118
“HUME AND THE PURITANS,” The American Literary Magazine, vol. 5, no. 1 (July 1849), p. 33.
S. G. Buckingham
The American Literary Magazine was published between July 1847 and August 1849 in Albany, New York. Its editor was Timothy Dwight Sprague (c.1819–49). For a review of Hume’s History in this same journal, see selection #121. The Rev. S. G. Buckingham appears to have been active in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he was a member of the South Congregational Society. It is interesting to see that, for Buckingham (and despite his criticisms of Hume on the topic of the Puritans), Hume, “the Great Historian of England,” continued to hold the field as a political historian, even after the publication of the first two volumes of Thomas Babington Macaulay’s (1800–59) History of England in 1848.
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HUME AND THE PURITANS.
BY REV. S. G. BUCKINGHAM
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WE are great admirers of Hume as a historian. We always feel, in reading him, as if we were conversing with a giant mind, and he has very much the same weight with us in what he says as our own Webster does in an argument. It is a mind equally acute and comprehensive, and one that constantly deals, and deals ably, with fundamental principles. He does not give us the philosophy of history without any facts in it, after the beau ideal of the German fashion, nor does he give us the facts merely without finding any philosophy to be derived from them, but there is a constant reference to first principles. As it is a political history, things are to be looked at in their bearings upon what the writer regards as the correct principles of civil government — as they affect the fundamental laws of the British Constitution, and as they bear upon the progress of Constitutional Freedom in those Islands. His ideas of a perfect Government do not, to be sure, square exactly with our own. But we are satisfied that this is the way such a history should be written; that things should be tried and judged of by this standard of first principles; that events should be looked at as they favor or oppose what are assumed to be the correct principles of Government, and this we regard as the highest kind of history writing. This, it strikes us, is the great defect of Macaulay in his recent work. As a series of pictures of men and the times — always vivid, and for the most part just, for aught we know — it is a rich contribution to English literature. But as a political history, it is hardly to be put upon the same shelf with Hume’s. He does not try things by any settled first principles. Indeed, he does not seem to have any that he regards as very great importance; for what he would consider bad legislation now, was the very best in a previous age, though it violated the principles which would now be necessary to make it good. In Hume’s mind, however, political principles have been definitely settled, and, whether formally or unconsciously, things have always judged of by them, except where his prejudices are stronger than his intellectual convictions. He has long stood, and aught we see, is still likely to stand, as the Great Historian of England, though his History has been shown to be in many respects false and unjust, and in many more may be. As we remarked at the beginning, we admire Hume as a historian, and yet we can hardly forgive him the injustice he has done to the Puritans.
He was peculiarly disqualified to write their history. They, as a class, were religious men, while he was an avowed unbeliever. They were the strictest Calvinists — he the loosest Deist. They were full of faith in God and Providence, and this faith was in them an ever-present, all-controlling principle of action, while he had no practical and scarcely a speculative belief in either. The religious element was altogether the most predominant and the most influential in their character, while in his it was entirely wanting. How, then, could he be expected to understand such men — much more to appreciate them? Had it not been for this broad gulf of separation which so completely cut him off from all sympathy with them, he never would have set down, as he so often has done, their most intelligent convictions as blind superstition, and their most conscientious scruples as so much bigotry.
Then, again, these men were the unyielding opponents of his favorite Stuart Kings. He is a regular apologist for Charles I, in all his contests with the Puritan party. He thinks it hard that they would not grant him all the supplies he asked for when he first came to the throne, a young and untried monarch, though he well knew that this was the only way in which they could secure their rights — by withholding supplies until their rights were guarantied to them — and that for twenty years this had been the ground on which they had maintained their struggle with his father, granting him no supplies until he should redress their wrongs. He wonders that they cannot place more confidence in the word and oath of a King, when he might have known so well that the word of a Stuart never was worth any thing, and that Charles owed his tragic end as much to his falsehood and fickleness as to his tyranny. We could not expect one with such over-weening fondness for these Stuarts, to do justice to their enemies. We might as soon expect a warm admirer of Jefferson’s administration to do full justice to his opponents, or an old-fashioned Federalist to appreciate fully Mr. Jefferson and his friends.
