56

ENGLAND'S GREAT MEN IN THE PAST.

aces, while every nation, and every tribe of earth's great family, pour into her lap the gold, silver, precious stones and luxuries of every clime.

VII.

ENGL

NGLAND also stands unrivalled in the great men and the literature she has given to the world. From Alfred, who laid the foundation of British Glory, down through British history till now, she presents a galaxy of illustrious men, furnished in the annals of no ancient or modern empire. In her Milton she has more than a Homer; in her Bacon more than a Solon; and in her Shakspere, more than the earth has ever beheld in any other mortal mould. Her literature has done more for human freedom and civilization, than all the literature of other nations. Expansive in its nature, it has revealed the true sources of power, and taught men to know their strength. Bacon unbound the earth and set men acting intelligently, or rather marching forward, instead of marking time. Newton unbound the heavens, and bade them roll in harmony and beauty before the eye of intelligence. England has waked up the world. Not satisfied with knowing and improving the present, she has hastened the future. In her impetuous valor she has called on the tardy ages, as if in haste to meet their unknown events. But this she attempts no more. The future she invoked has come, and like Hamlet she starts at the spirit she has summoned forth. Having taught the people some knowledge they are now sternly and intelligently demanding their rights; having taught the people strength-they are shaking the throne with its first experiment. Proud in her power, she has dared to do what no other nation has ever attempted-she has given her people the book of human rights, and yet told them not to ask for their own. She has told them they were free, and yet cheated them into the submission of serfs. In every other experiment she has been thus far successful--but here she has overrated her strength. If it could be done, Eng

THE DILEMMA OF ARISTOCRACY.

57

land could do it. But it is attempting a contradiction, an impossibility; and yet we can hardly see how she could escape the dilemma. Without being an enlightened nation, she could not have been great; and being an enlightened nation, she cannot exercise despotic power with safety. Yet starting on this broad basis, we cannot well see how she could have passed from it easily; not that it would have been impossible had there been a will; but taking into the account the prejudices of men, their love of power and wealth and pride, it is natural England should retain the form of government she adopted, even after its workings were seen to be evil. She could most easily have been a free and a great nation when in the transition state to which Cromwell brought her, had a second Cromwell been found to take the place of the first. Here Macaulay thinks England made her great mistake "Either Charles the First never should have been brought to the block, or Charles the Second never should have been brought to the throne." Had the great Hampden lived, no man could say this consummation would not have been reached.

VIII.

do it now, would be to wipe out at one stroke the long line of Kings-bury the Peerage-rend Church and State from their harlot embrace-fling the reins of government to the people, and bid them guide their own destinies, and relieve their own wants. This, King, Peerage and Hierarchy will never willingly permit. To lay down their honors and ill-gotten wealth and, like the slaveholding aristocracy of the South, be reduced to the painful necessity of acquiring them by industry and merit, is a task they cannot perform. Honors they must have, and opulence too, though millions perish. Their rentroll must be as great, though millions more fill the land with the cry for bread. To sustain the splendors of royalty, aristocracy, and hierarchy, there must be a perpetual drain of wealth from the people, to flow round the throne and privi

58

SHADOWS AROUND THE BRITISH THRONE.

leged classes. This flow of wealth does not pass through the natural channels of trade. The people receive no equivalent for it. To go and take it from the poor man's pocket at the bayonet's point would be too bare-faced a robbery in the sight of the world. Hence inordinate taxation-tithes, church rates, excise and custom duties, etc., must be employed to legalize the robbery. The mass of the people behold this stream of gold incessantly flowing from them towards their idle and profligate oppressors, while there returns not even a scanty supply of bread. Such a sight naturally awakens the keenest inquiry, and as the injustice of it all forces itself upon them, the strongest, stormiest passions of the human soul are aroused.

TH

IX.

