Conquest of England by the Normans.—order of Things They Established.—this Order of Things Degraded and Modified. Strugg

The soil which the English nation inhabits, was invaded in the eleventh century by an army of Normans, who forced their entrance and settled on it. This army took possession of the soil and of the men who lived on it, as of an encampment, and of machines fitted to cultivate it. It spread over the country to support itself more easily; but it was divided without being dissolved; grades, military subordination, and all the means of assembling an army for a campaign were preserved. The army was even continued in the sons of those who composed it, and even in their sons’ sons. Many centuries after the conquest, the descendants of the conquerors were encamped in the country, and organized in the same way as their ancestors: there was a principal chief, the heir of him who had conducted the expedition, and secondary chiefs and soldiers, descended from the officers and soldiers of the conquest.

The new captain, descended from the first one, either in the male or female line, took the name of king. The subordinate commanders had the title of barons. The remainder were called in Latin milites, and in English, knights or esquires.

The primitive division of the soil had maintained itself with the distinction of ranks. The captain possessed several portions of land which his predecessor had taken for himself; and moreover, he had the power to dispose of the possession of all the rest, according to certain laws established by discipline, a privilege which he expressed by adding to his title the name of the country, calling himself king of England. In the same manner, the officers, who, according to their rank, occupied more or less extensive districts, and the soldiers who were settled in them, were distinguished by the names of their provinces or their domains.

The chief of the victorious army had declared himself proprietor of the soil and of the vanquished, in the name of God and of his sword; his successors called to witness God and their right: their right was inheritance. The lieutenants had as the title of their possessions, their right, the inheritance of their ancestors, with the permission of the chief. But which of these titles was decisive of property, must frequently have been doubtful; and then the chief considered his will as supreme law, and the officers their succession. It was the cause of frequent disputes.

Such was in England the state of the sons of the conquerors; as to the sons of the vanquished, who were designated by the name of subjects, that is to say subjugated; they were also in the same condition as their fathers. They had to nourish the multitude encamped amidst them. Their life was only valuable inasmuch as it was useful to the conquerors. The greater or less profit to be derived from a man, was the measure of his good or bad treatment. If industry did not produce sufficiently, the body was sold. The aborigines of England formed an article of exportation to Ireland and foreign countries. Each officer had at his command, agents entrusted with collecting the provisions he derived from his district, protecting their carriage, and opposing the resistance of those on whom the contribution was levied; with punishing abuses, preventing insurrections, and even suppressing the quarrels of the subjects: with repressing every offence, every insult on the person or on property, which they might commit against one another, in order that their bodies should be always fit to endure fatigue, that the capital on which they worked for their lord should not diminish, nor they be diverted from the care of producing what he wanted to take from them. These agents, who were clerks, judges and executioners, composed what the lord called his court. The general thus had a court, a company of purveyors stationed in each of his domains; and he had, moreover, a roving court which went before him, when on certain occasions he went with his staff to inspect the quarters. It was necessary for him and his suite to find sufficient for them in all the places through which they passed; and the purveyors acquitted themselves so punctually of their office, that frequently, at the king’s approach, the inhabitants retired hastily, with every thing they could save, into the depths of forests or other remote places.

His domestics, too, when sent upon business into distant parts of the kingdom, claimed the same privilege, and demanded a supply of provisions, in every town through which they travelled.

These customs, authorized by the functions of the chief, whose duty it was to watch over every thing, were onerous to his lieutenants, who had so much the less to gain from their dependents, as the general had more for himself: for those who might suffice for one contribution, could not suffice for two at once. The officers were, therefore, interested in moderating the exactions of the general and his agents; and the general on his side, and for his own interest, for the common interest of the whole army, over whose preservation he had to watch, was led to prevent each officer from devouring too much in his province, in order that the country should not be too suddenly exhausted, and famine enter the camp.

(ad 1100—1200.) Thence naturally resulted between the chief and his officers a struggle favourable in the end to the subjects, although neither the chief nor his officers thought of relieving them out of affection. The barons, more strongly interested, because their personal subsistence was in question, were the first to raise their voices, and required the king to subscribe to an act by which they restrained his power of recruiting their men for the repairing of fortresses, bridges and roads; which limited the quantity of grain and cattle which the purveyors were to levy in their journeys, and interdicted the seizure of beasts of burden, of waggons and of agricultural implements; three acts of authority, for which the proprietor of the province where they were enforced always had to suffer; for either the men were carried away from labour, or the implements of labour were carried away from the men, or the fruits of labour perished. It was this compact, imposed by the lieutenants on their captain, which was called Magna Charta.