Every careful reader of Hume must have noticed the inconsistencies into which he falls in his account of the Puritans. He tells us that the leaders of this party were “men of the most uncommon capacity and the largest views:” “men of the greatest parts and most extensive knowledge that the nation at this time produced;” and yet that these very men were so weak that they “could not enjoy any peace of mind, because obliged to hear prayers offered up to the Divinity by a priest covered with a white linen vestment,” (vol. 3, chap. L., p. 352.) He speaks of it, to be sure, as the weakness of great men; but the question at once suggests itself, how could such men be so weak? unless there was some important principle involved in the matter — and then their weakness might be their wisdom. At the breaking out of the first civil war between Charles and his opponents, he represents the latter as so completely carried away by their religious fanaticism, as to exhibit neither reason nor principle in their proceedings. Though there “never was a people less corrupted by vice and more actuated by principle than the English, during this period, and never were there individuals who possessed more capacity, more courage, more public spirit, more disinterested zeal” — still he says, that “the infusion of this one ingredient, in too large a proportion, had corrupted all these noble principles, and converted them into the most violent poison — and this fanatical spirit let loose, confounded all regard to ease, safety, interest, and dissolved every moral and civil obligation,” (vol. 3, chap. LV, p. 512.) Yet we are told again that, during that period, “they displayed great vigor as well as wisdom in their counsels, from the beginning, and a furious, headstrong body, broken loose from the restraints of laws, were retained in subjection under their authority, and finally united by zeal and passion, as by the most legal and established government,” (chap, LVI, p. 535,) and that “all the events of this period are less distinguished by atrocious deeds, either of treachery or cruelty, than were ever any intestine discords which had so long a continuance,” (chap. LVI, p. 528.) Although he uniformly represents the Protectorate of Cromwell as an usurpation and a tyranny, still “it must be acknowledged,” he says, “that the Protector in his civil and domestic administration displayed as great regard, both to justice and clemency, as his usurped authority, derived from no law, and founded only on the sword, could possibly permit. All the chief officers in the courts of judicature were filled with men of integrity. Amidst the virulence of faction, the decrees of the judges were upright and impartial. And to every man but himself, and to himself, except when necessity required the contrary, the law was the great rule of conduct and behavior,” (vol. 4, chap. LXI, p. 112.) We have always regarded this last admission of Hume’s in regard to the Protector and his party, as the highest eulogium he could have pronounced upon them. To have kept the courts of justice pure, when they might so easily have corrupted them, as Charles soon after did — to have filled them with able and upright judges, instead of inquisitors like Jefferies — to have regarded the legal rights of their enemies, when they had the army at their control, and might have rode over them all, as their enemies did over theirs the moment they came into power, is in our view as complete a refutation as could be wished, of that charge of fanaticism which “dissolved every moral and civil obligation.”
We are also struck, in reading Hume, with the silly grounds on which he often rests his judgment of the Puritans. They wore long faces and short hair. They had queer scripture names,* and sang through their noses. This, to be sure, was not exactly in good taste, but hardly enough to make them either fools or fanatics. But they were men of acknowledged ability in Parliament, and their prowess in the field none will deny, while for strictness of morals there never was such an army as Cromwell’s in the world. “It is acknowledged by the most zealous Royalists,” says Macaulay, (vol. 1, p. 114,) “that in that singular camp no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that during the long dominion of the soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizen and the honor of woman were held sacred.” The Royalists may give themselves up to the most shameless profligacy, but if they do, it is because the Puritans are so rigid. They may make a holiday of the Sabbath, according to King James’ “Book of Sunday Sports,” and it is only because the Puritans spend it in such “melancholy indolence.” The Royal troops may be guilty of such license that their friends among whom they quarter fear the enemy less than they do them, and they are only a set of high-born Cavaliers — a little too warm-blooded, to be sure, but none of your low-lived, canting knaves, like the Round-heads. They had their weaknesses, but what were they compared with their devotion to God and to Liberty? Their faults, amid their sturdy virtues, seem no more than freckles on their faces, compared with the ulcers that blotched their enemies.
