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edge that the tone of their minds was often in- |icated into valor, defending without love, dejured by straining after things too high for stroying without hatred. There was a freemortal reach: and we know that, in spite of dom in their subserviency, a nobleness in their their hatred of Popery, they too often fell into very degradation. The sentiment of individthe worst vices of that bad system, intoler-ual independence was strong within them. ance and extravagant austerity, that they had They were indeed misled, but by no base or their anchorites and their crusades, their selfish motive. Compassion and romantic Dunstans and their De Monforts, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful body.

The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly because it was the cause of religion. There was another party, by no means numerous, but distinguished by learning and ability, which acted with them on very different principles. We speak of those whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were, in the phraseology of that time, doubting Thomases or careless Gallios with regard to religious subjects, but passionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by the study of ancient literature, they set up their country as their idol, and proposed to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They seem to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines of the French Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of distinction between them and their devout associates, whose tone and manner they sometimes found it convenient to affect, and sometimes, it is probable, imperceptibly adopted.

honor, the prejudices of childhood, and the venerable names of history, threw over them a spell potent as that of Duessa; and like the Red-Cross Knight, they thought that they were doing battle for an injured beauty, while they defended a false and loathsome sorceress. In truth they scarcely entered at all into the merits of the political question. It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant church that they fought, but for the old banner which had waved in so many battles over the heads of their fathers, and for the altars at which they had received the hands of their brides. Though nothing could be more erroneous than their political opinions, they possessed, in a far greater degree than their adversaries, those qualities which are the grace of private life. With many of the vices of the Round Table, they had also many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness, and respect for women. They had far more both of profound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes more elegant, and their households more cheerful.

Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a freethinker. He was not a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. From the Parliament and from the Court, from the conventical and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, he lived

We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them, as we have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect candor. We shall not charge upon a whole party the profligacy and baseness of the horse-boys, gamblers and bravoes, whom the hope of license and plunder attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars to the standard of Charles, and who disgraced their associates by excesses which, under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentry armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more favorable specimen. Thinking as we do that the cause of the King was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from looking with complacency on the character of the honest old cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparing Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed them with the instruments which the despots on an Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. of other countries are compelled to employ, And hence he acquired their contempt of exwith the mutes who throng their ante chambers, and the Janissaries who mount guard at their gates. Our royalist countrymen were not heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every step, and simpering at every word. They were not mere machines for destruction, dressed up in uniforms caned into skill, intox

"As ever in his great task-master's eye."

ternal circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest skeptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure.

"Oh, he mistook! Ye should have snatched his wand
And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed,
And backward mutters of dissevering power,
We cannot free the lady that sits here
Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless."

Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had should think for themselves as well as tax nevertheless all the estimable and ornamental themselves, and should be emancipated from qualities which were almost entirely monop- the dominion of prejudice as well as from that olized by the party of the tyrant. There was of Charles. He knew that those who, with none who had a stronger sense of the value the best intentions, overlooked these schemes of literature, a finer relish for every elegant of reform, and contented themselves with amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of pulling down the King and imprisoning the honor and love. Though his opinions were malignants, acted like the heedless brothers democratic, his tastes and his associations in his own poem, who, in their eagerness to were such as harmonize best with monarchy disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected and aristocracy. He was under the influence the means of liberating the captive. They of all the feelings by which the gallant Cava-thought only of conquering when they should liers were misled. But of those feelings he have thought of disenchanting. was the master and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination; but he was not fascinated. He listened to the song of the Syrens; yet he glided by without being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup of Circe; but he To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backbore about him a sure antidote against the ef- ward, to break the ties which bound a stupefects of its bewitching sweetness. The allu- fied people to the seat of enchantment, was sions which captivated his imagination never the noble aim of Milton. To this all his public impaired his reasoning powers. The states- conduct was directed. For this he joined the man was proof against the splendor, the so- Presbyterians; for this he forsook them. He lemnity, and the romance which enchanted fought their perilous battle; but he turned the poet. Any person who will contrast the away with disdain from their insolent trisentiments expressed in his treatises on Prel- umph. He saw that they, like those whom acy with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical they had vanquished, were hostile to the libarchitecture and music in the Penseroso, erty of thought. He therefore joined the Inwhich was published about the same time, dependents, and called upon Cromwell to will understand our meaning. This is an in-break the secular chain, and to save free conconsistency which, more than any thing else, science from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. raises his character in our estimation, because With a view to the same great object, he atit shows how many private tastes and feelings tacked the licensing system, in that sublime he sacrificed, in order to do what he consid- treatise which every statesman should wear ered his duty to mankind. It is the very as a sign upon his hand and as frontlets bestruggle of the noble Othello. His heart re-tween his eyes. His attacks were, in general, lents: but his hand is firm. He does nought directed less against particular abuses than in hate, but all in honor. He kisses the beau-against those deeply-seated errors on which tiful deceiver before he destroys her. almost all abuses are founded, the servile worship of eminent men and the irrational dread of innovation.

