Cameron County press. [volume] (Emporium, Cameron County, Pa.) 1866-1922, 1903-09-10
The Civil War i'm England.

SclNc uH6 ltISS pdoIohdSC ~ ooooiNcS,
few words regarding the Civil War
may be in place.
There is common tendency, due in
part to prejudice and in part to in
tellectual sloth to try to simplify too
much our views of historical spochs.
'The passion for broad generaliza-
tions," says Morley, 'works havoc
with truth" We try too much to see
in every great contest plain issue be-
tween right and wrong, between ty
ranny and freedom, or between law
and anarchy. This undiscriminating
tendency may very easily lead either
to the apotheosis of Cromwell as "the
transcendental hero and liberator of
mankind,o or to the vilitication of him
as hypocritical and blood stained
usurpea
As regards the religious aspect of
the strife it is q mistake to suppose
that the issue centered in the principle
of toleration. The contest was be-
tween opposing and mutually ntoer-
ant systems. King Charles and Laud
contended for the divine right of epis,
copacy The theory of divine right is
i'll its nature doctrinaire and visionary;
it is up in the air; it is unrelated to
practical human experience. Had
Charles and Laud held to the sober
position of Richard Hooker, who vim
dicated episcopacy on the substantial
and comprehensive ground of exper-
ience, they would never have inaug-
urated the trivial and visionary policy
which led to such acts as the cropping
of Prynne and Postwick. On the other
hand, the Puritan opposed episcopacy
on grounds quite as doctrinaire and
visionary as those on which Charles
and Laud contended for it. Against
the theory of the divine right of epis-
coPaey they set up the equally irrat-
ional theory of the divine right of
presbytery or congregation, as the
case may be. They did not oppose
episcopacy on any broad ard intelligi-
BILE ground of experience, but on the
fantastic ground that episcapacy is
divinely wrong. In this clash of OPP
posing systems, each claiming exclu-
sive devine right, it is difficult to see
how the Puritan of the seventeenth
century can be regarded as the cham
pion of the principle of religious tolera-
ton. Moderate royalists like Folk
land and Jeremy Taylor had that prin
ciple at heart in an unspeakably larger
measure than had the zealots Of the
Parliament of 1856, who punished
crazy fanatic by tortures as horrid as
any that Laud ever inflicted. The
friends of liberation, such as Folkland,
Taylor and Hall, on the one side and
Seldom, Baxter and Milton, on the
other, were men whose level of
thought was far above that of the
visionary extremists who precipitated
the strife. 1t is probably safe to say
that although Cromwell was singu-
larly free from the vice of religious
intolerance, liberation as principle
or cause in itself was not part of his
defined policy. He had nothing to do
with abstract principles; it was always
conditions and not theories that con-
fronted him. AS Lord Protector his
single aim was to establish a settled
and firm government, and he was
we'll content to leave religionists of
every sort unmolested so long as they
did not seek to undermine his power.
But even in this attitude the Puritans
as body gave him little or no
support.
Though the strife under it's religious
aspect was not Waged about the issue
of toleration, it did indirectly pro-
mote the cause of toleration by demon
strating the futility and harmfulness
of intolerance.
the Puritans was the cause of consti-
tutional freedom as long as the puri-
tans were merely the opposition party.
But with the establishment of the
Commonwealth and the Protectorate
the face of things was changed. No
English sovereign ever based his rul9
| upon principles more arbitrary than
did Cromwell. He was at constant
strife with his Parliaments. The ex-
plusion of the Long Parliament was as
high handed an outrage upon the prin-
ciples of constitutional government as
was the Intellectual attempt of Charl es
to seize the five members in 1641. The
Lord Protector imposed taxes upon
the nation withoutP parliamentary auth
ority, the very thing by which Charles
| precipitated the civil war. James l.
| declared that his rule was based upon
the common veal, not the common
will, and Charles from the scaffold as
| serted that "people are free under a
| government, not by being sharersin it,
! but by due administration fthe laws of
it," Singularly like these utterances
are those of the Lord Protector: ''The
people will prefer their real security to
| lofItlS.' ct nave announcer afSu-
ment to the good people of this nation
whether they would prefer having their
will, though it be their destruction,
rather than comply with things OF
necessity"
The difference between Charles and
Cromwell was that Charles was arbi
trary because he wished to be, while
! Cromwell was arbitrary because condi-
tions obliged him to be. Furthermore,
| although Cromwell came finally to
stand on Charles principle that people
are to be ruled, not according to what
they like, but according to what is
best for them, the ideas of Cromwell
with regard to the good of the people
were immeasureably nobler and more
real than those of Charles. Cromwell
was an Englishman through and
through, and he had the Englishman's
instructive perception of the practical
both in ends and means. Charles was
a foreigner in blood, in temperament
and ideas. He was moreover a vision
airy pedant. ellis fault" says Morley,
.Ea41