The king then retaliated, and constrained the barons only to exact regular taxes from the conquered; he insisted that they should leave merchants liberty to travel; favoured the assemblage of those who wished to practise their industry in common; took cities under his protection; gave men safe conducts, not from compassion, but for his own interest, and because every subject, whose labour was impeded, or who perished in it, to satisfy the wants of one person, caused a loss to the entire community of the conquerors.

Magna Charta and the statutes which succeeded it, were thus to the advantage of the conquered; but the terms alone show that their advantage was not the direct object, and that they were esteemed only like beasts of burden, whose preservation is desired. One article of Magna Charta forbids the destruction of houses, woods or men, without the special license of the proprietor.

At certain epochs, either fixed or determined by the captain, there was a general meeting, and a sort of a review of the whole army. Every officer and soldier attended it; the chaplains were present at it. This assembly was called parliament, which means conference, because explanations were made there, and counsel taken on the movements to be made both in and out of the country, on the distribution of posts, the means of maintaining themselves in peace in the midst of their subjects, and of obtaining the greatest quantity of provisions and money.

(1200—1300.) The subjects had to support themselves as well as their masters; always kept on the alert, and their minds always intent on the desire of being rich, and the difficulty of becoming so, they had promptly increased the power of their industry: manufactures had been started, cities enlarged. The conquerors then became unable to make the census of what each one possessed, and of what he might be deprived. As property was forever increasing, the accounts made soon ceased to be exact; it would have been frequently necessary to make new ones, or to resolve to lose on the receipts by putting on taxes according to former estimates. An expedient which should remove these difficulties, was naturally sought for, and found. It was in the cities that it was most difficult to estimate the value of movable riches; the subjects, therefore, inhabitants of towns, were compelled to choose a certain number among them to come to the Parliament, where the general, the lieutenants, chaplains and soldiers, were assembled, to reply to all the questions that might be made to them on the fortune of their borough, their city or their municipality; to say all that they could bear, and if there was any reason for exacting more. They were forced to sign the tax-deeds, in order that they should not afterwards resist the collectors, and defer or refuse payment, and were thus, in some measure, bound by their own oaths.

The lowest class of the army, the knights, possessing only small portions of land, and unable, like their superiors, to take at discretion on the estates of the vanquished, had begun to practise industry, and to add the revenue of their own labour to their share of the revenues of the subjects. In taking these men’s arts, they also assumed their manners, and gradually became mingled with them. At first, when they were summoned, they sat in common conference in the same place with their officers, with the lords spiritual and temporal; after citizens and members of municipalities had been summoned to Parliament, the soldiers separated from their leaders, and uniting with the citizens, deliberated with them in a separate place.

Such is the origin of the House of Commons in the English Parliament. The cities did not willingly send deputies; for they were forced to take upon themselves the expense of their subsistence during this long stay, far from their work and their affairs. The deputies did not present themselves willingly, for they were forced to suspend the occupations which maintained their families, to go and declare exactly, before masters whose arm they always saw raised, how much might in future be taken from the produce of their trouble and industry, without ruining them.

(1300—1400.) The convocation of delegates from the commons was found convenient, and became a custom: they were called every time levies of money were required. In the fourteenth century, the army commenced making excursions beyond the country, in order to acquire land and booty. For these enterprizes, arms, baggage, and provisions were required. The citizens were often consulted.

From frequently seeing their conquerors, the citizens feared them less. They no longer beheld the conqueror armed, and exacting under pain of death; he appeared like an ill-assured robber ready to capitulate, and they began to think of making conditions. Engaged in more extensive industrial enterprizes, the more pressing want of available capital kept them alive as to the demands: they became more sensitive about their property. The deputies brought the complaints of their constituents, and began to plead for them. Thus an institution destined to favour the exactions, became turned against those who had called it to their assistance, and tended to preserve the conquered from the rapacity of their conquerors.

