The time was lost, and William, with a smile, While Parliaments, no more those sacred things 'The last great wound given to the feudal system was the Act of the 12th of Charles II, which abolished the tenure of knight's service in capite, and which Blackstone compares, for its salutary influence upon With regard to this generous fit about his prerogative which seized property, to the boasted provisions of Magua Charta itself. Yet even the good king George I, historians have said that the paroxysm oriin this Act we see the effects of that counteracting spirit, that Arima-ginated more in hatred to his son than in love to the constitunius, which has weakened every effort of the English nation towards liberty, which allowed but half the errors of Popery to be removed at the Reformation, and which planted more abuses than it suffered to be rooted out at the Revolution. The exclusion of copyholders from their share of elective rights was permitted to remain as a brand of fendal servitude, and as an obstacle to the rise of that strong counterbalance which an equal representation of property would oppose to the weight of the Crown. If the managers of the Revolution had been sincere in their wishes for reform, they would not only have taken this fetter off the rights of election, but they would have renewed the mode adopted in Cromwell's time of increasing the number of knights of the shire, to the exclusion of those rotten insignificant boroughs, which have tainted the whole mass of the constitution. Lord Clarendon calls this measure of Cromwell's an alteration fit to be more warrantably made, and in a better time. It formed part of Mr Pitt's plan in 1783; but Mr Pitt's plan of reform was a kind of dramatic piece, about as likely to be acted as Mr Sheridan's « Foresters.» tion; (a) but no person acquainted with the annals of the three 2 The period that immediately succeeds a coronation has been called very aptly the Honey-moon of a reign; and if we suppose the Throne to be the wife, and the People the husband, (6) I know no better model of a matrimonial transaction, nor one that I would sooner recommend to a woman of spirit, than that which the arrangements of 1688 afford. In the first place, she must not only obtain from her husband, an allowance of pin-money or civil-list establishment, sufficient to render her independent of his caprice, but she must also prevail on him to make her the steward of his estates, and to intrust her with the management of all his pecuniary concerns. I need not tell a woman of sense to what spirited uses she may tura such concessions. He will soon become so tame and docile under her hands, that she may make him play the strangest and most amusing tricks, such as quarrelling with his nearest and dearest relations about a dish of tea, (c) a turban, (d) or a wafer; (e) preparing his house for defence against robbers, by putting fetters and handcuffs on two thirds of its inmates; employing C-nn-g and P-ro-v-1 in his sickest moments to read to him alternately Joe Miller and the Catechism, with a thousand other diverting inconsistencies. If her spouse The Athenians considered seduction so much more dangerous than force, that the penalty for a rape was merely a pecuniary fine, while the guilt of seduction was punished with death. And though it must be owned that, during the reign of that ravisher Prerogative, the poor Constitution was treated like Miss Cunegund among the Bulgarians, yet I agree with the principle of the Athenian law, that her present state of willing self-abandonment is much more hopeless and irreclaimable, and calls for a more signal vengeance upon her seducers. It would be amusing to trace the history of Prerogative from the date of its strength under the Tudor princes, when Henry VII and his successors taught the people (as Nathaniel Bacon says) (a) to dance to the tune of Allegiance, to the period of the Revolution, when the Throne, in its attacks upon liberty, began to exchange the noisy explo-have still enough of sense remaining to grumble at the ridiculous sions of Prerogative for the silent and effectual air-gun of Influence. In considering it too since that memorable era, we shall find that while the royal power has been abridged in branches where it might be made conducive to the interests of the people, it has been left in full and nnshackled vigour against almost every point where the integrity of the constitution is vulnerable. For instance, the power of chartering boroughs, to whose capricious abuse in the hands of the Stuarts we are indebted for most of the present anomalies of representation, might, if suffered to remain, have in some degree atoned for its mischief by restoring the old unchartered boroughs to their rights, and widening more equally the basis of the legislature. But, by the Act of Union with Scotland, this part of the prerogative was removed, lest Liberty should have a chance of being healed even by the rust of the spear which had wounded her. The power, however, of creating peers, which has generally been exercised for the government against the constitution, is left in free, unqualified activity; notwithstanding the example of that celebrated Bill for the limitation of this ever-budding branch of prerogative, which was proposed in