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THE LAST OF THE STUARTS.

BY GEORGE M. TOWLE.

HAD it not been that the Protectorate of Cromwell was succeeded by two reigns peculiarly aggravating to the people, England might still have been sleeping in the slavish lethargy which is the natural effect of systematic despotism. Had Charles the Second been a trifle more regardful of the interests he governed, and James the Second a little less determined in attempting to force a despised religion upon his people, an imbecile and capricious Stuart might have this day controlled the destinies of the British empire. British liberty did not derive its vigor directly from the violent Puritanism which characterized the ascendency of the Commonwealth. It was rather the reaction which followed, and which was the natural result of that Puritanism which at last woke the masses to an effort for liberty. Cromwell's policy became a by-word; the rigid Puritan became the laughing-stock even of the prelacy and clergy; the strict prohibition of all public amusement had produced a reactive tendency toward the grossest disregard of public and private morals.

The straight coat of the Puritan was changed for the gaudy frock of the Cavalier; churches were converted into theatres and brothels, in the highest degree obnoxious to every sense of decorum.

Instead of the stern homilies which had absorbed the entire industry of the press during the Commonwealth, the book-shops now teemed with dramas, libels and novels more offensive and scurrilous than have ever emanated from any other source, or any other age. Such, in fact, was the intensity of the reäction, that the few who still dared to avow their adherence to the doctrines of the Protector, were in daily terror lest they should become the victims of an infuriate mob. Algernon Sydney and Lord William Russell became martyrs to their cause, and a cry of triumph ascended to heaven from every corner of the empire, as their spirits went to meet their GoD in judgment. Even during the reign of Charles, the antagonism to the Cromwellian dogmas had not reached its climax. It remained for James, an avowed champion of the Romish creed, to complete the degradation of England, by bidding a fatal defiance to the religious scruples of the people. And even when the monarch could not but perceive the premonitions of the approaching storm, and murmurings from every quarter struck his ministers with terror, he did not hesitate to make his past provocation still more enormous, and to force on with still more dogged arrogance his detestable purpose of Catholic ascendency. If James had been content to feel the pulse of his people through his Parliaments, corrupt as those Parliaments undoubtedly were, he might have saved them the trouble of banishing him to St. Germains. The most obstinate of Puritan Parliaments had been succeeded by the most servile of Tory Parliaments.

Charles was welcomed to the throne of his ancestors by the practical indorsement by his people of a parliament ready to go to every length in supporting the kingly prerogative. Of course, corruption and moral decrepitude ensued, and the people began to open their eyes. The Parliaments of Charles grew less and less disposed to yield to incessant demands upon their forbearance, until finally they began to look with jealous eye upon the probable accession of his Catholic brother. But so solemn a decree was issued by James upon that accession, reïterating again and again his purpose to abide by existing law, to protect the rights of the Commons, to hide the religious zealot in the patriot monarch, to cherish, protect and defend every hallowed precedent which had received the sanction of the governed, that another Tory Parliament, hardly less obsequious than that which had greeted his brother, now welcomed him to the possession. The lessons of the preceding reign were lost upon him, and the same alienation of Parliament from king which had followed in Charles's case, now began to undermine the throne of James. The reaction reached its climax, and fell with fatal power upon the head of him who had reared it to its fearful height. It was an instance in which the enemies of freedom have hastened its achievement sooner than its most ardent friends dared to hope for. It was an instance in which a despot, by his own blindness, rushed headlong over the very precipice which it had been his lifelong study to avoid. It was an instance in which a whole people became gradually convinced, by the selfcondemning logic of a tyrant, that their first victory must be in his ruin. It may well be doubted whether if James's reign had not been, there would have been a revolution. Certain it is that that reign hastened on a revolution. The people might have been afraid to again intrust themselves in the hands of those who had sustained Cromwell in his usurpation. They might have revolted at the idea, that they were again to submit to the stern decrees which forbade innocent amusements, which ordained a peculiar habit, which, while pretending toleration, compelled conformity to a creed which was deadly hostile to the establishment. It might have been, and without doubt would have been, a long and tremendous struggle which could have forced the people to abandon the ease, the indulgence, the general apathy which, before and after Cromwell, characterized their mode of life. Such a change, under ordinary circumstances, could not have been sudden. It was not until they had been goaded on by systematic outrage, until they had discovered that every secular or sacred right which they now possessed must soon be wrested from them by that very power which should have strained every nerve to sustain and protect them, that the sudden, radical and almost reckless change took place. And yet this result was not achieved by the energy of a single man. To pretend that William of Orange was the sole regenerator of the British Constitution would be as preposterous as to attribute an equally great achievement to George of Hanover. The former was, like the latter, an instrument through whom the Constitution was purified and ennobled, through whom great remedies eradicated enormous evils, through whom liberalism supplanted, but not without a struggle in public sentiment, a superstition which divines and statesmen of former times had agreed in pronouncing sacred. True, the German

Prince combined all the qualities which on this occasion facilitated the success of the anti-Stuart party. He possessed energy, boldness, personal dignity and an appreciating sense of the importance of his mission and the moral effect of a triumph of his cause. But James was the unconscious and unwilling accuser of his own dynasty, and it was through this paradoxical medium that Great Britain grew into freedom. William of Orange sprang up, not as Peter in Russia, Charles in Sweden, Frederick in Prussia, Gustavus in Germany, Napoleon in France, and Washington in America sprang up, to fill positions for which they were remarkably adapted, and in which they achieved extraordinary triumphs. When the anti-Stuart party, by dint of unceasing toil and perseverance, gradually loomed up under the very shadow of St. James's, and when their cause had so far developed as to encouraged the hope of ultimate success, the hand of Providence pointed them to Holland for their Samson, and he came forth at the bidding of the righteous cause of liberty. William had from his earliest manhood been accustomed to regard it as his peculiar mission to establish the independence of the Protestant states and to restrain the overbearing influence of Louis the Magnificent. It was his good fortune to be the medium by which these grand purposes were achieved for England and Holland. To him belongs the honor of fulfilling his mission nobly; it is to his glory that he succeeded in that, in which success seemed well-nigh impossible. But to put him in the brilliant light of the 'founder of British liberty,' does monstrous injustice to British public sentiment of that time, and places the hero himself in a doubtful position before future generations.