For a long period, the general of the army, the king, had only to appear or to speak, and the subject people at that aspect alone representing to itself all the horrors of invasion, pillage, burning, and massacre, quietly submitted and allowed itself to be struck, for fear that the least resistance should be punished by entire destructions. It was the natural subordination of the weak yielding to force. But when these times grew distant, when memory only feebly retraced them, when terror ceased to be the first impression, and men became able to reason before they feared, this subordination abated. The conqueror felt this; and that there might not be any thought of contending with him, and awaiting the effect after the threat, he called to the assistance of his will, instead of his determined authority, a mysterious power superior to all human force. From the moment that the idea of examining their masters’ actions entered the minds of the subjects, the masters conceived the idea of withdrawing their actions from all calculation.

(1500—1600.) They solemnly proclaimed their right as a sacred, a divine right. It was God who had drawn the sword, who had conquered by them, who purposed to maintain himself by means of them in his conquest. It was with this help that their commands presented themselves to the imagination of the vanquished. And all were then silent before a finger raised towards heaven, as formerly before a hand grasping the handle of the sword.

In the barbarism of the early periods, this divine sanction of conquered property had some use, by arresting with mysterious force the brigand seeking to possess, in presence of the brigand in possession; and thus ended wars, which, without this, would never have been ended. The Jewish customs consecrated these maxims, and the modern dogma of the divine right was founded on their tradition. But the new doctrine was far from resembling the ancient one. It was no longer the possessor turning to those who endeavoured to dispossess him, and saying “look not at my strength and yours; there is some one behind me stronger than you and I, who possesses these things of which I have only the usufruct, and it is with him you will have to deal.” A man said to other men: “You are mine; you have fallen to my share by a will superior to us: he who wills that I should possess you, beholds you, and maintains me.” Conviction was necessarily obtained with greater difficulty.

However, the unfortunate subjects, perfectly astonished, believed, at first, and humbled themselves; when a priest proclaimed these axioms, no one ventured to doubt. Could the man by whom God usually expressed himself ever open his mouth without his words coming from God? But the time arrived when those who insisted that they should be acknowledged masters, did not think themselves sufficiently supported by the clergy alone, and endeavoured in some sort to strengthen the authority of faith by the authority of reason. They called together the lawyers, without seeing that this defence was not suited to their cause, and that the ground on which they entrenched themselves would soon become the enemy’s camp. Arranged in mysterious propositions, the divine right forbade all examination; to translate it into logical arguments was to provoke discussion and deliver it all up to controversy. The dogmatizers found no adversaries,—the reasoners were assailed by them. Every proposition put forward produced a contrary one. To those who proved by syllogisms that the conquerors had the right to possess the conquered, the conquered replied in the same form, that they had no right to be possessed. “But God,” said the first, “has given you to us;” “but God,” replied the second, “had long before given us to ourselves.”

Such was the situation of things, and the relations which existed between masters and subjects, when, in the year 1601, a lawyer, member of the House of Commons, speaking on the occasion of a subsidy demanded by Queen Elizabeth, thus commenced his discourse: “I marvel much that the House should stand upon granting of a subsidy, or the time of payment, when all we have is her majesty’s, and she may lawfully at her pleasure take it from us: she hath as much right to all our lands and goods, as to any revenue of the crown.” At these words he was interrupted by hootings and shouts of laughter. The speaker ordered silence, and the lawyer again rising, maintained his first assertion, and pretended “that he could prove his former position by precedents in the time of Henry the Third, King John, King Stephen, etc.:” the hooting then recommenced.

Examples, indeed, would not have been wanting. But the murmurs of the House were a present example as affirmative as the others. In them could be seen that neither speeches nor evidences would ever be able to operate on English subjects the conviction which seized their ancestors at the sight of William the Bastard’s sword in the hands of his son or grandson.

In those days, a swarm of jurisconsults arose to demonstrate what cannot be demonstrated, power. Power declares itself by its exercise: it is a fact which reasoning neither creates nor destroys. All power that argues and maintains that it exists, decides that it has ceased to exist.

Already, in 1591, all the judges of England had made in concert a decree to transform into rights the deeds of the conquest, and revive by logic a material action, of which time had worn out the spring.

They declared what had declared itself three centuries before, that the conqueror was the lord and master, and that the conquered were at his mercy:

“That the soil, the inhabitants, and the industry of the country, existing for the wants, the subsistence, the comforts, and the luxuries of the conquering army, it was an incontestable right that the general, acting for the army, should dispose of the labour of the vanquished, should force it, prevent it, dispose of it in his own way; should have what he preferred manufactured, and prohibit what he did not like; that he should give exclusive privileges to those whose talent pleased him.

