the fourth year of the Council of State the name of Henry Marten re-appeared on its list; nor could it be struck off until a twelvemonth had elapsed, by which time the defeat of Charles the Second at Worcester had turned out a crowning mercy,' to the victor, as indeed that victor accustomed himself not infrequently to term it. Soon afterwards ensued that famous forcible dismission of the Long Parliament, which paved the way for an analogous extinction of the almost equally celebrated Council. Marten however had been already once more rejected from that executive; yet he never consented to acknowledge the usurper, even after his presumed connexion with Wildman and Overton's conspiracy had consigned him to a prison. Nor did he ever cease inciting his old friends Scot and Bradshaw to be faithful to their common principles. These men gave utterance, in innumerable important discussions, to the opinions and hopes of their incarcerated colleague. After the resignation of the protectorate by Richard Cromwell, the member for Berkshire once more resumed his seat in the House of Commons, the survivors of the Long Parliament being recalled. He saw presently how matters were going; and one of his latest satires was directed against General Monk, in the shape of a bitter compliment. On the Restoration, as might have been expected, he was excepted from the Act of Indemnity, and had to take his trial in the ensuing October with the regicides. He manifested his usual readiness in defending himself; concluding his address, however, with an application for mercy to the king, which for once his majesty seemed disposed to entertain. The fact was, that Henry Marten had many friends, whose personal attachment surpassed even their admiration for his talents and varied accomplishments. Sir Henry Ludlow is declared by his own son to have had his death chiefly occasioned through grief at the expulsion of so attractive a debater from the House of Commons, in 1643. It may remind us of a more modern statesman, whose brilliant powers shone the brighter from their being perpetually enshrined amidst such habitual good-nature and graceful proprieties of manner, that his vices seemed (and only seemed) to lose something of their evil, by losing all their grossness.' The overstrained strictness of Puritanism had prepared the nation for a recoil into the multiform abysses of profligacy. Many royalists could even interest themselves for the only republican they had ever known, who sauctioned by his presence and example their own abominable excesses. Anthony à Wood winds up his angry portrait of him with no little accuracy and correctness, in these words. Marten was a man of good 'natural parts,-boon, familiar, and quick with repartees, exceeding happy in apt instances,-pertinent and very biting; so that his company, being esteemed incomparable, would have been 6 acceptable to the greatest persons, only he would get drunk too soon, and so put an end to all the mirth for the present.' This presented the best chance in the world for opening a door of favor in the heart of a wicked and witty monarch. His minions almost clamored to save from the scaffold the most entertaining debauchee of their age. There were others, and not a few, whom the facetious genius of gallant Harry,' as he loved to be called, had materially served in the days of his influence and power. They all persuaded him to transmit a very humble petition to the two houses, which was done accordingly. The Commons took little or no notice of it; but in the Lords, Viscount Falkland, with many peers, spoke warmly on his behalf. Through their efforts, a remission of his capital sentence ensued; yet he was ordered to be imprisoned for life, first in the Tower, then at Windsor, and finally in Chepstow Castle. Such,' says an indignant yet sympathising royalist, was the last sad doom of this gentleman, whose quickness of thought, elegance of manners, vivacity, wit, ' and charming gaiety had often fascinated not only the convivial 'board, but the grave, austere, sour, republican chiefs in the 'House of Commons, who so often chose him for their manager and director !' He lingered for twenty years in his last place of captivity, which must have been peculiarly bitter to him from its being on the border of the Welsh counties, which at the period of his greatest fame in the country had always desired to have him for their commander-in-chief. The jointure of his lady, whom until now he had grievously slighted, just supplied him with necessaries; all his estate beside having been confiscated by the crown. When his wife died, his daughter most dutifully supplied her place; beyond his parental deserts, as must be admitted. An anecdote is mentioned respecting him, which shows with how sincere a determination he retained his political predilections: He had been suffered, during the last few years of his life, in consideration of his harmlessness, no less than the infirmities of his great age, to walk out of his prison occasionally, under the strict conduct of a keeper, into the neighbouring village of St. Pierre. A person of the name of Lewis lived here, and when he saw him, he would ask him into his house. It grew into a habit at last; and a visit to this house and a conversation with its owner, were the old man's last remaining comforts. Some unlucky day, however, this Lewis, who was a staunch royalist (as people who lived in the neighbourhood of royal castles in those days generally were), happened to ask his visitor if, supposing the deed were to be done over again, he would again sign the warrant for the execution of Charles the First. Marten told him, 'Yes,'and was never after received into the house. At length in 1681, enfeebled with the weight of seventy-eight years, and the sufferings of a long imprisonment, against which his strong natural health had wonderfully borne him up, he was suddenly, whilst sitting at dinner, struck with apoplexy, and fell dead from his chair. A paper containing the following verses was found in the room where he died. They appear to have expressed the very latest of his thoughts, and he had formed the initial letters, as will be seen, into an acrostic of his own name,—an old fantastic resource from the wearying length of lonely hours: Here, or elsewhere (all one to you,-and me), My life was worn with serving you and you, -pp. 358, 359. One would fain hope, that something like a spark of repentance, with regard to his practical heathenism and forgetfulness of his Maker, may by possibility be discovered in so melancholy and pensive a memorial of the ashes of HENRY Marten. The main interest of his biography turns without question upon the republicanism of his politics, and the part he took in that notable transaction, characterized by our Established Church as The Martyrdom of the blessed King Charles the First.' We will conclude our article by venturing a few remarks upon these subjects. And