the reign of George I, under the peculiar sanction and recommendation of the Court, but which the Whigs rejected with that characteristic delicacy, which has generally prevented them, when in office themselves, from taking any ancourtly advantage of the Throne. It will be recollected, however, that the creation of the twelve peers by the Tories in Anne's reign (a measure which Swift, like a true party man, defends) gave these uprightWhigs all possible alarm for their liberties. (a) Historic, and Politic. Discourse, etc. part. is, p. 114. exhibition which she makes of him, let her withhold from him now and then the rights of the Habeas Corpus Act (a mode of proceeding which the women of Athens once adopted), (ƒ) and if the good man loves such privileges, the interruption will soon restore him to submission. If his former wife were a Papist, or had any tendency that way, I would advise my fair Sovereign, whenever he begins to argue with her unpleasantly, to shout out No Popery, no Popery! as loud as she can, into bis ears, and it is astonishing what an effect it will have in disconcerting all his arguments. This method was tried lately by an old woman at Northampton, and with much success. Seriously, this convenient bugbear of Popery is by no means the least among the numberless auxiliaries which the Revolution has marshalled on the side of the Throne.-Those unskilful tyrants, Charles and James, instead of profiting wisely by that useful subserviency which has always distinguished the ministers of our religious Coxe says that this Bill was projected by Sunderland. This is contrary to the symbolical language of prophecy, in which (avecording to Sir Isaac Newton) the King is the bus and, and the people the wife. See Faber, on the Prophecies. I would beg leave to suggest to Mr Faber, that his friend Sir R-ch-1 Msgrove cau. in his own proper person, supply him with an exposition of the Horas of the Beast.. America. (1) India. (e) Ireland. See the Lysistrata of Aristophanes.-The following is the form of i suspension, as he gives it: Όπως αν ανηρ επιτυχή μάλιςα μου Like a young cagle, who has lent his plume To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom, Shall the great wisdom of our patriot sires, Amid his ruffian spies, and doom'd to death Whom H-wk-sb-y, quotes and savoury B―rch ad- And how it ebb'd, for ever ebb'd away! mires, Be slander'd thus? shall honest St-le agree Oh! look around-though yet a tyrant's sword The people!-ah! that Freedom's form should stay Not bolder truths of sacred freedom hung Than upstart Whigs produce each market-night, cularly useful to the Roman Emperors; they were called instru- Somebody has said Quand tous les Poëtes seraient noyés, ce ne serait pas grand dommage; but I am aware that this would be most uncivil language at a time when our birth-day odes and statepapers are written by such pretty poets as Mr P-e and Mr C-nn-ng, I can assure the latter, 100, that I think him (like his water-proof colleague Lord C-stl-r-gb) reserved for a very different fate from 'There is something very touching in what Tacitus tells us of the that which the author I have just quoted imagines for his poetical hopes that revived in a few patriot bosoms, when the death of Aufraternity. All I wish is, that he would change places with his bro-gustus was near approaching, and the fond expectation with which ther P-e, by which means we should have somewhat less prose in our odes, and certainly less poetry in our politics. 2.It is a scandal (said Sir Charles Sedley in William's reign) that a Government so sick at heart as ours is should look so well in the face; and Edmund Burke has said, in the present reign, When the people conceive that laws and tribunals, and even popular assemblies, are perverted from the ends of their institution, they find in these names of degenerated establishments only new motives to discontent. Those bodies which, when full of life and beauty, lay in their arms and were their joy and comfort, when dead and putrid become more loathsome from remembrance of former endearments." -Thoughts on the present Discontents, 1770. ... tutor haberi Principis, Augusta Caprearum in rupe sedentis JUVENAL. Sat. x, v. 93. The senate still continued, during the reign of Tiberius, to manage all the business of the public; the money was then and long after coined by their authority, and every other public affair received their sanction. We are told by Tacitus of a certain race of men, who were parti they began bona libertatis incassum disserere,» Ferguson says, that Caesar's interference with the rights of elec tion made the subversion of the Republic more felt than any of the former acts of his power."-Roman Republic, book v, chap. 1. 2 Andrew Marvell, the honest opposer of the court during the reign of Charles the Second, and the last Member of Parliament who, according to the ancient mode, took wages from his constituents. How very much the Commons have changed their pay-masters!