“That the king had a lawful right to prevent the transport of merchandize, to suspend sales, and to keep vessels prisoners in the ports, in order that exemption from these obstacles should afterwards be purchased.

“That no subject was to leave the conquered country without his consent, for fear the property of the conquerors should be deprived of the industry or person of the emigrant.

“That the lower chamber having been created only for the convenience of the conquerors, its interference in levies of money was not absolutely necessary; that the general alone, by an order of the day, might seize where it pleased him, and by whom it pleased him, the provisions he might require, in the same way as private property is used during a campaign.

“That he had the right of declaring war on any city or district he pleased, and of treating men and things as on the day of an invasion.

“In a word, that the king, who was the supreme guardian of the conquest, having always to watch over its preservation, was to be the judge of whatever threatened it, and of the means of guarding it; that he consequently had the right to judge alone, to punish alone, to call to his assistance in his decision whoever he thought fit, and to establish at pleasure tribunals for the preservation of the order established by victory.”

“These acts of authority were called the royal prerogative; those who decreed this prerogative, decided at the same time that it was incontestable, and that it was a crime to doubt it; prærogativam nemo audeat disputare.”

But their assertion had no power against revolted interests: if the sword of conquest, the arm even of God, presented to the minds of the subjects, no longer subdued them, to what could a jurist, armed with his pen, pretend? Therefore the defence was not noticed, and they dared to contest it.

It seems as if, in the depths of misery, the want of amelioration acts less strongly on us than in a more bearable condition. When the first wants absorb our attention, the mind, weary with constantly thinking of them, unbends when they are satisfied, and is no longer capable of any other activity. But when we have not too much trouble for our existence, thought being less circumscribed, wanders elsewhere: we examine our situation more closely; we find more obstacles in it, because we have more desires, and torment ourselves for a change. As long as the subjugated men of England made only a pitiful income by their labour, they allowed themselves to be bound and despoiled without a murmur; they submitted to the prerogative. They were resigned under the Williams, when the conquerors had every thing, and the conquered nothing; they rebelled under James the First, when the riches of the commons were three times greater than those of the lords.

It was then that the conquest began to be questioned, and that voices were raised against its natural acts. The most natural of all was doubtless the tax which the conquerors exacted for their subsistence; they were the measures by which they acted on industry, on the property and the persons of the subjects, in order to increase their annual revenue, and make extraordinary profits: the struggle began by an attack on these measures.

The conquered first desired to free their property and industry; on all sides their industry was hindered; the prohibitions stopped all undertakings; the monopolies discouraged labour, and destroyed the establishments already founded; the tribunals, by their decrees, suspended all affairs; a man imprisoned suddenly was ruined, and ruined his correspondents; the arbitrary justice which struck one industrious man, was hurtful by its consequences to those whom it spared. When the subjects had reached the point of feeling these relations between independence and riches, of feeling the ties of interest which bound them to one another, by the want which each one felt of the liberty of all, they united; they became a nation, they became a power.

For we must not imagine that there existed an English nation before this period. There was in England an encamped nation, a nation of strangers; but the natives had nothing but their misery in common. Each one, apart, served his master; he did nothing for his equals, who did nothing for him. It was a scattered multitude. Industry united them by mutual services rendered; industry inspired them with the desire of their common liberty.

(ad 1603.) In this conjuncture, the king at the head, not of his warriors, but of his chaplains, rose to strengthen the threatened conquest. Armed with theology, he maintained with his own lips, in the face of the commons, that God had declared victorious generals and their sons to be gods like himself: Dixi quod Dii estis. By advancing such pretensions, he drew upon himself alone the anger and efforts of the subjects; he devoted himself or his successor for the cause of which he was the leader. The quarrel thus became engaged between the House of Commons, the deputies of the subject people, and the king, who put himself forward, only leaving to the privileged nation the care of assisting him on pressing occasions. The commons declared in the name of all the subjects, their unanimous will no longer to endure either the monopolies or taxes imposed on provisions. They represented that the taxes went on increasing, and the impediments growing greater; that it was necessary to stop at last, and to reflect that if the subjects exhausted themselves with labour, it was not only to furnish materials for taxes; that they wished also to live for themselves, to work for themselves, and to enjoy themselves the fruits of their labour.