first, with regard to his political peculiarities in wishing to abolish the monarchical principle, our readers may rest assured that we have no sympathy with him on that point. Our honest conviction is, that however the predictions of M. de Tocqueville may be realized in Europe, her great leading governments must never surrender an hereditary executive. By all means let popular and liberal legislation and administration be developed to their uttermost safe extent under its shadow: let responsibility be the characteristic of all official existence whatsoever, so as to keep clear of legal subtleties, serviceable for nothing but to entangle the minds of honest men: but at the same time, let crowns and sceptres remain, as they are interwoven with all national associations; although they must be also surrounded by free institutions, and practically as well as professedly recognizing the doctrine, that the source of all power, under divine providence, lies in the people. Marten and his party seemed to desire what the North American Union has conferred upon millions of our brethren beyond the Atlantic; or what Dumas, with a multitude of dreamers and theorists, may expect to see some day or other carried out in France and her dependencies. Now we are cordial supporters of monarchy, so limited and arranged, that on the one hand, a vast form of social organization, which has endured for ages and which has become part and parcel of the heart and mind of Christendom, may receive no unnecessary shock or violence; whilst on the other, all authority shall be considered as a mighty trust, to be administered not on behalf of the few at the expense of the many, but for the benefit of every individual member, high or low, forming the body-corporate of the commonwealth. We believe such to have been the grand idea, and genuine intention of the patriotic founders, both the early and later ones, who constructed the ark of our constitution. The maxim that a king or governor of these realms can 'do no wrong,' was never meant to override another, which is the ultima ratio of society, namely that Salus populi est suprema lex. The notion of a people existing at all, as Burke somewhere says, involves the idea of a corporation formed more or less artificially for the advantage of those concerned in it. The whole as to its primary foundations must rest upon equity and utility, according to Philo and Cicero, more especially the latter, who lays down in his Offices, that Unum debet esse omnibus propositum, ut eadem sit Utilitas unius cujusque, et universorum, quam si ad se quisque rapiat, dissolveretur omnis humana consortio. There will every now and then arise occasions, when wise statesmen will consider that they best consult the real spirit of our constitution, by doing what Hallam says the Whigs did in 1688, appealing not so much to the Magna Charta of King John, as to the inherent rights of man; in other words, by substituting Hooker and Harrington for Coke and Chief Justice Hale. Yet supposing this to be a correct view of the matter, it follows that right must stand connected with might: or else the germ of popular liberty expires. What we mean is neither more nor less than the avoidance of a reductio ad absurdum; for what would be the use of admitting or maintaining the responsibility of all rulers to their subjects, were these last utterly left without a conceivable power of realizing their freedom, and avenging its violation? Attached, therefore, though we are to our limited and constitutional monarchy, we contend as strongly that governors are essentially trustees! Accountability we look upon as inseparable from official existence in a free state. Had we lived, therefore, in the seventeenth century, we should have been for the trial of Charles Stuart, provided the investigation had only taken a legal form, which, however, it unfortunately did not. Nevertheless, there was nothing in the nature of things to prevent this from having VOL. VIII, T been the case, had a large majority of the nation, for instance, summoned him as a culprit to their bar, expressing their will through legitimate representation, or at least by such a fair and full convention, as might in great necessity supply the place of lawful authority. But it was, as we all know, the act of a bold but very small minority, who, having forcibly expelled their colleagues from parliament, had usurped, under the protection of a military force, that power which all England reckoned illegal. Thus far we agree with our elegant and learned constitutional historian, Mr. Hallam; whilst, in what follows we venture to differ from him altogether. I cannot perceive,' he goes on to say, 'what there was in the imagined solemnity of the proceedings, ' in that insolent mockery of the forms of justice, accompanied by 'all unfairness and inhumanity in its circumstances, which can 'alleviate the guilt of the transaction; and if it be alleged, that 'many of the regicides were firmly persuaded in their consciences of the right and duty of condemning the king, we may surely ' remember, that private murderers have often had the same apology.' We much prefer the philosophical opinion of Charles James Fox, whose authority will be admitted by most persons, as that of one of the noblest statesmen of modern times: 'If,' he observes in his beautiful Fragment, if we consider this question 'of example in a more extended view, and look to the general 'effect produced upon the minds of men, it cannot be doubted but that the opportunity thus given to Charles to display his 'firmness and piety has created more respect for his memory than it could otherwise have obtained. It has been thought 'dangerous to the morals of mankind, even in romance, to make 'us sympathise with characters whose general conduct is blameable; but how much greater must be the effect, when in real 'history our feelings are interested in favour of a monarch, with whom, to say the least, his subjects were obliged to contend in 'arms for their liberty? After all, notwithstanding what the 'more reasonable part of mankind may think upon this question, 'it is much to be doubted whether this singular proceeding has 'not, as much as any other circumstance, served to raise the cha'racter of the English nation in the opinion of Europe in general. The truth is, that the guilt of the action-that is to say, the 'taking away the life of the king-is what most men in the place ' of Cromwell and his associates would have incurred; what there 'is of splendor and magnanimity in it,-I mean the publicity and 'solemnity of the act, is what few would be capable of displaying? The fact is, that Marten and the other judges, with Bradshaw at their head, went into Westminster Hall, with their lives in their hands, as much as the arraigned and fallen sovereign who sat before them. They could have been never ignorant, that the pulse of the nation beat not with them, but with their prisoner. |