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such confusion, by the open rebellion of the Scots, and the secret discontents of the English, that if he had counselled or executed any violent measure, he might perhaps have been able to apologize for his conduct, from the great law of necessity, which admits not, while the necessity is extreme, of any scruple, cere. mony or delay." But Strafford, he adds, gave no such advice; therefore it was a gratuitous insult on morality to introduce the maxim in this place. The laboured justification of Charles I. from the charge of a want of good faith, concludes with the following absurd and disingenuous sentence:-" In every treaty, those concessions which he thought he could not in conscience maintain, he never could, by any motive or persuasion, be induced to make. And though some violations of the petition of right may perhaps be imputed to him; these are more to be ascribed to the necessity of his situation, and to the lofty ideas of royal prerogative, which, from former established precedents, he had imbibed, than to any failure in the integrity of his principles." Stripped of its artful phraseology, what would the most careless reader judge of this monstrous proposition? Charles violated the charter to which he had given his sanction; but his love of power, and the hope of advantage, or the fear of loss, were the motives of this violation; therefore there was nothing blameable in it. The Jesuits held a similar doctrine.

After relating the attempt on the Dutch Smyrna fleet, which the rapacity of Charles II. prompted him to make before any de claration of war, we have these expressions: "This attempt is denominated perfidious and piratical by the Dutch writers, and even by many of the English. It merits at least the appellation of irregular; and as it had been attended with bad success, it brought double shame upon the contrivers." So feeble is the protest put upon record by this historian against a practise worthy only of Tunis or Algiers! So little has he contributed to warn his country against a conduct which has since been retaliated upon her by so severe but just a retribution! The loyal author might at least have given us a lesson on the subject at the expense of Cromwell, for that surper it was who set the example of piracy, in an expedition against the Spaniards, though I know not whe ther the profits were conveyed into his privy purse by an assumption of the droits of admiralty. But, in narrating this affair, another purpose was chiefly to be served; several sea-officers threw up their commissions, from a conviction of the injustice of the Spanish war which ensued, alledging that their superiors had no right to command, nor themselves to execute, any thing contrary to natural equity and the decrees of Heaven. "Such maxims," ," adds Hume, "though they seem reasonable, are perhaps too perfect for human nature, and must be regarded as one effect,

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effect, though of the most innocent and honourable kind, of that spirit, partly fanatical, partly republican, which predominated in England." Without aiming at antithesis, or giving way to exaggeration, it may be said, that by this writer the virtues of sub. jects are more severely treated than the vices of kings. It happened most unfortunately for the moral reputation of the histo rian, that the men whose zeal in the cause of political liberty has entitled them to the gratitude and veneration of every truly Eng." lish heart, were also, for the most part, distinguished by a zeal in religious matters which Hume never fails to style fanatical. With all his pretensions to philosophical enlargement of senti ment, this principle is one to which he not only can grant no in dulgence in its immediate operation; the most generous exertions, the noblest sacrifices to moral and civil duty, made by those over whom he but suspects its influence, are transmuted by his touch to specious extravagances, and visionary scruples. He cannot contain his indignation against the sailors of the squadron sent by Charles I., ostensibly to assist the French in the blockade of Ge. noa, but really for the reduction of La Rochelle. These men re. monstrated, and their commanders willingly brought them back to the Downs without having fired a gun; being again decoyed into the service, they again mutinied, and one gunner alone could be induced, by the large offers of the French or "his duty to his king," to turn his arms against his brother-protestants. The parliament entered into the sentiments of the sailors-they too esteemed the tie of a common religion too strong to be broken by the political intrigues of princes, and our historian remarks, that "it plainly appears from this incident as well as from many others, that of all European nations, the British were at that time and till long after, the most under the influence of that religious spirit which tends rather to inflame bigotry than increase peace and mutual charity !" It is with a mean and unfounded stigma that he concludes his libel on the character and principles of John Hambden, the champion of the civil rights of Englishmen, the opposer of the illegal exaction of ship-money? there was a great tang of enthusiasm, he says, in the conduct of the parliamentary leaders, and Hambden's "intended migration to America, where he could only propose the advantage of enjoying puritanical prayers and sermons, will be allowed a proof of the prevalence of this spirit in him." It may be suspected, both here and in other places, that a secret rancour against the cause of freedom has given additional bitterness to that scorn and hatred of fanaticism which the historian has thought proper to avow. "That excellent prince," Henry IV. of France, who was so far from being a bigot," as to change his religion at the moment when policy required the sacrifice, is a hero quite to his taste, and accordingly

he

he goes a little out of his way to celebrate this meritorious effort of patriotic virtue.

But in favour of kings, our philosopher can make all fair and candid allowances; in Charles I., religion was a pure and noble principle, calculated to support and elevate the mind; and even in that inflexible adherence to episcopacy, to which the unhappy monarch sacrificed so much, we are taught to admire, if not the soundness of his judgment, at least his grateful attachment to an order so faithful to his interests, and his steadiness to what he re garded as the dictates of conscience. So tender indeed is he of the character of the royal martyr, that he has been careful, in one place, to counteract the judgment he had himself given against him in another. "The king," he affirms, "had in some instances stretched his prerogative beyond its due bounds; and, aided by the church, had well nigh put an end to all the liberties and privileges of the nation." In the next chapter, he says, that "all Europe stood astonished to see a nation so turbulent and unruly, who for some doubtful encroachments on their privileges had dethroned and murdered an excellent prince," submit to the tyranny and usurpa tion of Cromwell. But this is far from being a solitary instance of gross inconsistency-some others have already been mentioned, and more might be added. Of Strafford's letter begging Charles I, to consent to his execution, it is said, "Perhaps Strafford hoped that this unusual instance of generosity would engage the king still more strenuously to protect him." Here an action is at the same time styled generous, and supposed selfish and disingenuous in its motive and purpose,

