Behemoth: the History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England, and of the Counsels and Artifices By Which They Were Carried On From the Year 1640 to the Year 1660
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- B. A delinquent; what is that A sinner is it not Did they mean to undo all sinners A.
- B. How long had the Parliament now sitten A.
- B. Great expedition; but could not the King, for all that, have saved him by a pardon A.
B.That is worse than the bill itself, and is a plain confession that their sentence was unjust. For what harm is there in the examples of just sentences? Besides, if hereafter the like case should happen, the sentence is not at all made weaker by such a provision. A.Indeed I believe that the Lords, most of them, were not of themselves willing to condemn him of treason; they were awed to it by the clamour of common people that came to Westminster, crying out, Justice, Justice against the Earl of Strafford! The which were caused to flock thither by some of the House of Commons, that were well assured, after the triumphant welcome of Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, to put the people into tumult upon any occasion they desired. They were awed unto it partly also by the House of Commons itself, which if it desired to undo a Lord, had no more to do but to vote him a delinquent. B.A delinquent; what is that? A sinner is it not? Did they mean to undo all sinners? A.By delinquent they meant only a man to whom they would do all the hurt they could. But the Lords did not yet, I think, suspect they meant to cashier their whole House. B.It is a strange thing the whole House of Lords should not perceive that the ruin of the King’s power, and the weakening of it, was the ruin, or weakening of themselves. For they could not think it likely that the people ever meant to take the sovereignty from the King to give it to them, who were few in number, and less in power than so many Commoners, because less beloved by the people. A.But it seems not so strange to me. For the Lords, for their personal abilities, as they were no less, so also they were no more skilful in the public affairs, than the knights and burgesses. For there is no reason to think, that if one that is to-day a knight of the shire in the lower House, be to-morrow made a Lord and a member of the higher House, he is therefore wiser than he was before. They are all, of both Houses, prudent and able men as any in the land, in the business of their private estates, which require nothing but diligence and natural wit to govern them. But for the government of a commonwealth, neither wit, nor prudence, nor diligence, is enough, without infallible rules and the true science of equity and justice. B.If this be true, it is impossible any commonwealth in the world, whether monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, should continue long without change, or sedition tending to change, either of the government or of the governors. A.It is true; nor have any the greatest commonwealths in the world been long free from sedition. The Greeks had for awhile their petty kings, and then by sedition came to be petty commonwealths; and then growing to be greater commonwealths, by sedition again became monarchies; and all for want of rules of justice for the common people to take notice of; which if the people had known in the beginning of every of these seditions, the ambitious persons could never have had the hope to disturb their government after it had been once settled. For ambition can do little without hands, and few hands it would have, if the common people were as diligently instructed in the true principles of their duty, as they are terrified and amazed by preachers, with fruitless and dangerous doctrines concerning the nature of man’s will, and many other philosophical points that tend not at all to the salvation of the soul in the world to come, nor to their ease in this life, but only to the direction towards the clergy of that duty which they ought to perform to the King. B.For aught I see, all the states of Christendom will be subject to these fits of rebellion, as long as the world lasteth. A.Like enough; and yet the fault, as I have said, may be easily mended, by mending the Universities. B.How long had the Parliament now sitten? A.It began November the 3d, 1640. My Lord of Strafford was impeached of treason before the Lords, November the 12th, sent to the Tower November the 22d, his trial began March the 22d, and ended April the 13th. After his trial he was voted guilty of high-treason in the House of Commons, and after that in the House of Lords, May the 6th, and on the 12th of May beheaded. B.Great expedition; but could not the King, for all that, have saved him by a pardon? A.The King had heard all that passed at his trial, and had declared he was unsatisfied concerning the justice of their sentence. And, I think, notwithstanding the danger of his own person from the fury of the people, and that he was counselled to give way to his execution, not only by such as he most relied on, but also by the Earl of Strafford himself, he would have pardoned him, if that could have preserved him against the tumult raised and countenanced by the Parliament itself, for the terrifying of those they thought might favour him. And yet the King himself did not stick to confess afterwards, that he had done amiss, in that he did not rescue him. B.It was an argument of good disposition in the King. But I never read that Augustus Cæsar acknowledged that he had done a fault, in abandoning Cicero to the fury of his enemy Antonius: perhaps because Cicero, having been of the contrary faction to his father, had done Augustus no service at all out of favour to him, but only out of enmity to Antonius, and out of love to the senate, that is indeed out of love to himself that swayed the senate; as it is very likely the Earl of Strafford came over to the King’s party for his own ends, having been so much against the King in former Parliaments. A.We cannot safely judge of men’s intentions. But, I have observed often, that such as seek preferment, by their stubbornness have missed of their aim; and on the other side, that those princes that with preferment are forced to buy the obedience of their subjects, are already, or must be soon after, in a very weak condition. For in a market where honour and power is to be bought with stubbornness, there will be a great many as able to buy as my Lord Strafford was. Download 0.52 Mb. Share with your friends:
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