heinously, as his master did, against that supreme law, the SALUS POPULI, the element of all laws, as John Pym used to say, 'out of which they are derived; the end of all laws, to which they are designed, and in which they are perfected.' His services to liberty however ended not here. His sleepless vigilance it was, which had discovered and crushed the military conspiracy for releasing the lord lieutenant from the Tower, and bringing down troops from the north upon London. His impeachment of the Archbishop of Canterbury now went forward; with regard to which we are refreshed to fall in with such a passage as this in his opening oration: The church of Christ is one body, ' and the members of Christ have a mutual relation, as members 'of the same body. Unity with the true church of God every 'where is not only the beauty, but the strength of religion:' whence he goes on to denounce Laud for having broken this union by his cruelties towards the French and Dutch Protestant churches. He afterwards most satisfactorily fought for the bill excluding bishops from the upper house; although himself an episcopalian, and not having attained that degree of light on the subject which would have shown him the full force of what our Saviour enjoined, when he declared, 'My kingdom is not of this 'world.' He acted up however to the knowledge which he had, and shines out in resplendent contrast to Hyde, on this debate, whose secession from the popular cause he was amongst the first to discern. Soon afterwards followed the Grand Remonstrance, introduced by our indefatigable patriot, as a final appeal to the nation, on behalf of liberty against despotism. It was carried only by a majority of eleven: but it made Charles recoil. Disgraced at every turn, and compelled to pour infamy on his own head, with his own hands, he had set out for Edinburgh, to construct fresh schemes for tampering with the officers or troops, whether natives or aliens,-for sowing dissensions between the lords and commons, and brewing a hurricane in Ireland, to be used as convenient machinery for subjugating his two other kingdoms to their duty. But the monarch was no Prospero. His plans were penetrated by John Pym, so as to be unmasked and exposed in rapid succession. Experience could render him no services; for wisdom always seems to salute misguided royalty just too late. Falkland, Colepepper, and the future Lord Claren * On a much earlier occasion he had thus expressed himself: 'Howsoever it is alleged that the parliament are not judges in matters of faith, yet ought they to know the established and fundamental truths, and the contrary to them' in other words, that the secular power should or at least may more or less interfere in religious affairs. Both Sir James Mackintosh, however, and Miss Aiken make out Pym to have said more than he really did say, relying upon an incorrect report of Rushworth. don, held their nocturnal consultations in vain. The foreign queen had by this time consolidated her obnoxious influence over her husband. He divided his affections between a profligate consort and superstitious prelates. She betrayed him: the latter injured him irremediably by their preposterous protests, which sent themselves to the Tower, although Bedlam, as it was then remarked, would have suited them better. Yet bray fools in a 'mortar, and their folly will not depart from them! Mankind saw it so then, as they see it day by day. The celebrated attempt to seize Pym, Hampden, Hollis, Hazlerig, and Strode ensued; after which the king departed from his metropolis,—as a monarch, -for ever. Then came the tug of warfare; in which, although faults of details, both in motive and conduct, may unquestionably be raked up even against those, whom nearly all now acknowledge to have combatted on the right side, yet philanthropy will give her verdict for the patriots. There might be indeed too much godliness taken for granted; there might be too many mutual recriminations and condemnations extending sometimes to blasphemy beyond the bourne of the grave. There was, it must be confessed, too indiscriminate a commingling of sentiments and professions, which should have been kept separate. Selfishness also sometimes absorbed patriotism; and both were often forgotten, or swallowed up in passion. But when it is recollected, that the fire of three nations was stirred with the sword of civil and sanguinary contention, the only wonder is, that the best ornaments or affections of human nature both endured and survived the conflagration. Pym appeared to manage every thing. Money was wanted, and he negociated a loan with the city, upon twelve conditions, as to which we scarcely know whether most to admire his eloquence, or his statesmanship. He conducted the preliminary and contemporary paper war, on behalf of parliament, against no less a person than that of Hyde, on behalf of the king, with as much success, as was evinced in raising the sinews and materials for the grosser contest. To him was entrusted the momentous charge of superintending and conducting the affairs of the executive, whilst a majority of his friends followed Essex, or the other popular generals, to the field of battle. Supported by a Committee of Safety, comprising five peers, and ten commoners, he earned the jocular appellation of King Pym, from the ubiquity and preponderance of his talents. From three o'clock in the 'morning to the evening, and from evening to midnight,' says Doctor Marshall, an unimpeachable ocular witness, 'he laboured in the service of the commonwealth. Now on the field of action, 'consulting with Hampden; now in the tent of Lord Essex, 'strengthening his failing purposes; again at Westminster; and 'then among the London citizens; it was Pym, and Pym alone, who held at this awful crisis the framework of the executive 'together.' The successes which attended the royal arms in the earlier campaigns, the conspiracy of Waller, the death of Hampden, tumults around his own doors, even charges against his own uprightness, or his religion, or his conduct,-none of these things moved him. It also should not be forgotten, that through his efforts the system of Excise was introduced into this country; having been suggested by some of the financial procedures in Holland. Yet illness began to tell upon the physical strength, although it left unscathed his indomitable spirit. One more service he had to render, before he died. In 1643, Gainsborough had been re-captured by the cavaliers, Hull was in danger, Henrietta had joined the king with reinforcements, the parliamentary armies had been beaten in the west, there were neither troops nor fortifications to defend the metropolis, and the way thither from Oxford seemed perfectly open. At this crisis the Earl of Essex addressed the House of Lords, advising an accommodation. A moment more and all had been lost. But Pym, true to the last, called St. John to his side, and with him set out, oppressed with disease as he was, for the camp of the lord general. 