That from which the public character of Milton derives its great and peculiar splendor, still remains to be mentioned. If he exerted That he might shake the foundations of himself to overthrow a forsworn king and a these debasing sentiments more effectually, persecuting bierarchy, he exerted himself in he always selected for himself the boldest conjunction with others. But the glory of literary services. He never came up in the the battle which he fought for the species of rear when the outworks had been carried and freedom which is the most valuable, and the breach entered. He pressed into the forwhich was then the least understood, the lorn hope. At the beginning of the changes, freedom of the human mind, is all his own. he wrote with incomparable energy and eloThousands and tens of thousands among his quence against the bishops. But, when his contemporaries raised their voices against opinion seemed likely to prevail, he passed Ship-money and the Star-chamber. But there on to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy were few indeed who discerned the more fear- to the crowd of writers who now hastened to ful evils of moral and intellectual slavery, and insult a falling party. There is no more hazthe benefits which would result from the lib-ardous enterprise than that of bearing the erty of the press and the unfettered exercise torch of truth into those dark and infected of private judgment. These were the objects recesses in which no light has ever shone. which Milton justly conceived to be the most But it was the choice and the pleasure of Milimportant. He was desirous that the people ton to penetrate the noisome vapors, and

to brave the terrible explosion. Those who his eyes, rolling in vain to find the day; that most disapprove of his opinions must respect we are reading in the lines of his noble counthe hardihood with which he maintained tenance the proud and mournful history of them. He, in general, left to others the credit of expounding and defending the popular parts of his religious and political creed. He took his own stand upon those which the great body of his countrymen reprobated as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. He stood up for divorce and regicide. He attacked the prevailing systems of education. His radiant and beneficent career resembled that of the god of light and fertility.

"Nitor in adversum; nec me,qui cætera, vincit Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi."

his glory and his affliction. We image to ourselves the breathless silence in which we should listen to his slightest word, the passionate veneration with which we should kneel to kiss his hand and weep upon it, the earnestness with which we should endeavor to console him, if indeed such a spirit could need consolation, for the neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and his virtues, the eagerness with which we should contest with his daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents which flowed from his lips.

These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be ashamed of them; nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in any degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of idolizing either the living or the dead. And we think that there is no more certain indication of a weak and

It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, in our time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English language. They abound with passages compared with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is ill-regulated intellect than that propensity stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost has the great poet ever risen higher than in those parts of his controversial works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic language, "a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies."

We had intended to look more closely at these performances, to analyze the peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some length on the sublime wisdom of the Areopagitica and the nervous rhetoric of the Iconoclast, and to point out some of those magnificent passages which occur in the Treatise of Reformation, and the Animadversions on the Remonstrant. But the length to which our remarks have already extended renders this impossible.

We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear ourselves away from the subject. The days immediately following the publication of this relic of Milton appear to be peculiarly set apart, and consecrated to his memory. And we shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, we be found lingering near his shrine, how worthless soever may be the offering which we bring to it. While this book lies on our table, we seem to be contemporaries of the writer. We are transported a hundred and fifty years back. We can almost fancy that we are visiting him in his small lodging; that we see him sitting at the old organ beneath the faded green hangings; that we can catch the quick twinkle of

which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure, which have been weighed in the balance and have not been found wanting, which have been declared sterling by the general consent of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the Most High. These great men we trust that we know how to prize; and of these was Milton. The sight of his books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the earth and which were distinguished from the productions of other soils, not only by superior bloom and sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he labored for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame.

ON LIBERTY.

DEDICATION.

To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward-I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful re-examination, which they are now never destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it, than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

THE subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual. A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in general terms, but which profoundly influences the practical controversies of the age by its latent presence, and is likely soon to make itself recognized as the vital question of the future. It is so far from being new, that, in a certain sense, it has divided mankind, almost from the remotest ages; but in the stage of progress into which the more civilized portions of the species have now entered, it presents itself under new conditions, and requires a different and more fundamental treatment.

