第4章 Letter II(1)

Sir:--Whilst I was writing my last letter to you,it came into my thoughts that nothing would illustrate the subject better,nor enforce more strongly the exhortation to an union of parties,in support of that constitution,on the terms of which alone all right to govern us,and all our obligation to obey is now founded,than an enquiry into the rise and progress of our late parties;or a short history of Toryism and Whiggism from their cradle to their grave,with an introductory account of their genealogy and descent.

Your papers have been from the first consecrated to the information of the people of Britain;and I think they may boast very justly a merit singular enough,that of never speaking to the passions,without appealing to the reason of mankind.It is fit they should keep up this character,in the strictest manner,whilst they are employed on the most important subject,and published at the most important crisis.I shall therefore execute my design with sincerity and impartiality.I shall certainly not flatter,and I do not mean to offend.

Reasonable men and lovers of truth,in whatever party they have been engaged,will not be offended at writings,which claim no regard but on this account,that they are founded in reason and truth,and speak with boldness what reason and truth conspire to dictate.As for the drummers and trumpeters of faction,who are hired to drown the voice of both in one perpetual din of clamour,and would endeavour to drown,in the same manner,even the dying groans of their country,if she was already brought into that extreme condition;they shall not provoke me to break a most contemptuous silence.The subject is too solemn.They may profane it,by writing on it.Far be it from me to become guilty of the same crime by answering them.

If the enquiry I am going to make into the rise and progress of our late parties should produce in any degree the good which I intend,it will help to confirm and improve the national union,so happily begun,by taking off some remains of shyness,distrust and prejudice,which may still hang about men,who think alike,and who press on from different quarters to the same common point of view.It will help to unmask more effectually the wicked conduct of those,who labour with all the skill,and,which is much more considerable,with all the authority they possess,to keep up the division of parties;that each of these may continue to be,in its turn,what all of them have been too often and too long,the instruments and the victims of private ambition.It will do something more.A few reflections on the rise and progress of our distemper,and the rise and progress of our cure,will help us of course to make a true judgment on our present state,and will point out to us,better perhaps than any other method,the specific remedies still necessary to preserve our constitution in health and vigour.

--Having premised this,I come to the point.

Queen Elizabeth designed,and the nation called,King James to the throne,though the whole Scottish line had been excluded by the will of Henry the Eighth,made indeed under the authority of an Act of Parliament,and yet little regarded either by the Parliament,or the people.As soon as he was on the throne,a flattering Act of Recognition passed;for though all princes are flattered on their first accession,yet those princes are sure to be flattered most,who deserve panegyric least.In this Act the Parliament acknowledged,on the knees of their hearts,such was the cant of the age,the indubitable right,by which they declared that the crown descended to him immediately,on the decease of Queen Elizabeth.Of this Act,and of the use,which some men,very weakly I think,endeavoured to make of it,I shall have occasion to speak hereafter.I would only observe here,that this is the era of hereditary right,and of all those exalted notions,concerning the power and prerogative of kings,and the sacredness of their persons.All together they composed such a system of absurdity as had never been heard of in this country,till that anointed pedant broached them.They have been spoken of pretty much at large in your papers;particularly in some of those published under the name of Oldcastle.To them I refer.

To assert that the extravagant principles of ecclesiastical and civil government,which began to be propagated in this reign,and were carried still higher in the next,gave Occasion to those of another kind,or of another extreme,which were taught with success,and gained by degrees great vogue in the nation,would be too much.Opinions very different from those which received the sanction of a legal establishment in Church and state,had crept about obscurely,if not silently,even whilst the government of Elizabeth lasted.But this I say;that the principles by which King James and King Charles the First governed,and the excesses of hierarchical and monarchical power,exercised in consequence of them,gave great advantage to the opposite opinions,and entirely occasioned the miseries which followed.Frenzy.provoked frenzy,and two species of madness infected the whole mass of the people.

It hath cost us a century to lose our wits,and to recover them again.

If our grievances under King Charles the First had been redressed by a sober,regular,parliamentary reformation of the state;or,if the civil war happening,a new government had been established on principles of the constitution,not of faction,of liberty,not of licentiousness,as there was on the abdication of King James the Second;we may conclude,both from reason and experience,that the absurd and slavish doctrines I have mentioned would have been exploded early.They would have been buried in the recent grave of him who first devised them;and the memory of him and of them would have stunk together in the nostrils of mankind.But the contrary fell out.