General Literature.

Lyttelton Times, Volume VI, Issue 371, 24 May 1856, Page 4

General Literature.

MACAULAY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, " (Abridged for the " Lyttelton Times," from the

" Times," December 17th.)

The History or England peom the

accession of James 11., by Thomas Babington Macauxay, Vols. 3 and

4, London, Longmans, 1855For full seven years the public has waited for the continuation of Mr. Macaulay's History ; nor is it too much to say that its appetite has been keenty stimulated by the unexpected delay. For several London seasons a shadow has been seen projected on'the blind of a window, presumed to be that of the Historian's study, and many have watched this visible evidence of a great labour with the speculative interest attaching to a great renown. The fruits of that labour have been welcomed in advance by the largest preliminary sale of recent years. The public have called for some 30,000 copies of a work, of which previously they had not seen a single page. Its publishers, we learn, have, in spite of their unprecedented arrangements, been embai-rassed to meet this unusual demand, and the narrow capacity of Paternoster Row has been tested to the utmost by the vast number of carts, men, and horses, required for the simultaneous delivery of the 60,000 volumes. Moreover, the expected issue has suspended other literary ventures ; it has disturbed all publishing and bookselling arrangements, and devoured for a time the promise of authorship. Such a popular advent, therefore, claims immediate attention.

We must tell the reader that he has before him exactly 1600 pages to cut through, and that, when he has achieved this labour, he will find "the history of Ingland ior some eight or nine yesrs —from the proclamation of William and Mary to the peace of Byswick in 1697. It startles us to find that this history has consumed almost an equal space of our-; own century in its prepaiation. We have been fabricating other history in the meantime. Will Mr. Macaulay always preserve the same relative distance from current and familar topics ? He proposed in his first sentence to write the History of England *' down to a time which is within the memory of men still living." Can he at his present pace fulfil his promise ? or will he leave us but a fascinating fragment, a splendid but convicting proof of his hopeless volubility ?

Let us, at all events, receive his present instalment thankfully. The establishment of our public liberties on their present basis —the consolidation of the Revolution, forms a part: the rest is the story of the vindication, by a just war, of our Protestant spirit, and of our independence as a nation. The domestic and foreign issues are combined together in orig-'m, course, and consequences, and constitute an historic unity. Against the English interests were arrayed the Grand Monarque, the aboriginal Irish, the avowed hostility of the Nonjurors, and the more dangerous hostility of the great Whig grandees, " who were ready to take any oath, and whom no oath could bind." The marshals of France for the most part prevailed over William in the field ; his secret enemies commanded his fleets and armies, hud charge of his ar&enals, and held seats at his council board. He was thwarted by a jealous Parliament and by a reluchiist nation : and he was in extreme peril iVom the bullets of traitors. Above all, lie had to weather a terrible financial and commercial crisis. All these obstacles Mr. Mficaulay has to recount, and he can boast how William eventually surmounted them ; how peace followed abroad and at ■„ home : ho* Hnglar.d resumed her place in the first rank of European powers ; how internal prosperity succeeded peace, and

successful! enterprise attended freedom ; and how England hailed the dawning oof a happier age. Mr. Macaulay had this epical function before him, and we need not say he was adequate to its performance. In his composition are included many circumstances, which are memorable^ though subordinate. He has not devoted separate chapters to questions of social progress or constitutional histoiy, but has interspersed such subjects in the course of his narrative. The resistance in Ireland enables him to dwell on the habits of the Rapparees, and

the Scotch Rebellion to illustrate the savagery of the Highlands. The Nonjurors and the Convocation afford him amusement, and defray in this instance the liabilities of the Established Church. He notes the commencement of the National debt, and the growth of speculation, .and stock jobbing ; the early success of the Bank of England, the first issue of Exchequer bills, the restoration of the coinage, and the establish-

ment of the Mint. He enlarges on the foundation and early struggles of the East

India Company; he marks the connection of Mutiny bills with a standing army ; he notes tbe discussion on Parliamentary qualifications, on trial for treason, on Place bills, and Triennial bills ; he obsei-ves the

transfer of venality from judicial to legislative functionaries, and he dwells on the emancipation of the Press, and the estab-

lishment of newspapers. His secondary topics ait; thus obviously attractive, and he has made them more interesting by his interesting treatment.

