may appear unreasonable who would pretend to complain of it: but to be the victim of the frivolous gallantry of a favorite, and of his boyish caprices, seemed the object of peculiar indignation.
In this situation, it may be imagined the king and the duke dreaded, above all things, the assembling of a parliament; but so little foresight had they possessed in their enterprising schemes, that they found themselves under an absolute necessity of embracing that expedient. ”

“ The military genius of the people had, by the civil contests, been roused from its former lethargy; and excellent officers were formed in every branch of service. The confusion into which all things had been thrown, had given opportunity to men of low stations to break through their obscurity, and to raise themselves by their courage to commands which they were well qualified to exercise, but to which their birth could never have entitled them. And while so great a power was lodged in such active hands, no wonder the republic was successful in all its enterprises. ”

“ The nobility, the gentry, bent their passionate endeavors to the same enterprise, by which alone they could be redeemed from slavery. And no man was so remote from party, so indifferent to public good, as not to feel the most ardent wishes for the dissolution of that tyranny, which, whether the civil or the military part of it were considered, appeared equally oppressive and ruinous to the nation. ”

“ The plea of necessity would warrant any other taxation as well as that of ship money; wherever any difficulty shall occur, the administration, instead of endeavoring to elude or overcome it by gentle and prudent measures, will instantly represent it as a reason for infringing all ancient laws and institutions: and if such maxims and such practices prevail, what has become of national liberty? What authority is left to the Great Charter, to the statutes, and to the very petition of right, which in the present reign had been so solemnly enacted by the concurrence of the whole legislature? ”

“ That the letter of the law, as much as the most flaming court sermon, inculcates passive obedience, is apparent; and though the spirit of a limited government seems to require, in extraordinary cases, some mitigation of so rigorous a doctrine, it must be confessed, that the presiding genius of the English constitution had rendered a mistake in this particular very natural and excusable. To inflict death, at least, on those who depart from the exact line of truth in these nice questions, so far from being favorable to national liberty, savors strongly of the spirit of tyranny and proscription. ”

“ The wild enthusiasm, together with valor and discipline, still propagated itself; and all men cast their eyes on so pious and so successful a leader. From low commands, he rose with great rapidity to be really the first, though in appearance only the second, in the army. By fraud and violence, he soon rendered himself the first in the state. In proportion to the increase of his authority, his talents always seemed to expand themselves; and he displayed every day new abilities, which had lain dormant till the very emergence by which they were called forth into action. ”

“ The torrent rising to so dreadful and unexpected a height, despair seized all those who from interest or habit were most attached to monarchy. And as for those who maintained their duty to the king merely from their regard to the constitution, they seemed by their concurrence to swell that inundation which began already to deluge every thing. “You have taken the whole machine of government in pieces,” said Charles, in a discourse to the parliament; “a practice frequent with skilful artists, when they desire to clear the wheels from any rust which may have grown upon them. ”

“ Every man had framed the model of a republic; and, however new it was, or fantastical, he was eager in recommending it to his fellow-citizens, or even imposing it by force upon them. Every man had adjusted a system of religion, which, being derived from no traditional authority, was peculiar to himself; and being founded on supposed inspiration, not on any principles of human reason, had no means, besides cant and low rhetoric, by which it could recommend itself to others. The levellers insisted on an equal distribution of power and property, and disclaimed all dependence and subordination. ”

“ All Europe stood astonished to see a nation, so turbulent and unruly, who, for some doubtful encroachments on their privileges, had dethroned and murdered an excellent prince, descended from a long line of monarchs, now at last subdued and reduced to slavery by one who, a few years before, was no better than a private gentleman, whose name was not known in the nation, and who was little regarded even in that low sphere to which he had always been confined. ”

“ An army is so forcible, and at the same time so coarse a weapon, that any hand which wields it, may, without much dexterity, perform any operation, and attain any ascendant, in human society.
The domestic administration of Cromwell, though it discovers great abilities, was conducted without any plan either of liberty or arbitrary power: perhaps his difficult situation admitted of neither. His foreign enterprises, though full of intrepidity, were pernicious to national interest, and seem more the result of impetuous fury or narrow prejudices, than of cool foresight and deliberation. ”

“ Some unexpected procedure must be attempted, which would astonish the world by its novelty, would bear the semblance of justice, and would cover its barbarity by the audaciousness of the enterprise. Striking in with the fanatical notions of the entire equality of mankind, it would insure the devoted obedience of the army, and serve as a general engagement against the royal family, whom, by their open and united deed, they would so heinously affront and injure. ”

“ The more to quiet the minds of men, the council of officers took into consideration a scheme called “the agreement of the people;” being the plan of a republic, to be substituted in the place of that government which they so violently pulled in pieces. Many parts of this scheme for correcting the inequalities of the representative, are plausible; had the nation been disposed to receive it, or had the army intended to impose it. Other parts are too perfect for human nature, and savor strongly of that fanatical spirit so prevalent throughout the kingdom. ”