The people vibrated to one extreme in the protectorate of Cromwell; they vibrated to the other extreme in the reigns of Charles and James, and they returned in their vibration just so far, in the time of William, as to reach the blessings, without restoring the evils of the Commonwealth. It was, then, public sentiment, unaided by any one very brilliant mind, unpromoted either by fanatical zeal or by secret intrigue, frowned upon by the old and illustrious houses of the nobility, and by a majority of the prelates of the establishment, sustained by several determined souls, whose patriotism was undoubted, but impelled by the resistless arguments of proofs which brought them daily oppression, supported by a conviction that the struggle was not like that of Cromwell, which sect should have the power to oppress the other, but in behalf of universal toleration and equal justice; it was this sentiment that was the great interior cause of the regeneration of the English constitution.

The battle which finally established the ascendency of the Protestant party under William and Ormond, is seldom noticed as one of the events which has fixed the fate of nations. Unmarked by that striking splendor which has dis tinguished other decisive battles, achieved by no consummate generalship on either side, noticeable only in the apparently nearly balanced strength of its opposing elements, enacted with alacrity, and without the preparatory and subsequent bustle which generally attend like conflicts, it spoke in thundertones of prophecy for the future happiness of a great race. It marked the beginning of an era, which has never been equalled for the astonishing progress of the human race, made within its period. It was the mustard-seed, which

produced a prolific and exuberant growth. In short, it achieved for the AngloSaxon perpetual freedom of conscience and political action; this is at once its simplest and its sublimest eulogy. The sun of the first of July, 1690, shone with a clear and healthful light upon discordant Erin. Its early rays of morning fell upon a glistening armament of two vigorous and hopeful bands; their last lingering glance beheld the retreating army of a despotic and dying cause. During that eventful day the brave, the good, the loyal, had fallen; but in that struggle had been achieved the greatest boons of nature and enlightenment, for millions and for centuries. William of Orange the Protestant against James Stuart the Papist, were fit personifications of the struggle of liberalism against prejudice, popular liberty against kingly power, intellectual progress against sluggard sensuality. Ireland, too, was a fit spot where to decide the contest which was to break the power of Popery, or consign to the despotism of the hierarchy the destinies of Britain. For there the tyranny of James was visible in the desolate hamlet and deserted city; and there, too, wherever the protection of the new government extended, new life was seen springing up throughout the community. The peals of the victorious guns of Londonderry had hardly ceased, and Enniskillen had but just achieved, with a meagre band of sterling souls, a signal triumph over the rude and merciless Celts, when, to complete the rout of the deposed monarch, the blended colors of England and Orange floated from Dublin Castle. By the battle of the Boyne, of which the capture of the metropolis was the immediate result, was insured the final annihilation of the dynasty of the Stuarts. They had ruled with great injustice, most of the time, for nearly a century. They found a strong and vigorous prerogative, a substantial prosperity, a rich and high-toned literature, a nation respected at home and abroad. They left a weak and corrupt court, a sluggish and crumbling navy, a low and scurrilous literature, a second-rate power in the balance of Europe. Whatever of good Elizabeth had preserved and acquired, they were quick to eradicate; whatever of evil she had continued or called into existence, they were equally zealous to perpetuate. Whether in secret league with foreign courts, or draining the national exchequer, or desecrating the high office of the bench, or ministering to the peevish cravings of imbecile courtiers, or insulting the clergy, the effect of every act of this line of kings was to diminish British credit, to dishonor British fame, and to demoralize British habits and morals. To narrow to the control of a few the legislature of the state, to subject to royal dictation the decisions of the judge, to incessantly widen the dominion of monarch over parliament, were the great ends this race proposed to themselves. But the people had been growing; the march of civilization had kept an equal course; liberal aspiration trodden under foot, grew even there and flourished. The progeny of Charles arose against the progeny of Charles. The grand-son, the hope of the vast majority, went, supported by the right arm of the English people, to expel the son from the throne and the soil of his fathers. Supported though the tyrant was by his Papist brother of France, defended as he was by the superstitious ferocity of the Irishry, he fell before the might of his own people; he fell by the hand of his own nephew and the husband of his own daughter; he fell by the demerit of

his own foolhardy reign, a reign which had brought calamity and wo to those very households which had sent forth the flower of the English youth to die for his royal father at Worcester and Marston Moor.

And William, a second but a peaceful conqueror, the deliverer of a people whose language he could not speak, whose habits he could not learn, whose political and religious system were an enigma to him, a cold, phlegmatic Dutchman, sat upon the throne of his English ancestors, assured of the love of his people, proud in the consciousness of having achieved the noble title of benefactor to his religion and his race; and to the end of his life governed with vigor and prudence, yielding the while to every subject the right to worship according to the promptings of his own conscience.

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