第10章 Letter III(3)

Then it was,that this passive-obedience and non-resistance Parliament went the utmost lengths of resistance,in a parliamentary way;and the necessary consequence of the steps they made in this way,must have been resistance in another,if the King had not dropped his ministers,retracted his pretensions,redressed some and given expectation of redressing other grievances.In fine,this pensioner-Parliament,as it hath been styled,with some corruption in the house,and an army sometimes at the door of it,disbanded the army in England,and protested against the militia settled in Scotland by Act of Parliament,and appointed to march for any service,wherein the King's honour,authority,and greatness were concerned,in obedience to the orders of the Privy Council.That I may not multiply particular instances,they not only did their utmost to secure their country against immediate danger,but projected to secure it against remote danger,by an exclusion of the Duke of York from the crown,after they had endeavoured strenuously,but in vain,to prevent his entailing popery more easily upon us,by his marriage with a popish princess;for he had declared himself a papist with as much affectation,as if he expected to grow popular by it;had already begun to approve his zeal,and exercise his talent in conversions,by that of his first wife;and was notoriously the agent of Rome and France,in order to seduce his brother into stronger measures than King Charles was willing to take.King Charles,to use an expression of the lord Halifax of that age,would trot;but his brother would gallop.

When I reflect on the particulars here mentioned,and a great many others,which might be mentioned to the honour of this Parliament,I cannot hear it called the pensioner-Parliament,as it were by way of eminence,without a degree of honest indignation;especially in the age in which we live,and by some of those who affect the most to bestow upon it this ignominious appellation.

Pensions indeed,to the amount of seven or eight thousand pounds,as I remember,were discovered to have been given to some members of the House of Commons.

But then let it be remembered likewise,that this expedient of corrupting Parliaments began under the administration of that boisterous,over-bearing,dangerous minister,Clifford.As long as there remained any pretence to say that the court was in the interest of the people,the expedient of bribery was neither wanted,nor practised.When the court was evidently in another interest,the necessity and the practice of bribing the representatives of the people commenced.Should a Parliament of Britain act in compliance with a court,against the sense and interest of the nation,mankind would be ready to pronounce very justly that such a Parliament was under the corrupt influence of the court.But,in the case now before us,we have a very comfortable example of a court wicked enough to stand in need of corruption,and to employ it;and of a Parliament virtuous enough to resist the force of this expedient;which Philip of Macedon boasted that he employed to invade the liberties of other countries;and which had been so often employed by men of less genius,as well as rank,to invade the liberties of their own.All that corruption could do in this Parliament,was to maintain the appearance of a Court party,whilst the measures of the court united a Country party,in opposition to them.Neither places nor pensions could hinder courtiers in this Parliament from voting,on many signal occasions,against the court;nor protect either those who drew the King into ill measures,nor those who complied with him in them.Nay,this pensioner Parliament,if it must be still called so,gave one proof of independency,besides that of contriving a test in 1675,to purge their members on oath from all suspicion of corrupt influence,which ought to wipe off this stain from the most corrupt.They drove one of their paymasters out of court,and impeached the other,in the fullness of his power;even at a time,when the King was so weak as to make,or so unhappy as to be forced to make,on account of pensions privately negotiated from France,the cause of the crown and the cause of the minister one,and to blend their interests together.

What I have said to the honour of the long Parliament is just;because in fact the proceedings of that Parliament were agreeable to the representation I have given of them.But now,if some severe censor should appear,and insist that the dame was chaste,only because she was not enough tempted;that more pensions would have made more pensioners;that much money and little prerogative is more dangerous to liberty than much prerogative and little money;and that the worst and weakest minister King Charles ever had,might have been absolute in this very parliament whose character I defend,if such a minister had been able to enlist,with places,pensions and occasional bribes,not a slender majority,which the defection of a few might at any time defeat,but such a bulky majority,as might impose on itself:if any one,I say,should refine in this manner,and continue to insist that such a minister,with such a purse,would have stood his ground in the Parliament I speak of,with how much contempt and indignation soever he might have been everywhere treated by the people;I shall not presume to assert the contrary.It might have been so.Our safety was owing as much,perhaps,to the poverty of the court,as to the virtue of the Parliament.We might have lost our liberties.

But then I would observe before I conclude,that if this be true,the preservation of our religion and liberty,at that time,was owing to these two circumstances:

first,that King Charles was not parsimonious,but squandered on his pleasures,what he might have employed to corrupt this Parliament;secondly,that the ministers in that reign,fingering no money but the revenue,ordinary and extraordinary,had no opportunity to filch in the pockets of every private man,and to bribe the bubbles very often with their own money;as might be done now,when funding hath been so long in fashion,and the greatest minister hath the means of being the greatest stockjobber,did not the eminent integrity of the minister,and the approved virtue of the age,secure us from any such danger.

We have now brought the deduction of parties very near to the era of Whig and Tory,into which the court found means to divide the nation,and by this division to acquire in the nation a superiority,which had been attempted ineffectually,even by corruption in Parliament.But this I reserve for another letter,and am,sir,yours,etc.