We proceed at once to the details of his narrative. William and Mary are now proclaimed ; but their throne is not secure, and William is anxious, for the clergy and the army dislike him, and shew their dislike. The enthusiasm of other classes had also subsided, and inevitable re-action had set in. In the opinion of Halifax and Danby, the two men who best knew the nation, James

could not be long kept out, if he would but give the country some satisfaction about religion. The whigs meanwhile were in-

conveniently affectionate, and extremely urgent on their peculiar claims, and William conciliated tories at his pei-il. He included them, however, in fair proportion, in his Ministerial arrangements—to wit, Danby, Lowther, Nottingham &nd Godolphin. But his English troops objected to proceed to Holland : the first Mutiny bill was passed ; the Habeas Corpus Act had to be suspended, and the throne of William was in no little danger ; the King of England was secure only of the esteem and deference of foreign nations :— *' Here (in England) be was less favourably judged. In truth, our ancestors saw him in the worst of all lights. By the French, the Germans, and the Italians, lie was contemplated at such a distance that only what was great could'be discerned, and that all small blemishes were invisible. To the Dutch lie was brought close ; but he was himself a Dutchman. In his intercourse with them he was seen to the best advantage ; he was perfectly at his ease with them, and from among them he had chosen his earliest and dearest friends. But to the English he appeared in a most unfortunate point of view. He was at once too near to them, and too far from them. He lived among them, so that the smallest peculiarity of temper or manner could not escape their notice. Yet he lived apart from them, ard was to the last a foreigner in speech, tastes, and habits. " William's taciturnity and habitual reserve also contrasted unfavourably with the easy sociableness of Charles 11, and the decent civility of James. His freezing look and dry concise answers disgusted the gentlemen who had been used to a familiar intercourse with their royal masters, and his rudeness and want of courtesy amused and shocked the ladies. He also cared little to speak our language well, and appeared incapable of appreciating our literature. These things were imputed to him as crimes, and filled the measure of his unpopularity. Mary,

on the other hand, was English and popular, and while William's Dutch comrades hung about Kensington House, she gave it the attractiveness of an English Courc. At the same time, there were great administrative scandals, due to the days of Charles and of James, of which William reaped the odium, which was recklessly embittered by complainants on both sides : —

" The two Secretaries of State were constantly labouring to draw their master in diametrically-op-posite directions. Every scheme, every person recommended by one of them was reprobated by the other. Nottingham was never weary of repeating that the old Roundhead party, the party which had taken the life of Charles 1., and had plotted against the life of Charles 11-, was in principle republican, and that the Tories were the only true friends of monarchy. Shrewsbury replied that the Tories might be friends of monarchy, but they regarded James as their monarch. * * ' Every Whig,' said the Tory Secretary, ' is an enemy of your Majesty's prerogative.' ' Every Tory,' said the Whig Secretary, ' is an enemy of your Majesty's title.'

"At the Treasury there was a complication of jealousies and quarrels- Both the first Commissioner, Mordaunt, and the Chancellor of Exchequer, Delamere, were zealous Whigs; but though they held the same political creed, their tempers differed widely. Mordaunt was volatile, dissipated, and generous, — Delamere was gloomy and acrimonious, austere in his private morals, and punctual in his devotions, but greedy of ignoble gain. The two principal ministers of finance, therefore, became enemies, and agreed only in hating their colleague Godolphin.''

Happily, William himself was his best friend, as James on his side, was his own worst enemy.

The difficulty of William between his two stools is put perspicuously : —

" Official experience was to be found almost exclusively among the Tories, hearty attachment to the new settlement almost exclusively among the Whigs. It was not the fault of the King that the knowledge and the zeal which, combined, make a valuable servant of the State, must at that time be had separately, or not at all. If he employed men of one party, there was great risks of mistakes ; if he employed men of the other party, there was great risk of treachery. If he employed men of both parties, there was still some risk of mistakes, there was still some risk of treachery, and to these risks was added the certainty of dissension. He might join Whigs and Tories, but it was beyond his power to mix them."

In one department of State he was unembarrassed by their dissensions, and this department was well conducted, for he was his own foreign minister.

In his attempt to effect a settlement of the religious disputes of his time, he was not so successful. Three great reforms engaged his attention; the first, to obtain greater toleration for Dissenters; the second, to conciliate the more moderate Non-Confor-mists by means of certain changes in the ritual and polity of the Church of England ; and the third, to throw open civil offices to Protestants, without distinction of sect. The first of these was attained by the passing of the Toleration Act, but in the second and third his object was frustrated. Parties in Parliament were so divided that they were unable to relieve the Non-conformists, while the Non-jurors were ejected from office in the Church, with five of the bishops at their head. The commission appointed to reform the Book of Common Prayer, too, was unfruitful, for its acts had to be revised by Convocation, and Convocation was opposed, to its projects. The clergy were ill affected"' towards the King, and, irritated by the treatment of the Episcopalians in Scotland, opposed the passing of the Comprehension Bill. Having thus proved unmanageable for the work of the state, they were sent about their business.

