Jacobite rebellion

“ In 1715 a Jacobite insurrection in the north, supported by the appearance of the Pretender, the son of James II., in Scotland, was suppressed, and its suppression not only gave to the government a character of stability, but displayed its adversaries in an unfavourable light as the disturbers of the peace. ”

“ The Jacobitism of later days did not mean any discontent with revolution principles, but dislike to the revolution dynasty. The Whig indeed argued with true party logic, that every Tory must be a Jacobite, and every Jacobite a lover of arbitrary rule. In truth a man might wish to restore the Stuarts without wishing to restore the principles for which the Stuarts had been expelled: he might be a Jacobite without being a lover of arbitrary rule; and still more easily might he be a Tory without being a Jacobite. ”

“ This motion, in the debate on which the Jacobites figured as both a dangerous and a mercenary people, was lost by 222 to 206. Sixteen placemen saved Sir Robert, who had spoken with much plausibility and cunning against the leave asked for. The Bishop of Salisbury in the House of Lords, in the discussion in March on the Pension Bill, could only express a hope that faction would not foster insurrection. The opposition papers maintained that no such thing as faction existed, and that Jacobitism was a name now utterly unknown to the mass of the people. ”

“ The prevalence of Jacobite principles among [Pg 131] the English gentry is supposed to have infected many officers in the royal army, who might have avowed them at any crisis in the public affairs; many were, at all events, suspected of Jacobite principles; "and the mere suspicion," remarks Lord Mahon, "would have produced nearly the same effects as the reality,—bewilderment, distrust, and vacillation in the chiefs." "Had, then, the Highlanders combined to push forward," observes this able writer, "must not the increasing terror have palsied all power of resistance? ”

“ For example, the ‘Contest,’ in 1757, flung this paragraph at the supposed few Jacks now left in London to read it:—‘The word Jacobite is vox et prœterea nihil. The Name survives after the Party is extinct. There may be a few enthusiastic Bigots who deem Obstinacy a Merit, and who appear to be ungrateful for the Liberty and Security they enjoy under the present Government, and insensible of the Calamity and Oppression of the Government they would be willing to restore. But their Power is as inconsiderable as their Principles are detestable. ”

“ In confirmation of this surmise may be quoted an anecdote which is related of a company of the celebrated Black Watch, which had been exempted during the insurrection of 1745 from serving against their countrymen; more than three hundred of the regiment having brothers and relations engaged in the Jacobite army. [137] But it was afterwards employed on a service which might well have been assigned to others;—to execute the decrees of burning, and to lay waste the districts where the forefathers of these brave men had lived. ”

“ The Girondists hoped, though almost in despair, that it was not yet too late to show the people the horrors of anarchy, and to rally around themselves the multitude to sustain a well-established and law-revering republic. The Jacobins determined to send their opponents to the scaffold, and by the aid of the terrors of the mob, now enlisted on their side, resistlessly to carry all their measures. A hint from the Jacobin leaders surrounded the Assembly with the hideous howlings of a haggard concourse of beings just as merciless and demoniac as lost spirits. ”

“ All parties, Whig, Tory, or Radical, became Jacobite at heart, and admirers of absolute power. The Whigs talked about the liberty of the subject, and the Radicals about the rights of man still, but neither party cared a straw for what it talked about, and mentally swore that, as soon as by means of such stuff they could get places, and fill their pockets, they would be as Jacobite as the Jacobs themselves. ”

“ Among the modern Jacobite, or legitimist, societies perhaps the most important is the “Order of the White Rose,” which has a branch in Canada and the United States. The order holds that sovereign authority is of divine sanction, and that the execution of Charles I. and the revolution of 1688 were national crimes; it exists to study the history of the Stuarts, to oppose all democratic tendencies, and in general to maintain the theory that kingship is independent of all parliamentary authority and popular approval. ”

“ Jacobite leaders should not disperse until news of the Chevalier's landing should reassure them, or the certainty of a rising in England should give vigour to their proceedings. At this critical moment Lord Mar published a declaration which has been printed in most of the histories of the period, exhorting all those who were well-affected to the good cause to put themselves under arms, and summoning his confederates to the Tower of Braemar, on the eleventh of September, promising them, in the name of the King, their pay from the moment of setting out. ”

“ As for resisting the Jacobites, the Highlanders were described as too powerful to be resisted. It was certainly in ridicule of such exaggerations that a story ran for a few days to the effect that those terrible Highlanders had cut off the Dutch auxiliaries, had put on their breeches, and, advancing on an English detachment which did not recognise them, had cut the Whig soldiers to pieces. It is quite as certain that the London Jacobites claimed the victory at Preston for their side, and were not silenced till the cavalcade of Jacobite captives was passing from Highgate to the London prisons. ”

“ All Jacobites, it was agreed, were in want of something, and if they could overturn the throne and King George with it, carry fire and sword into England, as their chaplains recommended in their sermons, and divide property amongst themselves, there would be a fair chance of happiness under a new state of things, for the accomplishment of which they had had the prayers of all the harlots in the kingdom! ”

“ Despising the reactionists, whose hopes were more or less enlisted on behalf of the foreign armies, he also detested the Jacobins who were dishonoring and compromising the new order of things. He expresses both sentiments in a letter addressed to the National Assembly, and written from the intrenched camp of Maubeuge, June 16, 1792, the Fourth Year of Liberty: "Can you conceal from yourselves," he says in it, "that a faction, and to use plain terms, the Jacobin faction, has caused all these disorders? ”

“ It seems undeniable that the strength of this Jacobite faction sprung from the want of apparent necessity for the change of government. Extreme oppression produces an impetuous tide of resistance, which bears away the reasonings of the casuists. But the encroachments of James II., being rather felt in prospect than much actual injury, left men in a calmer temper, and disposed to weigh somewhat nicely the nature of the proposed remedy. ”