-See the State-Poems for some rude but spirited effusions of Andrew Marvell ̧ 3 The following artless speech of Sir Francis Winnington, in the reign of Charles the Second, will amuse those who are fully aware of the perfection which we have attained in that system of Government whose humble beginnings seem to have astonished the worthy Baronet so much. I did observe (says he) that all those who had pensions, and most of those who had offices, voted all of a side, as they were directed by some great officer, exactly as if their business in this House had been to preserve their pensions and offices, and not to make laws for the good of them who sent them here. He alludes to that Parliament which was called, par excellence, the Pensionary Parliament! a distinction, however, which it has long lost, and which we merely give it from old custom, just as we say The Irish Rebellion. And loud and upright, till their price be known, Are Freedom's grave old anthems to my ear, And reverence Scripture even from Satan's tongue. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption. 2 Pet. ii.-I suggest, with much deference, to the expounders of Scripture-Prophecy, whether Mr C-nn-ng is not at present fulfilling the prediction of the scoffers, who were to come in the last days." I believe it is in following the corpse to the grave, and not at the wakes (as we call the watching of the dead), that this elegiac howl of my countrymen is performed. Spenser says, that our bowl is heathenish, and proceeds from a despair of salvation. If so, I think England may join in chorus with us at present.-The Abbé de Motraye tells us, that the Jews in the East address their dead in a similar manner, and say, Hu! Hu! Hu! why did you die? Had'nt you a wife? Hadn't you a long pipe ? etc. etc. (See his Travels.) I thought for a long time with Vallencey, that we were a colony of Carthaginians, but from this passage of De Motraye, and from the way in which Mr P-rc-v-1 would have us treated, I begin to suspect we are no better than Jews. According to Xenophon, the chief circumstance which recommended eunuchs to the service of Eastern princes, was the ignominious station which they held in society, and the probability of their being, upon this account, more devoted to the will and caprice of a master, from whose notice alone they derived consideration, and in whose favour they found a refuge from the contempt of mankind. Αδοξοι οντες οἱ ευνουχοι παρα τοις άλλοις ανθρώποις και δια τουτο δέσποτου επικουρου προσδεονται. (α) But I doubt whether even an Eastern Prince would have chosen an entire Administration upon this principle. Of slavery's draught was wanting if for this That, in this hour, when patriot zeal should guide, To enemies made fiends, and friends made foes, Of that unpitying power, whose whips and chains Among the many measures which, since the Revolution, have contributed to increase the influence of the Throne, and to feed up this Aaron's serpents of the constitution to its present healthy and respectable magnitude, there have been few more nutritive than the Scotch and Irish Unions. Sir John Packer said, in a debate upon the former question, that he would submit it to the House, whether men who had basely betrayed their trust, by giving up their independent · constitution, were fit to be admitted into the English House of Commons. But Sir John would have known, if he had not been out of place at the time, that the pliaucy of such materials was not among the least of their recommendations. Indeed the promoters of the Scotch Union were by no means disappointed in the leading object of their measure, for the triumphant majorities of the Court-party in Parliament may be dated from the admission of the 45 and the 16. Once or twice, upon the alteration of their law of treason and the imposition of the malt-tax (measures which were in direct violation of the Act of Union), these worthy North Britons arrayed themselves in opposition to the Court; but finding this effort for their country unavailing, they prudently determined to think thenceforward of themselves, and few men have kept to a laudable resolution more firmly.-The effect of Irish representation upon the liberties of England will be no less perceptible and no less permanent. Είπερ γαρ αδικειν χρη τυραννίδος περι This appears to be also the moral code of Bonaparte. 3 When the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated, Charles the First. as a tribute to his memory, continued all his creatures in the same pouts and favours which they had enjoyed under their patron and much in the same manner do we see the country sacrificed to the manes of a Minister at present. It is invidious perhaps to look for parallels in the reign of Charles Does Lord C-stl-r-gh remember the reforming Resolutions of the First, but the expedient of threatening the Commons with dishis early days? And in the cup an Union shall be thrown. HAMLET. Three C's were branded in the Sibylline books, as fatal to the peace and liberties of Rome. Трx xxxxxx-x (Cornelius Sylla, Cornelius Cinna, and Cornelius Lentulus) (6). And three C's will be remember in Ireland as long as C-md-n and cruelty, Cl-re and corruption, C-st-r-gb and contempt, are alliteratively and appropriately associated. (4) See a pamphlet on the Union, by a Philosopher. | solution, which has lately been played off with so much eclat, appears to have been frequently resorted to at that period. In one instance Hume tells us, that the King sent his Lord Keeper (not his Jester) to menace the House, that, unless they dispatched a