Hume often does the Puritans injustice in the construction he puts upon their conduct. The same act will appear well, or ill, according to the view you take of the motives that dictated it. And it is within the power of a historian, without misstating or omitting any material fact, to put such a construction upon those facts as shall produce entirely a wrong impression, and shall be virtually falsehood. If a man prays, like Cromwell, it may be an evidence of his piety or a mark of his hypocrisy, as Hume regards it. As to the character of the act, and of the individual whose act it is, the views you take of it will depend upon the motives to which you ascribe it. It is in this respect preeminently that Hume wrongs the Puritans throughout his work. He does not do justice to their motives — he does not appreciate their principles. Take their leaders, Hampden and Pym and others, whom Charles attempted to detach from their party by giving them offices under the crown, but failed. Hume attributes his want of success to his “want of skill” in managing the matter, or to the “slender preferments which it was then in the King’s power to confer” — instead of ascribing it, as he ought in all justice, to their incorruptible virtue, which spurned the bridge, (vol. 3, chap. LV., p. 489.) When Cromwell came to the Protectorate, Hume says, he was “ambitious of forming connections with the nobility, and for this purpose united one of his daughters in marriage to Viscount Fauconberg, and another to Rich, grandson and heir of the Earl of Warwick.” Now, it so happens that among his letters which have lately come to light, is one from Mary, the former of these daughters, to her brother Henry in Ireland, which lets us into this matter. She apologises for not having written before, but really she has felt so bad about this “business of my sister Frances and Mr. Rich,” that she could not — and she goes on to tell him that, after the affair had gone on well for several months, her father broke it off, and broke it off, not (as was generally supposed) because he and the Earl of Warwick could not agree about the settlement to be made upon the young people; but, “if I may say the truth, I think it was not so much estate, as from private reasons, which my father discovered to none, but to my sister Frances, and his own family — which was, a dislike to the young person, which he had from some reports of his being a vicious man.” (Carlyle’s Cromwell, vol. 2, p. 211.) That is, he heard that his character was not good; and, desirable as such a connection might be in itself considered, he was not willing to strengthen his power by an alliance with an ancient and influential family, if it might involve in it the sacrifice of his daughter’s happiness. And but for this old family letter, which, after two centuries, has come to light, this connection might always have been quoted as one of the proofs of his ambition, and quoted on the authority of the Great Historian of England, when the truth in the case does him honor, and shows that his wise affection as a father, was superior to any selfish ambition he might have had as Lord Protector.
The fact is, he has done Cromwell, throughout, the basest injustice. The idea he gives us of him — and it is the one generally entertained of him until lately, and chiefly upon his authority — is the grossest caricature that was ever sketched. He gives us the impression that he was a man of great abilities, but of just those abilities which make us despise one the more, the more he possesses of them — the ability to manage others by arts and every mean device; whereas, in truth, the English Government never had such a man at its head before, and those eleven years of the Commonwealth are some of the brightest of its history. They seem like day itself between two nights, compared with what preceded and followed it. And as for his principles — they are all summed up in a single word, and that is hypocrite. He is a hypocrite in politics, for while he professes to be actuated by a love of liberty, he is only aiming at absolute despotism. And his piety is all a cloak to cover his villanies. Is it not a little strange that, when his memory, like his bones, has been dug up and blackened, after two hundred years, his friends should be able with pious care to collect the fragments, and we be permitted to see, for the first time, that he was a man, and not a monster. The publication of his Letters by Carlyle, after two centuries, has reversed the judgment of the world in regard to him, and stamped on Hume the deepest blot that rests upon the Great Historian — the crime of basely maligning the noblest character he had to treat of. Macaulay, we notice, gives up the idea of his being a hypocrite, and, admitting his abilities and sincerity, does him, in the main, justice. And it will be long, we imagine, before any respectable historian will again venture to adopt Hume’s views of him.
The truth is, Hume hated the Puritans. He could not appreciate them; he could not understand them; and, more than all, he abhorred their faith and their worship. He meant to do them justice, and no doubt often thought he had, especially in attributing to them, as a party, such a steadfast love of liberty. But, looking at them individually and through the medium of his bitter prejudices, their faults were magnified, their misdeeds aggravated, and some of those little things which, to say the most, were only ridiculous, are made proofs of the deepest corruption, and hold such a place in the frame-work of his otherwise noble History, and will, sadly to its marring, as long as it shall last. The character of those men, however, is becoming continually better understood, and each succeeding generation thinks more of those old English Puritans, and will till he who can trace his descent, however remote, back to that seed royal, shall ask for no prouder pedigree.
*Hume has made the most of this weakness of theirs, and exaggerated the matter, for the purpose of ridiculing them, beyond all truth. In the list of “a jury, said to be enclosed in the county of Sussex,” and wholly made up of such names as, “Accepted, Faint-not, Make-peace, Kill-sin, Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith,” (chap. LI, p. 93,) we take it no one without great simplicity supposes that such a jury was ever empannelled. It looks like a list which some wag of Charles the Second’s time got up, perhaps to amuse his monarch with after dinner.