To all requests of the subjects, the king answered only by one word, the only one which he could answer, I use my prerogative. The commons then drew up bills, in which, by abolishing customs which constrained them, they touched the prerogative. But the House of masters, or lords, took care not to sanction these resolutions: they stood at their post, assembled round their leader, and supported him by their resistance. The same classes of men who had formerly met, sword in hand, now, after the lapse of six centuries, found themselves in presence of one another, fighting a war of words and intrigues, before coming to force, the last of reasons.

The commons did not give way; bills followed each other in crowds; the power of the orders of the day, or proclamations, and the authority of the tribunals were attacked; but it was useless labour. The lords stopped every thing by their refusal to sanction the decisions; and the king, on his side, imprisoned the members who raised their voices, in virtue of that very authority which they were labouring to destroy.

(ad 1614—1621.) However, these debates wearied him; he dissolved the Parliament, hoping that the new members would be more docile. In order to prepare them, he instructed them in these words at the beginning of the session: “Your privileges were derived from the grace and permission of our ancestors and us, (for the most of them grew from precedents, which shows rather a toleration than inheritance;) yet we are pleased to give you our royal assurance, that as long as you contain yourselves within the limits of your duty, we will be as careful to maintain and preserve your lawful liberties and privileges as ever any of our predecessors were; nay, as to preserve our own royal prerogative.”

The commons might have answered, “The facts which you mention are exact: we do not mean to deny them. Your ancestors conquered us: we were a plunder of war for them; they found it convenient that we should become more free; they loosened our bonds, as they would have drawn them tighter, in the view of their sole interest; they granted us some freedom; now we require more. Do you think yourselves strong; refuse, and we shall then see. If you feel yourselves weak, submit to the fate of all worn-out authority, and give way. There are here neither rights to claim, nor rights to defend; it is the destiny of all human things which have limits.”

But instead of expressing themselves with this truthfulness, and braving the event, the commons eluded them. They found it better to reply to the king in his own language, and, like him, to attribute rights to themselves. They protested “that the liberties, franchises, and jurisdictions of Parliament,” which they demanded for themselves and their constituents, “are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England.” It was a fiction similar to that practised by the advocates of the conquerors, when they sought their reasons against the conquered elsewhere than in the eternal fact of the conquest, the will to maintain it, and the strength to sustain this will. Either party left the realities behind, and confined itself to abstractions; this rendered the war less open, and its objects less precise: we shall see its consequences.

Each party recruited itself under names which indicated its nature, origin and pretensions; those who sided with the conquered, called themselves the country party; the others, the court party.

James I. left his son, not what he had received at his accession, that is to say, the direction of a plunder but slightly contested as yet by those who suffered it, but what the conqueror had formerly bequeathed to the first of his successors, the command of a party which was to subsist on the labour of the inhabitants, and to whom the inhabitants were perfectly ready to refuse subsistence.

Force alone could entirely end this quarrel, and yet each party deferred the struggle. They endeavoured mutually to convince each other, and to make their adversary agree to what was required of him. The partisans of the country pretended that they had never been conquered, and that they had supported the others out of kindness, and not from constraint. Those of the court maintained that the former had always been their subjects, that it was their natural condition, and that nothing had, nor should in future mitigate for them the rigour of that state, except the will of their masters. But interest which did not rest, from time to time mixed up some more decisive assaults with this conflict of argument and replies. Men’s wills were harshly expressed.

(ad 1625.) The first subsidy which the new king, Charles I., demanded of the Commons, was granted so sparingly, that it was rather, says Hume, a cruel mockery than a support; the second was formally refused.

The king declared to the Commons that, “if they should not do their duties, in contributing to the necessities of the state, he must use those other means which God had put into his hands.”

These words, wants of the state, made the members of the Commons reflect: were the wants of the party of the ancient conquerors simply in question, or was it some interest which they had in common with the subjugated? What was the state? It was necessary that this question should first be put and solved.

(ad 1628.) In order to find out what he who had pronounced the word state, really meant by it, the House drew up a bill, in which it assumed the power of controlling all demands for money and of refusing or granting, according as it saw the interests of its constituents included or not in the interest of the state. This bill was called the Petition of Rights.