But William had other and more acceptable work before him. He had yet to effect the submission of Scotland and Ireland. In the latter country the civil and military power was, at the date of the revolution, in the hands of the Roman Catholics —" men who had long suffered oppression, and who finding themselves suddenly transformed from slaves into masters, were impatient to

pay back with accumulated usury, the heavy debt of injuries and insults." The strong holds of the English at the time were Enniskillen and Londonderry, the authorities of which cities had refused to submit to Jam"6s. In the meantime, the Protestants throughout the island were plundered of most of their wealth, and were in peril of their lives. The Quakers, not a fiftieth part of the whole, computed their losses at £100,000. In Ulster, whole townships vanished before the marsh of Hamilton's army. As the foe drew nearer, the inhabitants of the smaller towns crowded to Enniskillen and to Antrim, and at length came pouring into Londonderry.

" Thirty thousand Protestants, of both sexes, and of every age, were crowded behind the bulwarks of the City of Refuge. There at length, on the verge of the ocean, hunted to the last asylum, and baited into a mood, in which men may be destroyed, but will not easily be subjugated, the Imperial race turned desperately to bay. "

Just at this time James determined to go to Ireland ; and, assisted by Louis with a fleet, and with arms and ammunition for such followers as might join him, the exiled King landed at Kinsale, entered Cork, and was received by his Irish subjects with, to him, disgusting cordiality. On the 24th of March, 1689, he entered Dublin, to the dismay of the Court of London. But the Irish and the English Jacobites failed to agree ; one party regarding James as the tool to effect the deliverance of Ireland; the other looking oa Ireland as the means to effect the i-estoration of James to his throne. Meanwhile Londonderry refused to surrender, and Mr. Macaulay has painted with consummate skill the horrible extremities to which the city was reduced in that memorable siege:—

" By this time July was far advanced, and the state of the city was, hour by hour, becoming more frightful. The number of the inhabitants had been thinned more by famine and disease than by the fire of the enemy. Yet that fire was sharper and more constant than ever. *. * A very small quantity of grain remained, and this was doled out by moutlifuls. The stock of salted hides was considerable, and by gnawing them the garrison appeased the rage hunger. Dogs, fattened on the blood of the slain who lay unburied round the town, were luxuries which few could afford to purchase. The price of a whelp's paw was ss. 6d. * *

There was scarcely a cellar in which some corpse was not decaying. Such was the extremity of distress that the rats which came to feast in these hideous dens, were eagerly hunted and greedily devoured. A small fish caught in the river was not to be purchased for money. The only price for which such a treasure could be obtained was some handfuls of.oatmeal. * * Even in that extremity the general cry was "No surrender. " And there were not wanting voices which in low tones, added, " First the horses and hides, then the prisoners, and then each other- " It was afterwards related, half in jest, yet not without a horrible mixture of earnestness, that a corpulent citizen, whose bulk presented a strange contrast to the skeletons which surrounded him, thought it expedient to conceal himself from the numerous eyes, which followed him with cannibal looks whenever he appeared in the streets."

We have no space for the equally vivid picture of the relief of the beleaguered city, or for the battles of Newtown Butler, and of the Boyne. How James's cause was ruined in Ireland, and ruined for ever, by his foil)' and faint heartedness, is described at. length —at too great length, indeed, for Mr. /j^lacaulay's progress with his subject: but i not at too great length to rivet and delight his readers.

We learn in this same volume how the cause of William triumphed over his Scottish opponents. In Scotland the Parliament of the Restoration had legislated in defiance of the sense of the nation, and, as a consequence, the Parliament of the Revolution had to abase itself before the mob. On Christmas day, 1689, the Episcopal clergyhad their manses invaded ; themselves were reviled and beaten ; their furniture was thrown out of windows, their wives and children turned out into the snow, the keys of their churches were seized, and they