certain Bill for subsidies, they must expect to sit no longer. By similar threats the excise upon beer and ale was carried in Charles the Second's reign. It is edifying to know, that though Mr C-nn-ng despises Puffendorf, he has no objection to precedents derived from the Courts of the Stuarts. (a) From Aratus (v. 715), a poet who wrote upon astronomy, though. as Cicero assures us, he knew nothing whatever about the subject (b) See a Treatise by Pontus De Thiard, De recta Nominum Impo- just as the great Harvey wrote De Generatione, though he had as sione, p. 43. little to do with the matter as my Lord Viscount C. Made Ireland first, in wild, adulterous trance, So weak to save, so vigorous to destroy! Such are the men that guard thy threaten'd shore, INTOLERANCE. PART THE FIRST. When Heaven was yet the Pope's exclusive trade, - This clamour, which pretends to be raised for the safety of Re-As H-wk-sb'ry proses, or as Ireland bleeds! ADDISON, Freeholder, No. 37. START not, my Friend, nor think the Muse will stain The following prophetic remarks occur in a letter written by Sir Robert Talbot, who attended the Duke of Bedford to Paris in 1762. Talking of states which have grown powerful in commerce, he says, According to the nature and common course of things, there is a confederacy against them, and consequently in the same proportion as they increase in riches, they approach to destruction. The address of our King William, in making all Europe take the alarm at France, has brought that country before us near that inevitable period. We must necessarily have our turn, and Great Britain will attain it as soon as France shall have a declaimer with organs as proper for that political purpose as were those of our William the address of our statesmen will immortalize them by contriving for And thou, my Friend-if, in these headlong days, Look breathless on and shudder while they smile- The Sella Stercoraria of the Popes.-The Right Honourable and learned Doctor will find an engraving of this chair in Spanheim's Disquisitio Historica de Papa Fœmina" (p. 118); and I recommend it as a model for the fashion of that seat which the Doctor is about to take in the Privy-Council of Ireland. When Innocent X was entreated to decide the controversy between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, he answered, that he had been bred a Lawyer, and had therefore nothing to do with divinity.-It were to be wished that some of our English pettifoggers knew their element as well as Pope Innocent X. The breach of faith which the managers of the Irish Union have been guilty of, in disappointing those hopes of emancipation which they excited in the bosoms of the Catholics, is no new trait in the annals of English policy. A similar deceit was practised to facilitate the Union with Scotland, and hopes were held out of exemption from the Corporation and Test Acts, in order to divert the Parliament of that country from encumbering the measure with any stipulation to that effect. And oh! my friend, wert thou but near me now, Not the C-md-n who speaks thus of Ireland: Atque uno verbo dicam, sive lernes fecunditatem, sive maris et portuum opportunitatem, sive incolas respicies qui bellicosi sunt, ingeniosi, corporum lineamentis conspicui, mirifica carnis mollitie et propter musculorum teneritatem agilitate incredibili, a multis dotibus ita felix est insula, ut non male dixerit Gyraldus, naturam hoc Zephyri regnum benigniori oculo respexisse.» Tyrants by creed, and torturers by text, them); when they show, too, by their conduct that these declarations are sincere, and that their faith and morals are no more reçulated by the absurd decrees of old councils and Popes, than their science is influenced by the Papal anathema against that Irishman, (a) who first found out the Antipodes:-is it not strange that so many still wilfully distrust what every good man is so much interested in believing? That so many should prefer the dark-lantern of the 13th century to the sunshine of intellect which bas since spread over the werld, and that every dabbler in theology, from Mr Le Mesurier down to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, should dare to oppose the rubbish of Constance and Lateran to the bright triumphant progress of justice, generosity, and truth? There is a singular work upon the Souls of the Pagans, by one Franciscus Collius, in which he discusses, with much coolness and erudition, all the probable chances of salvation upon which a heathen philosopher may calculate. He damns without much diffi to hesitate is Pythagoras, in consideration of his golden thigh, and the many miracles which he performed; but, having balanced his claims a little, and finding reason to father all these miracles on the devil, be at length, in the twenty-fifth chapter, decides upon damning bim also. (De Animis Paganorum, lib. iv, cap. 20 and 25.) Dante compromises the matter with the Pagans, and gives them a neutral territory or limbo of their own, where their employment, it must be owned, is not very enviable-Senza speme vivemo in desio. Cant. iv.