solely for the sake of economy. Tom did the like. 'My intentions,' he tells us, 'are both for cheapness and privacy to journey into North Wales into a place called Anglesey, some two hundred and fifty miles.' Of a truth, Tom was a perfect character, and gladly indeed would we believe, as he assured his incredulous relatives, that he was not 'naturally inclined to evill.'

215

PURITAN POLITICS

I

THE PURITANS AND THE RISE OF MODERN

DEMOCRACY

It is often said that even if the French Revolution produced a slush of lust and blood, into which courage, virtue, freedom, and good faith were cast and trampled under foot, it at least gave birth to new ideas, taught men rights before unknown, and proclaimed, if it did not secure, human liberty. At the Revolution dawned the ideas and the beliefs that have overthrown tyranny and oppression throughout the world. That is the claim made on behalf of the movement which ended in the Consulate and the Empire. In truth, it is the vulgarest of vulgar errors. All reasonable men must of course admit that, besides doing a great amount of good in France, the Revolution testified to certain truths which underlie the best forms of popular government and secure liberty of body and soul. But these truths were not born in Paris. They did not flow from the guillotine, nor were they inspired by the orgies of the Carmagnole. They had been born long before among the English race across the Channel or in the settlements of New England. Of the French Revolution it is exactly accurate to

say that its principles were both new and true. Unfortunately, however, those which were new were not true, and those which were true were not new. The ideas of liberty of conscience, of liberty of the person, of equality before the law, of the sovereignty of the people, of the abolition of privilege, were great and fruitful ideas, but they had, every one of them, been not merely suggested but fully stated either in the Long Parliament, among the so-called Levellers or ideal Republicans of Cromwell's army, or in the course of the foundation of the communities which the Puritans created on the north-east coast of America. What was good in the French Revolution, and what has since enlightened the continental world, was altogether anticipated by the political workings of the Puritan spirit. Doubtless the Revolution gave a fiery advertisement to freedom, and doubtless this was important, but this was all it did. Burke's famous phrase, describing the work of the Jacobins, should be made to read: 'Their errors were fundamental; their improvements superficial-and borrowed from the Puritans.'

The previous existence in England of the Democratic ideas which have been claimed as the product of the French Revolution is shown by a study of the 'Agreement of the People,'-the constitution which the Army endeavoured to force on the Long Parliament directly after the final overthrow of the King's power. Let no one suppose that this was an anarchic or levelling document, though the so-called Levellers were supposed to have inspired it. It is merely an attempt by the Army to get a constitution or fixed scheme of government as a security for the liberties they had just won, and to provide

against the fruits of their labours being swept away by a sudden Act of Parliament. The Army saw, in fact, what political philosophers are beginning to see now, that it is not well to have the fundamentals' of government always at the mercy of a scratch majority in Parliament, and they drew up their Agreement in order to get this evil remedied. The Agreement 'proposed by the agents of the five regiments of Horse, and since by the general approbation of the Army, offered to the joynt concurrence of all the free Commons of England,' begins by declaring how needful it is for them to provide against any return ' into a slavish condition.' Accordingly, after declaring in favour of a Redistribution Bill, the abolition of Rotten Boroughs and Biennial Parliaments, they make the following very remarkable declaration :

That the power of this, and all future Representatives of this Nation, is inferior only to theirs who chuse them, and doth extend, without the consent or concurrence of any other person or persons, to the enacting, altering, and repealing of Lawes ; to the erecting and abolishing of Offices and Courts; to the appointing, removing. and calling to account Magistrates, and Officers of all degrees; to the making War and Peace, to the treating with forraigne States: And generally, to whatsoever is not expressly, or implyedly reserved by the represented themselves.

Which are as followeth,

(1.) That matters of Religion, and the wayes of God's worship, are not at all intrusted by us to any humane power, because therein wee cannot remit or exceed a title of what our Consciences dictate to be the mind of God, without wilfull sinne neverthelesse the publike way of instructing the Nation (so it be not compulsive) is referred to their discretion. (2.) That the matter of impressing and constraining any of us to serve in the warres, is against our freedome ; and there

fore we do not allow it in our Representatives; the rather, because money (the sinews of war) being alwayes at their disposall, they can never want numbers of men, apt enough to engage in any just cause. (3.) That after the dissolution of this present Parliament, no person be at any time questioned for anything said or done, in reference to the late publike differences, otherwise than in execution of the Judgments of the present Representatives or House of Commons. (4.) That in all Laws made, or to be made, every person may be bound alike, and that no Tenure, Estate, Charter, Degree, Birth or place do confer any exemption from the ordinary Course of Legall proceedings, whereunto others are subjected. (5.) That as the Laws ought to be equall, so they must be good, and not evidently destructive to the safety and well-being of the people. These things we declare to be our native Rights, and therefore are agreed and resolved to maintain them with our utmost possibilities, against all opposition whatsoever, being compelled thereunto, not only by the examples of our Ancestors, whose blood was often spent in vain for the recovery of their Freedomes, suffering themselves, through fraudulent accommodations, to be still deluded of the fruit of their Victories, but also by our own wofull experience, who having long expected, and dearly earned the establishment of these certain rules of Government are yet made to depend for the settlement of our Peace and Freedome, upon him that intended our bondage, and brought a cruell Warre upon us.

It would be difficult to draw up a better list of fundamentals than these, and their moderation strongly testifies to the good sense of the Army' Agitators,'i.e. agents or, as we might say, commissioners. Yet the 'Agreement of the People,' when presented to the House of Commons, was at once declared seditious and destructive to the authority of Parliament. It will be remembered by readers of Carlyle that when the two regiments mutinied and arrived at Ware without orders,