HE English government is a solid one, but it must be infinitely more so to sustain itself amid such a wild waking up of men to their rights. There is a glory round her throne. and her peerage, whose honors were laid in the days of Norman chivalry; but it must be brighter than it has ever yet been, to dazzle the eyes of wronged and starving men, for the first time open to the true and only means of redress. The Church with its long train of mitred bishops, led on by Royalty itself, is an imposing spectacle, but it must invent some new majesty to awe a people that openly, boldly cry," Give us more bread and fewer priests!" The throne of England towers as majestic as ever, but fearful shadows are flitting over it, the visages of famine-struck, hate-filled men. The chariot with its blazing coronet, and lazy lord within, rolls by as imposingly as ever; but there is an ominous sound in the streets which the rumbling of its wheels cannot utterly drown; it is the low, half-suppressed threat, YOUR TIME WILL COME! Her cathedrals and bench of bishops retain their ancient splendor, but there are eyes looking on them with other purpose than to admire

or revere.

To the careless observer, England is as powerful and mag

But

nificent as ever; all things yet remain as they were. there is an under-working power which gathers strength from the very obstacles that bar its progress. The tremendous power exerted to restrain it from bursting forth, cannot make it cease working. Instead of expending its fires in eruptions, it slowly eats away under ground, hollowing out the whole mountain on which the Throne, the Aristocracy, and the Church rest. The greatest, keenest-sighted men of England know this, and they begin to study these new and alarming appearances, as philosophers study volcanoes-not to see what they shall do with the volcano, but what the volcano is going to do with them. And yet, after all, we think England could make as great an exertion (in certain directions) now as ever. In a crisis which should call forth all her resources, she would exhibit as much strength as she ever has done. A common danger would unite for a while all her jarring interests. No outward force, we imagine, can subdue her. Her provinces might be cut off in a general war, but her throne she would hold against the world. Her danger lies where the exertion of physical force would only increase it. Not abroad, but at home, are the elements of trouble. Not hostile armies, but her own subjects have become her greatest dread. She has reached that crisis from which most governments date their decline -her foes have become they of her own household.

In many respects she resembles the Roman Empire. Her own population bearing but a small proportion to the number of her subjects; like Rome her external growth has been more rapid than her internal; or rather, while she has been extending her dominion abroad, the elements of destruction have been gathering at home. Like Rome, too, her arms have become too long for her body. Even had not the Northern barbarians swarmed down on her, like giants drunk with wine, Rome would soon have reeled to her downfall. Nothing but a regeneration of the people could rescue her from the approaching ruin. But England is not threatened with this evil; her superstructure does not totter because it stands in the midst of an

60

THE TOWER OF LONDON.

enslaved people, but because it is based on millions of agitated human hearts. It vibrates not so much because it has been wrong, as because the bowed necks on which it has so long rested, begin to erect themselves. England's greatness is in the past, not in the future. She looks back with pride, forward with shuddering.

X.

HIS truth was illustrated to me most forcibly as I passed from the crowded streets of London into the ToWER, that grand and gloomy treasure-house of England's Feudal and military glory. It was founded by William the Conqueror as a fortress, nearly eight centuries ago, and it speaks to us from the feudal age. As I entered its ponderous gates, crossed the ditch, and stood before the massive buildings, made gloomy by the terrible part they had played in the history of England, the past rose before me, haunted with majestic figures. For awhile the misery of England was forgotten-London was to me as though it were not-I stood in the shadow of past centuries.

I will not describe the Tower, but listen awhile to the language of this old home of the English monarchs. In one of the great chambers, the Horse Armory (the destruction of a large part of those valuable treasures of antiquity in this building by fire in 1841, was subsequent to the date of the visit here referred to,) were arranged, in regular and chronological order, twentytwo equestrian figures, many of them of the most celebrated kings of England, with their favorite lords; all of them with their horses, in the armor of the ages in which they lived, surrounded by the insignia of their rank, and the trophies of their conquests.

In passing slowly by them, I met first, the figure of Edward, clad in the armor he wore 600 years ago, with hauberk and sleeves, and hood, and chausses of mail. Next came Henry VI. with his battle-axe, and knightly cap. Passing Edward IV. and Henry VII. I stood with a strange feeling, before Henry