-Among the many e.rors imputed to Origen, he is accused of having denied the eternity of future punishment, and, if he never advanced a more irrational doctrine, we may forgive him. He went so far, however, as to include the devil himself in the general hell-delivery which he supposed would one day or other take place, and in this St Augustin thinks him rather too merciful- Misericordior profecto fuit Origines, qui et ipsum diabolum, etc. (De Civitat. Dei, lib. xxi, cap. 17.)-St Jerom says, that, according to Origen, the devil, after a certain time, will be as well off as the angel Gabriel--- Id ipsum fore Gabrielem quod diabolum, (See his Epistle to Pam.nachius.) But Hallois, in his Defence of Origen, denies that he had any of this misplaced tenderness for the devil.I take the liberty of recommending these notitia upon damnation to the particular attention of the learned Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Fox, in his Speech on the Repeal of the Test Act (1790), condemns the intermixture of religion with the political constitution of a state: What purpose (he asks) can it serve, except the baleful purpose of communicating and receiving contamination? Under such an alliance corruption must alight upon the one, and slavery The example of toleration, which Bonaparte has given, will produce, I fear, no other effect than that of determining the British Go- | vernment to persist, from the very spirit of opposition, in their own old system of intolerance and injustice; just as the Siamese blacken their teeth, because, as they say, the devil has white ones. (a) One of the unhappy results of the controversy between Protestants and Catholics, is the mutual exposure which their criminations and recriminations have produced. In vain do the Protestants charge the Papists with closing the door of salvation upon others, while many of their own writings and articles breathe the same unchari-culty Socrates, Plato, etc., and the only one at whose fate he seems table spirit. No canon of Constance or Lateran ever damned heretics more effectually than the eighth of the Thirty-Nine Articles consigns to perdition every single member of the Greek church, and I doubt whether a more sweeping clause of damnation was e er proposed in the most bigoted council, than that which the Calvinistic theory of predestination in the seventeenth of these Articles exbibits. It is true that no liberal Protestant avows such exclusive opinions; that every honest clergyman must feel a pang while he subscribes to them; that some even assert the Athanasian Creed to be the forgery of one Vigilius Tapsensis, in the beginning of the si th century, and that eminent divines, like Jortin, have not hesitated to say, There are propositions contained in our Liturgy and Articles, which no man of comon sense amongst us believes. (b) But while all this is freely conceded to Protestants; while nobody doubts their sincerity, when they declare that their Articles are not essentials of faith, but a collection of opinions which have Leen promulgated by fallible men, and from many of which they feel themselve, justified in dissenting,-while so much liberty of retraction is allowed to Protestants upon their own de lared and subscribed Articles of religion, is it not strange that a similar indulgence should be refused, with such inconvincible obstinacy, to the Catholics, upon tenets which their church has uniformly resisted and condemned, in When the every country where it has flourished independently? Catholics say, The decree of the council of Lateran, which you object to us, has no claim whatever upon either our faith or our reason; it did not even profess to contain any doctrinal decision, but was merely a judicial proceeding of that assembly; and it would be as fair for us to impute a wife-killing doctrine to the Protestants, because their first Pope, Henry VIII, was sanctioned in an indalgence of that propensity, as for you to conclude that we have inberited a king-deposing taste from the acts of the Council of Lateran, or the secular pretensions of our Popes. With respect, too, to the Decree of the Council of Constance, upon the strength of which you accuse us of breaking faith with heretics, we do not hesitate to pronounce that Decree a calamnions forgery; a forgery, too, so obvious and ill-fabricated, that none but our enemies have ever ventured to give it the slightest credit for authenticity:-When the Catholics make these declarations (and they are almost weary with making (a) See l'Histoire Naturelle et Polit. du Royaume de Siam, etc. Strictures on the Articles, Subscriptions, etc. overwhelm the other." Locke, too, says of the connexion between Church and State, The boundaries on both sides are fixed and immovable. He jumbles heaven and earth together, the things most remote and opposite, who mixes these two societies, which are in their original, end, business, and in every thing, perfectly distinct and infinitely different from each other. First Leiter on Foleration. The corruptions of Christianity may be dated from the period of its establishment under Constantine, nor could all the splendour which it then acquired atone for the peace and purity which it lost. (a) Virgilius, surnamed Solivagus, a native of Ireland, who maintained, in the 8th century, the doctrine of the Antipodes, and was anathematized accordingly by the Pope. John Scotus Erigena, another Ii-hman, was the first that ever wrote against transubstantiation. |