The Commons demanded, “that all manner of raising money which should appear like a requisition of war, should be abolished; and that if in the expenses, the affairs of those who paid were not entirely disregarded, the king would please to subject himself to the indispensable condition of all public contributions, to the free consent of the taxed or the causers of that consent; and thus, that no one could be forced to assist any tax, loan or benevolence, which had not been granted by the House of Commons.”

This petition struck a decisive blow. If the victorious class did not accede to it, fighting must ensue; if it did accede, it was deprived of every thing, its means of existence, of pleasure, of luxury, of its very honour, which it made to consist in skirmishing in foreign lands. All this must have been renounced; for it would have been too difficult a task to persuade the subjects that they derived any profit from it. The energy which the Commons displayed, determined the conquerors to adopt the latter alternative, but it was not without trouble. The Lords, in approving the Petition of Rights, endeavoured to annul it by a clause in which the sovereign power was recognized. The king hesitated long before signing this compact, which his situation forbade him to maintain.

(ad 1629.) A few months later, he recommenced raising of his own private authority, the rights of tonnage and poundage, declaring to the Commons that he was compelled to it by necessity. The merchandizes of those who, trusting in the Petition of Rights, refused to pay, were seized and confiscated. The Commons were indignant at this violation of a treaty, which, however, could not fail of being violated; “those who levied tonnage and poundage were declared capital enemies. And even merchants who should voluntarily pay these duties, were denominated betrayers of English liberty, and public enemies.” The king, provoked, saw no help but in force. He dissolved the house, imprisoned some members, summoned others before the privy council: on their refusal to appear, he inflicted fines on them, and gave his collectors orders to violate private dwellings.

The existence of those whose only means of support was the taxes raised on the subjects, became daily more difficult. This council of citizens which had been established to render accounts, now demanded them; it chose to scrutinize the wants it had to supply. The king resolved to call no more of these inconvenient assemblies. One of his ancestors had made a decree enjoining the cities not to fail to elect, and the elected men not to fail to assemble. Things had changed since the Richards.

(ad 1630.) A statute of Edward II. ordered that every subject possessing an income of twenty pounds sterling, was bound, at the king’s command, to enter the order of knighthood, that is to say, to enlist himself in the militia, or pay his exemption from that service. This was a means of recruiting for the conquerors, who thus compelled the conquered to become the instruments of their own oppression. Charles I. revived this decree: he expected from it either a reinforcement of men, or some assistance of money to his party; but he was deceived in this hope. The time was past when the conquered, rendered selfish by the excess of their misery, esteemed themselves happy in obtaining some security against oppression, by betraying the cause of their brethren in misfortune. This cause had become sacred to them ever since they had hoped to make it triumph. They no longer sought for safety in escaping from the ranks of those who were perishing; they were determined that all should be saved, or all die.

(ad 1634.) It was necessary for the army encamped in England to maintain fleets for its expeditions and defence. The money which these expenses required was levied on the inhabitants of the coast and seaports, under the name of ship-money. The king levied this tax on the whole country at once, and decreed this new measure in the name of the national honour and safety.

National honour and safety . . . .; what did these words, addressed to subjects, mean? That it was to their advantage that those who possessed the country should be preserved by their naval force from being driven out of the kingdom, and be enabled to acquire possessions in foreign lands! The subjects did not require much reflection to feel that this interest might affect the nation of the conquerors, but in no degree affected them. Their national safety consisted in being worked no longer; their national honour consisted in succeeding in the design they were prosecuting: ships were not wanted for this.

The king, anxious to discourage the opposition by all possible means, had proposed this question to the judges: “Whether, in a case of necessity, for the defence of the kingdom, he might not impose this taxation, and whether he were not sole judge of the necessity?” The judges replied in the affirmative.

But notwithstanding the king’s expressed will, notwithstanding this declaration, which gave his will some sort of logical foundation, courageous minds would not give way. It was then that Hampden appeared: he refused to submit to the tax. He was accused and condemned.

At this condemnation, the subjects were all roused. Hampden had roused them, at the peril of his fortune and his life. “We have been children,” was everywhere exclaimed; “formerly we were struck, and we hung down our heads: we are now men. We have lived so many centuries for others, is it not time to live for ourselves? We are millions, and they, how many are they?”

(1640.) The king was making war against the Scotch; the English people showed itself discontented with this war, and disposed to refuse every thing as long as it was carried on. The king, in a speech to the House of Commons, in speaking of the Scotch, pronounced the word rebels; the Commons were greatly offended.