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Respecting the expediency of the oath of non-resistance, proposed in the year 1675, it is given as the just opinion, "That the absolute exclusion of resistance in all possible cases, was founded on false principles; its express admission might be attended with dangerous consequences; and there was no necessity for exposing the public to either inconvenience: That if a choice must necessarily be made in the case, the preference of utility to truth in public institutions was apparent; nor could the supposition of resistance beforehand, and in general terms, be safely admitted in any government," &c, Hume, the essayist, could not but know, that the question with philosophical enquirers, in this or any other case, would not be, whether truth should be preferred to utility? but whether utility is not best promoted by an adherence to truth? Yet he assumes and builds upon the negative as an axiom.

In the summaries of the characters of Charles II. and James II., in the estimate of the national manners and morals of that period, and in other passages, there is an even ostentatious contempt of the virtue of chastity and the grace of decorum, borrowed from the French, but happily not yet universally approved and adopted

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amongst ourselves. Of Charles it is said; "In the duties of private life, his conduct, though not free from exception, was in the main laudable. He was an easy, generous lover, a civil, obliging husband, a friendly brother, an indulgent father, and a good-natured master. The voluntary friendships, however, which this prince contracted, nay, even his sense of gratitude, were feeble; and he never attached himself to any of his ministers or courtiers with a sincere affection. He believed them to have no motive in serving him but self-interest; and he was still ready, in his turn, to sacrifice them to present ease or convenience. With a detail of his private character we must set bounds to our pane.. gyric on Charles," &c. This then was considered by the author as a panegyric! Profusion and complaisance to his mistresses, indulgence to children whose birth reproached him, civility to a wife whom he injured and deserted, with a mere constitutional good-nature displayed towards those around him, are to overbalance the total want of honour, gratitude, and generosity, with the disregard of every restraining principle, so conspicuous in the whole conduct of this selfish profligate. Are these the morals of history?

Of James II. it is pronounced, that "in domestic life his conduct was irreproachable, and is entitled to our approbation." Yet were his conjugal infidelities not less frequent or notorious than those of his gayer brother, and he was even guilty of the baseness of attempting to disown his private marriage with the daughter of Clarendon, and allowing one of his infamous favourites grossly to slander her virtue.

Tacitus has delighted to extol, in animated terms, the chaste and frugal virtues of those tribes of ancient Germany concerning which Hume coldly observes, that they seem to have carried to the highest pitch the virtues of valour and love of liberty; the only virtues which can have place among an uncivilized people, where justice and humanity are commonly neglected." The same noble Roman labours to inculcate on the mind of his reader, by the whole strain of his narration, the sacred and momentous truth, that public principle, and by consequence, public freedom, depends for its stability on private virtue, which has itself no safer basis than a frugal simplicity and guarded purity of domestic life, which lessens the temptations by setting bounds to the desires of Far from seeking to palliate the tyranny and wickedness of bad emperors and their base satellites, by the maxims of a crafty policy and the arts of a sophistical rhetoric, the annalist has obeyed the high impulse of a generous soul, in adorning, with all the majesty of his own forcible eloquence, the pleadings, the efforts, the sufferings, of those patriot martyrs who graced, who retarded perhaps, the final fall of Roman liberty. These are the

men.

merits

merits which have secured to that great and truly philosophical historian the reverence, still more than the admiration, of all succeeding ages, and have rendered the perusal of his works no less a moral benefit than an intellectual delight, How short-lived, how inglorious in comparison, will be the reputation of that writer, who, proceeding on principles directly opposite, degrades while he entertains us!

CAMILLA.

ART. IV.-Greek and English Tragedy.

MEDEA, -CLYTEMNESTRA, LADY MACBETH.

THESE three illustrious murderesses have been fortunate in having their infamous exploits celebrated by three of the greatest tragic poets the world has produced,-Euripides, Eschylus, and Shakspeare. From the peculiar genius of each of these tragedians, it might have been expected that Eschylus would have been inferior to neither of his competitors in the delineation of such a charac ter: but I know not by what unlucky chance it has happened, that in almost every instance in which that great poet has been drawn into a comparison with his successors, by any prominent coincidence of characters or circumstances, he has lost that ground which the particular bent or the superiority of his genius might have given him, by a negligence in filling up the parts of his performance, or by dividing his exertion and the interest of his piece with other agents; or, perhaps, in some instances at least, by the extraordinary diligence and ardour with which his successors were inspired by a spirit of emulation. Such a spirit is every where to be remarked in Euripides; but if his Medea must be acknowledged to be a more artful, a more interesting, and a more perfect portrait, than the Clytemnestra of Eschylus, I am mistaken if, upon a close investigation, it will not be thought, that Shakspeare in his Lady Macbeth has excelled them both,-that he has exhibited a character not only more difficult of de. lineation, but more perfect in all its parts, and more sublime in its execution, than either of the mighty masters of the Athe, nian stage.

Characters of, a deep dye of infamy may be distinguished into two kinds, those who rush forwards to the perpetration of their crimes with a daring hand, unassailed by any of the " compunc

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