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England. But in old times this contest was between subjects, or some classes of subjects, and the Government. By liberty, was meant protection against the tyranny of the political rulers. The rulers were conceived (except in some of the popular governments of Greece) as in a necessarily antagonistic position to the people whom they ruled. They consisted of a governing One, or a governing

tribe or caste, who derived their authority from inheritance or conquest, who, at all events, did not hold it at the pleasure of the governed, and whose supremacy men did not venture, perhaps did not desire, to contest, whatever precautions might be taken against its oppressive exercise. Their power was regarded as necessary, but also as highly dangerous; as a weapon which they would attempt to use against their subjects, no less than against external enemies. To prevent the weaker members of the community from being preyed upon by innumerable vultures, it was needful that there should be an animal of prey stronger than the rest, commissioned to keep them down. But as the king of the vultures would be no less bent upon preying on the flock than any of the minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude of defence against his beak and claws. The aim, therefore, of patriots was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty. It was attempted in two ways. First, by obtaining a recognition of certain immunities, called political liberties or rights, which it was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe, and which if he did infringe, specific resistance, or general rebellion, was held to be justifiable. A second, and generally a later expedient, was the establishment of constitutional checks, by which the consent of the community, or of a body of some sort, supposed to represent its interests, was made a necessary condition to some of the more important acts of the governing power. To the first of these modes of limitation, the ruling power, in most European countries, was compelled, more or less, to submit. It was not so with the second; and, to attain this, or when already in some degree possessed, to attain it more completely, became everywhere the principal object of the lovers of liberty. And so long as mankind were content to combat one enemy by another, and to be ruled by a master, on condition of being guaranteed more or less efficaciously against his tyranny, they did not carry their aspirations beyond this point.

A time, however, came, in the progress of

the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the 'self-government' spoken of is not the government of each by himself. but of each by all the rest. The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power. The limitation, therefore, of the power of government over individuals loses none of its importance when the holders of power are regularly accountable to the community, that is, to the strongest party therein. This view of things, recommending itself equally to the intelligence of thinkers and to the inclination of those important classes in European society to whose real or supposed interests democracy is adverse, has had no difficulty in establishing itself; and in political speculations the tyranny of the majority' is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard.

human affairs, when men ceased to think it a fan usurping few, and which, in any case, benecessity of nature that their governors longed, not to the permanent working of popushould be an independent power, opposed in lar institutions, but to a sudden and convulsive interest to themselves. It appeared to them outbreak against monarchical and aristocratic much better that the various magistrates of despotism. In time, however, a democratic the State should be their tenants or delegates, republic came to occupy a large portion of revocable at their pleasure. In that way the earth's surface, and made itself felt as one alone, it seemed, they could have complete of the most powerful members of the commusecurity that the powers of government would nity of nations; and elective and responsible never be abused to their disadvantage. By government became subject to the observadegrees this new demand for elective and tions and criticisms which wait upon a great temporary rulers became the prominent ob- existing fact. It was now perceived that ject of the exertions of the popular party, such phrases as 'self-government,' and 'the wherever any such party existed; and super-power of the people over themselves,' do not seded, to a considerable extent, the previous express the true state of the case. The 'peo efforts to limit the power of rulers. As the ple' who exercise the power are not always struggle proceeded for making the ruling power emanate from the periodical choice of the ruled, some persons began to think that too much importance had been attached to the limitation of the power itself. That (it might seem) was a resource against rulers whose interests were habitually opposed to those of the people. What was now wanted was, that the rulers should be identified with the people; that their interest and will should be the interest and will of the nation. The nation did not need to be protected against its own will. There was no fear of its tyrannizing over itself. Let the rulers be effectually responsible to it, promptly removable by it, and it could afford to trust them with power of which it could itself dictate the use to be made. Their power was but the nation's own power, concentrated, and in a form convenient for exercise. This mode of thought, or rather perhaps of feeling, was common among the last generation of European liberalism, in the Continental section of which it still apparently predominates. Those who admit any limit to what a government may do, except in the case of such governments as they think ought not to exist, stand out as brilliant ex- Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the ceptions among the political thinkers of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly held Continent. A similar tone of sentiment might in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts by this time have been prevalent in our own of the public authorities. But reflecting percountry, if the circumstances which for a sons perceived that when society is itself the time encouraged it, had continued unaltered. tyrant-society collectively, over the separate But, in political and philosophical theories, individuals who compose it-its means of as well as in persons, success discloses faults tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts and infirmities which failure might have con- which it may do by the hands of its political cealed from observation. The notion, that functionaries. Society can and does execute the people have no need to limit their power its own mandates: and if it issues wrong over themselves, might seem axiomatic, when mandates instead of right, or any manpopular government was a thing only dreamed dates at all in things with which it ought about, or read of as having existed at some not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny distant period of the past. Neither was that more formidable than many kinds of politnotion necessarily disturbed by such tempo-ical oppression since, though not usually uprary aberrations as those of the French Revo-held by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewlution, the worst of which were the work of er means of escape, penetrating much more

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