Justice was the weapon employed against the subjects; the Commons employed it for their benefit; they declared delinquents all military commanders, who, under pretext of the public safety or repose, had exercised military power in the counties; all who had levied ship-money and taxes on provisions; all who had concurred in the decrees of the extraordinary tribunals; all who possessed monopolies by the king’s patent, and those who had judged Hampden.

Since its institution, the House of Commons had frequently presented petitions, in which it exposed the sufferings of the conquered, humbly requesting that attention should be paid them, and that they should be treated with a lighter hand. In 1640, the Commons drew up a general remonstrance on the state of the people of England; but it was not addressed to the king or the Lords, but appealed to the nation itself. It was the first time that such a signal of rallying had been raised. This composition contained a recapitulation of all the abuses of power, which they were not disposed to suffer any longer; those whom they had supported until then, were spoken of in it as of insatiate men always receiving gifts, and who, far from being thankful, returned those benefits by outrage and oppression. Every thing in it breathed of hatred and anger. The House of Commons had it printed and published without submitting it to the Upper House, the affairs of which they looked upon as quite apart from their own, and those of their constituents.

To establish a barrier between the interests which it considered inimical, it ordered resistance to the power which the king exercised, of giving places to the subjects and recruiting his armies among them. It demanded that, in the event of a war, each man should find himself at the disposal of his party, and that there should be no forced coalition between the conquered and the conquerors.

The bills containing these dispositions were not carried up to the House of Lords, who were careful not to change any of the ancient customs, on which their existence depended, and who rallied round their chief, the representative of their common interests. It was their duty to press round him, and make a body together against the revolt of their dependants.

A remarkable thing was, that the House of Commons went so far as to sanction by its will the lords’ refusal to participate in the acts it drew up: “It is in the name of the inhabitants of this land,” said they, “and for them that we act, and we have the mission to do it; we are their representatives, chosen by them. But by what right should you mix yourselves up with their affairs? What is there in common between you and the nation? You are nothing but individuals. We will act alone, we will decide alone; you will see our decisions; and if they offend you, you can demand an account of them, and we will answer you.”

Meanwhile, parties were growing more exasperated; the hour of force was about to strike. The House of Commons ordered a guard; the king dismissed it; and as they murmured, in order not to declare himself too soon their enemy, he offered them a new guard, under the command of one of his officers; but “they absolutely refused the offer, and were well pleased to insinuate that their danger chiefly arose from the king himself.”

(1642.) Five members of the Commons were accused, in the king’s name, of having wished to overthrow the established order of things in this country, to deprive the king of his power, to render him odious to his subjects, and to withdraw part of his soldiers from their allegiance. Hampden was among the accused. The house took the liberty of its members under its protection, and refused to deliver them up to the sergeant-at-arms. The king came in person, and the House repeated its refusal. The accused retired to the city, and the armed citizens guarded them all night.

The next day the king attended the common council, and in passing through the streets, he heard the cry, “Privilege of Parliament! Privilege of Parliament!” resounding from all quarters. This was the way in which the people expressed itself when it agreed with the House of Commons.

The inhabitants of the counties sent numbers of addresses to the Commons; they demanded to arm; they swore to live and die for their defence.

Things had gone to such an extent, that the sword alone, which judges without appeal, could decide between the parties. It was necessary that the event of a combat should destroy or revive what a combat had formerly founded. The Commons made magazines of ammunition; they enjoined the officers of the paid army to receive no orders but from themselves, that those who were subjects by birth should return to their natural party. They sent similar messages to the governors of sea-ports and fortresses. The king retired to York. He sought a favourable encampment, and assembled his forces. Those whose birth made them his companions in arms, flocked to him from all quarters, and exhorted him to save himself and them from that ignominious slavery with which they were threatened. The Commons attempted, for the last time, an impossible arrangement; they wanted a bill passed, of which the first clause was that subjects should be allowed arms. The king refused. “Should I grant these demands,” said he, “the title of majesty may be continued to me; but as to true and real power, I should remain but the outside, but the picture, but the sign of a king. War on any terms was esteemed, by the king and all his counsellors, preferable to so ignominious a peace.”

All transaction was then broken off. The subjects armed, invoking their wants, their wills, and their union. The king, attesting his past fortune and long rule, God and his right, erected near Nottingham the standard of the Norman chief, the signal of the war declared to the country.