were charged, as they valued their lives, never more to officiate in their parishes. Throughout Scotland the extreme Presbyterians were as much out of humour as the extreme Prelatists. The one accepted the Stuarts as their only rightful sovereigns, the other held that to the end of time the nation was bound by the solemn league and covenant. With this discord were mingled the elements of venality and corruption, in matchless profusion, and Mr. Macaulay has described them with peculiar zeal and emphasis. In the midst of this confusion, Dundee, threatened by the covenanters, fled to the Highlands, and raised the standard of revolt. The reader is told, with more than ordinary felicity, the light in which the Highlands were regarded in those days. The character of its inhabitants may be inferred when he is told that it contained, closely intermingled, the good and the bad qualities of an uncivilized nation. The people had no love for their country or for their king; v.o attachment for any commonwealth other than their clan, or respect for any superior but their chief. Life was there governed by a code of morality and honour, widely different from that established in peaceful societies. The most sanguinary vengeance wreaked on their enemies was openly boasted of. Robbery was held to be not merely innocent, but honourable as a calling. With that dislike of steady industry which characterises savage nations, able bodied men might have bedn seen basking in the sun, or folio wing the game upon their hills, while their wives and daughters were toiling to secure their scant)' harvest of oats. A high born warrior was considered as more becomingly employed in plundei%ing the lands of his neighbour, than in tilling his own. There religion was a rude mixture of Popery and Paganism :—

" The symbol of redemption was associated with heathen rites and incantations. Baptized men poured libations of ale to one demon, and set lout drink offerings of milk to another. Seers wiapt themselves up'in bulls' hides, and awaite;l in ' that vesture the inspiration which was to reveal the future. Even among those minstrels and genealogists, whose hereditary vocation was to preserve the memory of past events, an inquirer would have found very few who could read- In truth, he might easily have journeyed from sea to sea. without discovering a page of Gaelic, printed or written.1'

Indeed, it was only at the scattered mansions of the nobility, that a traveller would be likely to meet with even the decencies of life, and to reach these he would have had a heavy price to pay, in the discomforts he would meet with in the dwellings of the lower class, and which in this volume are set out in considerable detail and with abundant unction.

The jacobitism of the Highlanders was not, however, as consistent or unselfish as is generally represented. In Mr. Macaulay's view the normal lawlessness of the Gael contrasts unfavourable with the occasional disloyalt}' of the Whig, and no intermittent affection for the King's person can atone for an incessant objection to the King's writ. His theory is, and it rests on considerable grounds, that the successive rebellions of the Highlanders, were due to their jealousy of the clan Campbell ; and that this was the bond of union whic.'i attached Lochiel, Glengarry, and " Coll of the Cows" to the standard of Dundee. He shows us how, at that time, the Highlanders were in onesense better, and in another sense worse fitted for military purposes than any nation in Europe. The individual Celt was already half a soldier, and a tribe of Celts was easily turned into a battalion of soldiers. All that was necessary was that the officers of this new regiment should be chosen from among the chiefs of the clan. There was then exact order, and prompt obedience ; no danger of mutiny, no danger of desertion.—

" But those very institutions which made a tvibe of Highlanders, all bearing the same name, and all

subject to the same ruler, so formidable in battle disqualified the nation from war on a large scale. Nothing was easier than to turn clans into efficient regiments ; but nothing was more difficult than to combine these regiments, so as to form an efficient army- From the shepherds and herdsmen who fought in the ranks up to the chiefs, all was harmony and order. Every man looked up to his immediate superior, and all looked up to the common, head. But with the chief this chain of subordination ended. He knew only how to govern, and had never learnt to obey."

The jealousy subsisting between the chiefs, rendered it impossible that thej could be induced to co-operate heartily with one another, under a common leader, unless that leader were a stranger. Montrose and. Dundee could never have led armies composed of Highland clans had they been themselves Highlanders. Yet even they had but a very limited, and very precarious authority, owing Jo the disputes of the different chiefs about precedence, and about the division of spoil. " A highland bard might easity have found in the history of the year 1689, subjects very similar to those with which the war of Troy furnished the great poets of antiquity. One day Achilles is sullen, keeps his tent, and announces his intention to depart with all his men. The next day Ajax is storming about the camp, and threatening to cut the throat of Ulysses."

Hence it was, that none of the great exploits of the Highlanders were productive of proportionate results. Montrose, in tha full career of success, found himself abandoned by his army; and there is every reason to believe, that the history of Dundee, had he not fallen at Killiecrankie, would have been the history of Montrose retold.

Scotland was pacified, and Ireland almost subdued, by the winter of 1690, and William had no longer thoughts of returning to Holland, and resigning to Mary the control of Church and State. In spite of faction, the throne of William was becoming daily more secure, and the coalition, of which he was the soul, was considerably strengthened by the adhesion of the Duke of Savoy. He was playing a great Kuropean game with superior facilities. His instruments were becoming more suited to his hand. He iiad yet other trials to go through, but the worst was now past.