Actual
transcript
ON THE
CAUSE OF
THE SUCCESS
OF THE
ENGLISH
REVOLUTION
OF 1640-1688
A DISCOURSE
DESIGNED
AS AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF THE REIGN
OF CHARLES
THE FIRST
BY M GUIZOT
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY,
ALBEMARLE STREET
1850
Such were
the guarantees for moderation in the two impending revolutions, afforded
by the dispositions of their several partisans. Providence also granted
them an especial favour; they were not doomed, at the outset, to commit
the dangerous wrong of attacking spontaneously, and without a clear
and urgent necessity, a mild and offensive ruler. In England, the royal
power was the aggressor. Charles I, full of haughty pretensions, though
devoid of elevated ambition, and moved rather by the desire of not derogating
in the eyes of the kings, his peers, than by that of ruling with a strong
hand over his people, twice attempted to introduce into the country
the maxims and the practice of absolute monarchy: the first time, in
presence of Parliament, at the instigation of a vain and frivolous favourite,
whose presumptuous incapacity shocked the good sense and wounded the
self respect of the humblest citizen: the second time, by dispensing
with Parliament altogether, and ruling alone by the hand of a minister,
able and energetic, ambitious and imperious, though not without greatness
of mind, de
voted to
his master, by whom he was imperfectly understood and ill supported,
and aware too late that kings are not to be saved solely by incurring
ruin, however nobly, in their service.
To check
this aggressive despotism, more enterprising than energetic, and asssailing
equally, in Church and State, the ancient rights and recent franchises
to which the country laid claim, the mind of the people of the people
of England did not go beyond legal resistance, and this they entrusted
to the hands of their representatives in Parliament. The resistance
was unanimous as it was legitimate. Men the most unlike in origin and
character, the great nobles, gentlemen and citizens, those attached
to the court and those the most remote from its influence, the friends
and enemies of the established church, all rose with common accord against
this accumulated mass of grievances and abuses: and the abuses were
overthrown, and the grievances vanished, as the old walls of a deserted
citadel crumble at the first stroke of its assailants.