“ No government at that time appeared in the world, nor is perhaps to be found in the records of any history, which subsisted without the mixture of some arbitrary authority committed to some magistrate; and it might reasonably, beforehand, appear doubtful, whether human society could ever reach that state of perfection, as to support itself with no other control than the general and rigid maxims of law and equity. But the parliament justly thought, that the king was too eminent a magistrate to be trusted with discretionary power, which he might so easily turn to the destruction of liberty. ”

“ Not only battles were won, towns and fortresses taken; the genius too of the nation seemed gradually to improve, and to compose itself to the spirit of dutiful obedience and of steady enterprise. A Condé, a Turenne were formed; and the troops, animated by their valor, and guided by their discipline, acquired every day a greater ascendant over the Spaniards. All of a sudden, from some intrigues of the court, and some discontents in the courts of judicature, intestine commotions were excited, and every thing relapsed into confusion. ”

“ It was necessary to fix a choice; either to abandon entirely the privileges of the people, or to secure them by firmer and more precise barriers than the constitution had hitherto provided for them. In this dilemma, men of such aspiring geniuses, and such independent fortunes, could not long deliberate: they boldly embraced the side of freedom, and resolved to grant no supplies to their necessitous prince, without extorting concessions in favor of civil liberty. ”

“ But what a contrast when we pass to the protector’s replies! After so singular a manner does nature distribute her talents, that, in a nation abounding with sense and learning, a man who, by superior personal merit alone, had made his way to supreme dignity, and had even obliged the parliament to make him a tender of the crown, was yet incapable of expressing himself on this occasion, but in a manner which a peasant of the most ordinary capacity would justly be ashamed of. ”

“ In a word, the parliament, after the commencement of their violences, and still more after beginning the civil war, had reason for their scruples and jealousies, founded on the very nature of their situation, and on the general propensity of the human mind; not on any fault of the king’s character, who was candid, sincere, upright; as much as any man whom we meet with in history. ”

“ And I am confident, that another parliament would remember how useful a king’s power is to a people’s liberty; of how much power I divested myself, that I and they might meet once again in a parliamentary way, in order to agree the bounds of prince and people. Give belief to my experience, never to affect more greatness or prerogative than what is really and intrinsically for the good of the subjects, not the satisfaction of favorites If you thus use it, you will never want means to be a father to all, and a bountiful prince to any whom you incline to be extraordinarily gracious to. ”

“ It is indeed certain, that strong compunction for his consent to Strafford’s execution attended this unfortunate prince during the remainder of his life; and even at his own fatal end, the memory of this guilt, with great sorrow and remorse, recurred upon him. All men were so sensible of the extreme violence which was done him, that he suffered the less, both in character and interest, from this unhappy measure; and though he abandoned his best friend, yet was he still able to preserve, in some degree, the attachment of all his adherents. ”

“ Men considered the house of commons in no other light than as the representatives of the nation, whose interest was the same with that of the public, who were the eternal guardians of law and liberty, and whom no motive, but the necessary defence of the people, could ever engage in an opposition to the crown. The torrent, therefore, of general affection ran to the parliament. What is the great advantage of popularity, the privilege of affixing epithets fell of course to that party. The king’s adherents were the wicked and the malignant: their adversaries were the godly and the well-affected. ”

“ In the battle of Newbury, on the part of the king, besides the earls of Sunderland and Carnarvon, two noblemen of promising hopes, was unfortunately slain, to the regret of every lover of ingenuity and virtue throughout the kingdom, Lucius Gary, Viscount Falkland, secretary of state. Before assembling the present parliament, this man, devoted to the pursuits of learning and to the society of all the polite and elegant, had enjoyed himself in every pleasure which a fine genius, a generous disposition, and an opulent fortune could afford. ”

“ If a statute contrary to public good has at any time been rashly voted and assented to, either from the violence of faction or the inexperience of senates and princes, it cannot be more effectually abrogated by a train of contrary precedents, which prove, that by common consent it has been tacitly set aside, as inconvenient and impracticable. Such has been the case with all those statutes enacted during turbulent times, in order to limit royal prerogative, and cramp the sovereign in his protection of the public, and his execution of the laws. ”

“ I can live, though another, who has no right, be put to live along with me; nay, I can live, though burdened with impositions beyond what at present I labor under: but to have my liberty, which is the soul of my life, ravished from me to have my person pent up in a jail, without relief by law, and to be so adjudged,—O, improvident ancestors! ”

“ By promoting all measures which reduced the powers of the crown, they hoped to disarm the king, whom they justly regarded, from principle, inclination, and policy, to be the determined patron of the hierarchy. By declaiming against the supposed encroachments and tyranny of the prelates, they endeavored to carry the nation, from a hatred of their persons, to an opposition against their office and character. And when men were enlisted in party, it would not be difficult, they thought, to lead them by degrees into many measures for which they formerly entertained the greatest aversion. ”