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name of the conquest of Jamaica; as if a defeated army should have the impudence to brag afterwards of the victory, because, though they had fled out of the field of battle, yet they quartered that night, in a village of the enemies. The war with Spain was a necessary consequence of this folly; and how much we have gotten by it, let the custom-house and exchange inform you; and, if he please to boast of the taking a part of the silver fleet (which indeed nobody else but he, who was the sole gainer, has cause to do), at least, let him give leave to the rest of the nation (which is the only loser) to complain of the loss of twelve hundred of her ships.

"But because it may here perhaps be answered, that his successes nearer home have extinguished the disgrace of so remote miscarriages, and that Dunkirk ought more to be remembered for his glory, than St. Domingo for his disadvantage; I must confess, as to the honour of the English courage, that they were not wanting upon that occasion (excepting only the fault of serving at least indirectly against their master), to the upholding of the renown of their warlike ancestors. But for his particular share of it, who sate still at home, and exposed them so frankly abroad, I can only say, that, for less money than he in the short time of his reign exacted from his fellow-subjects, some of our former princes (with the daily hazard of their own persons) have added to the dominion of England,

not only one town, but even a greater kingdom than itself. And this being all considerable as concerning his enterprises abroad, let us examine, in the next place, how much we owe him for his justice and good government at home.

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And, first, he found the commonwealth (as they then called it) in a ready stock of about 800,000 pounds; he left the commonwealth (as he had the impudent raillery still to call it) some two millions and an half in debt. He found our trade very much decayed indeed, in comparison of the golden times of our late princes; he left it as much again more decayed than he found it: and yet not only no prince in England, but no tyrant in the world, ever sought out more base or infamous means to raise monies. I shall only instance in one that he put in practice, and another that he attempted, but was frighted from the execution (even he) by the infamy of it. That which he put in practice was decimation; which was the most impudent breach of all public faith that the whole nation had given, and all private capitulations which himself had made, as the nation's general and servant, that can be found out (I believe) in all history, from any of the most barbarous generals of the most barbarous people. Which, because it has been most excel

*By decimation, is here meant, not the putting to death of every tenth man (which is the usual sense of this term), but the levying of the tenth penny on the estates of the Royalists. The word is so used by sir John Denham. HURD

lently and most largely laid open by a whole book written upon that subject, I shall only desire you here to remember the thing in general, and to be pleased to look upon that author, when you would recollect all the particulars and circumstances of the iniquity. The other design, of raising a present sum of money, which he violently pursued, but durst not put in execution, was by the calling in and establishment of the Jews at London; from which he was rebutted by the universal outcry of the di vines, and even of the citizens too, who took it ill, that a considerable number at least amongst themselves were not thought Jews enough by their own Herod. And for this design, they say, he invented (oh Antichrist! omgor and Пlongos!) to sell St. Paul's to them for a synagogue, if their purses and devotions could have reached to the purchase. And this, indeed, if he had done only to reward that nation, which had given the first noble example of crucifying their king, it might have had some appearance of gratitude: but he did it only for love of their mammon; and would have sold afterwards for as much more St. Peter's (even at his own Westminster) to the Turks for a mosquito. Such was his extraordinary piety to God, that he desired he might be worshipped in all manners, excepting only that heathenish way of the Common-prayer book. But what do I speak of his wicked inventions for getting money; when every penny, that for almost five years he took every day from every

man living in England, Scotland, and Ireland, was as much robbery, as if it had been taken by a thief upon the highways? Was it not so? or can any man think that Cromwell, with the assistance of his forces and moss-troopers, had more right to the command of all men's purses, than he might have had to any one's, whom he had met and been too strong for upon a road? And yet, when this came, in the case of Mr. Coney *, to be disputed by a legal trial, he (which was the highest act of tyranny that ever was seen in England) not only discouraged and threatened, but violently imprisoned the counsel of the plaintiff; that is, he shut up the law itself close prisoner, that no man might have relief from or access to it. And it ought to be remembered, that this was done by those men, who a few years before had so bitterly decried, and openly opposed, the king's regular and formal way of proceeding in the trial of a little ship-money.

"But, though we lost the benefit of our old courts of justice, it cannot be denied that he set up new ones; and such they were, that as no virtuous prince before would, so no ill one durst, erect. What, have we lived so many hundred years under such a form of justice as has been able regularly to punish all men that offended against it; and is it so deficient just now, that we must seek out new ways

*Which the reader may see in lord Clarendon, H. R. vol.iii. fol. p. 596. HURD.

how to proceed against offenders? The reason, which can only be given in nature for a necessity of this, is, because those things are now made crimes, which were never esteemed so in former ages; and there must needs be a new court set up to punish that, which all the old ones were bound to protect and reward. But I am so far from declaiming (as you call it) against these wickednesses (which if I should undertake to do, I should never get to the peroration), that you see I only give a hint of some few, and pass over the rest, as things that are too many to be numbered, and must only be weighed in gross. Let any man shew me (for, though I pretend not to much reading, I will defy him in all history), let any man shew me (I say) an example of any nation in the world (though much greater than ours), where there have, in the space of four years, been made so many prisoners, only out of the endless jealousies of one tyrant's guilty imagination. I grant you, that Marius and Sylla, and the accursed triumvirate after them, put more people to death; but the reason, I think, partly was, because in those times that had a mixture of some honour with their madness, they thought it a more civil revenge against a Roman, to take away his life, than to take away his liberty. But truly, in the point of murder too, we have little reason to think that our late tyranny has been deficient to the examples that have ever been set it in other countries. Our judges and our courts of justice have not been idle: and, to omit

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