Each man, whose ancestors had made a part of the invading army, left his castle to go to the royal camp, and assume the command which his title assigned him. The inhabitants of the towns and seaports flocked to the opposite camp. It might be said, that the rallying cries of the two armies were, on one side, idleness and power; on the other, industry and freedom: for all those without employment, all those who desired no other occupation than that of enjoying themselves without trouble, enlisted, whatever their race, in the royal troops, where they were about to defend interests similar to their own; whilst those families of the race of the ancient conquerors, who practised industry, joined the party of the Commons.

It was for these positive interests that the war was kept up on either side. The rest was all appearance or pretence. Those who engaged in the cause of the subjects were mostly Presbyterians, that is to say, that they would bear no yoke, not even in religion. Those who supported the opposite cause were Episcopalians or papists; they liked to find, even in the forms of worship, power to exert and taxes to levy on men.

(1643-1646.) The royal party was victorious at Stration, Roundway Down, and Cropredy Bridge, and defeated at Edge Hill, Marston Moor, Newbury, and finally at Naseby.

In every province which the royal army passed through, it made the inhabitants feel that they were re-conquered; it took their property: the parliamentary army respected men and property; its presence freed them.

Severe discipline, the subordination of the ancient conquerors, reigned among the first: each man had his place marked out beforehand; he remained in it, acknowledging his superiors as well as his inferiors. Amongst the others there frequently were divisions and disobedience. This was, because each, devoted to the independence of all, endeavoured to anticipate it for himself, and at least taste of liberty when on the point of dying for it. “They were not,” they said, “mere janizaries; mercenary troops enlisted for hire, and to be disposed of at the will of their paymasters;” and these disorderly troops overthrew disciplined battalions.

Conferences were several times attempted, but without success. The subjects always demanded to remain armed; the king persisted that this right should belong to himself and his own party alone. The war continued.

(ad 1648.) At last, after a defeat, the king, pursued by the parliamentarians, fell into the camp of the Scotch subjects who delivered him up to the subjects of England. He took refuge in the Isle of Wight; he was seized there and imprisoned. The leader of the enemy was a captive; what was the victorious party to do?

Every officer of the defeated army interposed in this war, not only on account of the leader, but also on his own account: the war was to continue; moreover, the son of the leader was there, and custom appointed him his successor.

Thus, in whatever manner the prisoner was disposed of, the same state of events remained: it was still necessary to fight the quarrel out. The strangers who had invaded England, had massacred all those who would not consent to become machines to feed them. The English, freeing themselves at the end of six centuries, were not to see in that an example for themselves. Their duty was to offer an asylum and labour to the defeated conquerors; and if such offers were refused by them, to send them out of the country.

(ad 1649.) Unfortunately, in the quarrels of men, humanity rarely makes itself heard; useless reprisals follow the necessary violence. The king was judged and condemned to death.

There was no other natural motive for that sentence than the will of those who had conquered him. We will that the captive should perish: no answer was possible to such a decree; submission alone remained.

But moved, perhaps, by the necessity which conscience feels to justify itself by reason, “the solicitor, in the name of the Commons, represented that Charles Stuart, being admitted King of England, and intrusted with a limited power; yet, nevertheless, from a wicked design to erect an unlimited and tyrannical government, had traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament, and the people whom they represented, and was therefore impeached as a tyrant, traitor and murderer.” Such was the speech of the solicitor, speaking in the name of the Commons. These few words were entirely false.

It was not the subjects who had made Charles Stuart king of England; his birth had transmitted to him the title of his father. No compact had been made between him and those over whom he had exercised his power. Power had come to him by chance, and not by agreement. The prisoner knew the facts better. He knew “that he himself was their native hereditary king; nor was the whole authority of the state entitled to try him, who derived his dignity from the Supreme Majesty of Heaven. That those who arrogated a title to sit as his judges, were born his subjects.”

This supposititious treaty which the subjects advanced, was of a kind to be turned against them some day. The son of the prisoner might in his turn, if he was the conqueror, say, “The tacit contract which existed between you and my father, on the sole ground that he was James’s son, exists between you and me, because I am his son. I have, on your own confession, the right to dispose of you and your property in the same measure that you had prescribed to my predecessor. I take this right according to your words. The justice which you exercised against him I shall exercise against you. He died justly, you say, for having aspired to more power; you, also, shall die justly, if you aspire to more liberty.”