“ There was a considerable noisy excitement through the country, the Jacobites ever striving to rouse the people in the great towns to riot and sedition, and, when they found that impossible, spreading exaggerated accounts of the effects of their efforts. ”

“ In England, from the middle of 1690, the Jacobite intrigues continued. The lenity shown by William, after the abortive efforts of the Jacobites during the threatened French invasion, encouraged further conspiracies. It seemed certain that William's presence would be required abroad, and that again during his absence an opportunity would be offered for striking a blow against the Government. In December 1690, a meeting was held of the leading Jacobites, and it was determined that Preston should be sent to St. Germains. ”

“ They would raise the mass of the people to the enjoyment of liberty, but to liberty controlled by vigorous law. Opposed to them were the Jacobins—far more radical in their views of reform. They would overthrow both throne and altar, break down all privileged orders, confiscate the property of the nobles, and place prince and beggar on the footing of equality. These were the two great parties into which revolutionary France was divided and the conflict between them was the most fierce and implacable earth has ever witnessed. ”

“ Jacobites were originally followers of Jacob who went about in various parts of the country for preaching purposes.
(2) Jacobite was the name given to the followers of Jackade. Jackade was a person who pretended to be Duke of York. he marched through London at the head of 6000 men: he went to Ireland and tried to deceive them his followers were called Jacobites and Jacobin was the name given to his government.
(The two next may need a note: they refer to the Rebecca Riots in Wales, blended with Jacob, son of Rebekah. I think Rebekah had no daughter.) ”

“ But with regard to the practicability of the course to be pursued, the right honourable gentleman says, he is looking forward to a time when there shall be no dread of Jacobin principles. I ask whether he does not think, from the fraud, oppression, tyranny, and cruelty with which the conduct of France has marked them, that they are not now nearly dead, extinct, and detested? But who are the Jacobins? Is there a man in this country who has at any time opposed Ministers, who has resisted the waste of public money and the prostitution of honours, that has not been branded with the name? ”

“ And, in fact, the Jacobin only does that and right away too; insurrections, usurpations, pillaging, murders, assaults on individuals, on judges and public attorneys, on assemblies, violations of law, attacks on the State, on communities—there is no outrage not committed by him. He has always acted as sovereign instinctively; he was so as a private individual and clubbist; he is not to cease being so, now that he possesses legal authority, and all the more because if he hesitates he knows he is lost; to save himself from the scaffold he has no refuge but in a dictatorship. ”

“ Again the Jacobins and the Girondists prepared for the renewal of their struggle. It was not a struggle for power merely, but for life. The Girondists, knowing [Pg 177] that the fury of the Revolution would soon sweep over every thing, unless they could bring back the people to a sense of justice—would punish with the scaffold those who had incited the massacre of thousands of uncondemned citizens. The Jacobins would rid themselves of their adversaries by overwhelming them in the same carnage to which they had consigned the Loyalists. ”

“ A true Jacobin, then, is one who does not believe in the divine right of kings, or in any other alias for it, which implies that they reign "in contempt of the will of the people;" and he holds all such kings to be tyrants, and their subjects slaves. ”

“ The fatal blow given to the King’s power was struck by the union of the Tories and the Whigs. Whilst the majority of the laity and clergy laboured in conjunction to effect the important end in question, some there were who deemed that determined but calm resistance rebellion, and who formed the new party under the name of Jacobites. ”

“ The Jacobin Revolution is carried on by men of no rank, of no consideration, of wild, savage minds, full of levity, arrogance, and presumption, without morals, without probity, without prudence. What have they, then, to supply their innumerable defects, and to make them terrible even to the firmest minds? One thing, and one thing only,—but that one thing is worth a thousand;—they have energy. In France, all things being put into an universal ferment, in the decomposition of society, no man comes forward but by his spirit of enterprise and the vigor of his mind. ”

“ The Jacobites, he says, do all they can to perswade the Nation that their pretended King is a Protestant in his Heart, tho’ he dares not declare it while under the Power of France; that he is acquainted with the Mistakes of his Father‘s Government, will govern us more according to Law, and endear himself to his Subjects.
They magnifie the Strength of their own Party, and the Weakness and Divisions of the other, in order to facilitate and hasten their Undertaking; they argue themselves out of their Fears, and into the highest assurance of accomplishing their purpose. ”

“ The Jacobins taught: The men of all countries are brothers, and the different nations ought to help each other to the best of their ability, like citizens of the same state. The nation which oppresses another nation declares itself the enemy of all. Those who make war upon any one nation in order to arrest the progress of liberty and abolish the rights of humanity ought to be assailed by all the others, not as ordinary enemies, but as insurrectionary murderers and robbers.
The Girondists opposed every tyranny in human shape, but they seldom tried to protect from the tyranny of circumstances. ”

“ These considerations shall always make me jealous of the Jacobite party’s getting any opportunity to rebel, and this they have always thought they had, and always will think they have, when they see the nation destitute of troops, for which reason, I shall always be for keeping in the island such a number of regular troops as may be sufficient for awing them into obedience.... The danger of an invasion from abroad, with the Pretender at the head of it, is equally to be apprehended.’ Alluding to Spain with whom we were at war, Mr. ”

“ After ten years of violence, of destruction and burning and pillage and massacre and general upheaval, their impotence was revealed so startlingly that they fell into universal reprobation. The dictator then invoked by the whole of France was obliged to re-establish the greater part of that which had been destroyed.
The attempt of the Jacobins to re-fashion society in the name of pure reason constitutes an experiment of the highest interest. Probably mankind will never have occasion to repeat it on so vast a scale. ”