'There,' says Clarendon, by his mental vigour and dexterity, 'he wholly changed him, and wrought his lordship to that temper, 'which he afterwards swerved not from.' In other words, the earl was brought to open his eyes to the real bearings of the case to the royal resentments on the one hand, as well as the true interests of justice and freedom, on the other. From that hour, the tide of affairs turned; and the army, with its righteous cause, which Pym had held together, through the confidence of all good men in his uprightness and activity, was destined to gather not a few of the most unsullied laurels, which valour has ever won, or patriotism ever worn. Not that he lived to see them, since he departed this life, at Derby House, on the 8th of December, 1643. Doctor Marshall declared of him in his last moments, that he maintained the same evenness of spirit, which he had in the time of his health; 'professing that it was to him a most indifferent thing to live or die; if he lived, he would do what service he could; if he died, he 'should go to that God whom he had served, and who would carry 'on his work by some others.' He was often heard praying with much importunity for the king and his posterity, for the parliament, and the public welfare. Surely, says the pious Baxter, after the struggle had gone over, Pym is now a member of a 'more knowing, unerring, well-ordered, right-aiming, self-deny'ing, unanimous, honorable, triumphant senate, than that from 'whence he was taken.' Such were the sentiments of the author of the Everlasting Rest, in alluding to those saints who had entered upon it, to enjoy the beatific vision of God. The untainted portion of an entire nation, wept when Pym was carried on the shoulders of the House of Commons to a lamented sepul chre. Bonfires at Oxford, the revelry of cavaliers, the foul calumnies of his enemies, are now referred to only as so many memorials of a great man, whom the wicked feared, but the virtuous respected. It was said that he died raving mad; as also, that a loathsome disease had terminated his sufferings, and that he had apostatized from all his principles. Falsehoods like these have often followed the noblest among mankind, as the mementos of their fallen mortality. It was only those who had sold themselves to the evil one, according to the fanciful fictions of the middle ages, that cast no shadows behind them. The name of John Pym was a gnomon on the sun-dial of liberty, through the century of illustrious heroes and glorious achievements, whose magnitude and disinterestedness make us feel pigmies in the present day. Had such a mind, as that we have been contemplating, presided at the helm of affairs when a dominant upper chamber might be clogging the wheels of government, refusing municipal institutions to Ireland after having granted them to Great Britain, or repressing national education,-how would it now have risen with the requirements of the occasion, and wielded the prerogative of the crown on behalf of an indignant people. John Pym was amongst an immortal class of statesmen, who knew what freedom was in itself; as well as what it could do for their species. They were all head,-all heart,—all eye,— all soul, in combatting for the rights of man. They were well aware, that every thing must depend upon the intrepid conduct of a mere handful of patriots, as opposed to overwhelming hosts favourable to the cause of despotism, or at least if not altogether thus, yet timid, and vacillating, and selfish, or prejudiced as to some little paltry sectional view of things, so as to embarrass their professed friends even more than open adversaries. They constituted the Leonidas and Spartans of their period, hemmed in betwixt the mountains and the sea, with the Persians before them. Does not our beloved country at this moment need such men? 'Shall Freedom still in slumber rest With peril round her palace spread? We close this paper with the conclusion of a funeral sermon preached on the removal of its subject: Verily, when we consider how God hath followed us with breach upon breach, taken away all those worthy men before mentioned, and all the other things wherein the Lord has brought us lew; and now this great blow to follow all the rest, we are ready to call for such a mourning as that of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. But mistake me not! We do not mean that you should mourn for him,— you his dear children,-you right honourable lords and commons, who esteemed him little less than a father; I mean not that you should mourn for him! His work is done, his warfare is accomplished; he is delivered from sin and sorrow, and from all the evils, which we may fear, are coming upon ourselves. He hath received at the hand of the Lord a plentiful reward for all his labours! I beseech you, let not any of you have one sad thought touching him. Nor would I have you mourn out of any such apprehension, as our enemies have, and for which they rejoice; as if our cause were not good, or we should lose it for want of hands and heads to carry it on: No-NO, BELOVED,— THIS CAUSE MUST PROSPER; AND ALTHOUGH WE WERE ALL DEAD, OUR ARMIES OVERTHROWN, AND EVEN OUR PARLIAMENTS DISSOLVED, THIS CAUSE MUST PREVAIL.'-Pym, p. 302. In Letters to a Art. II. The Kingdom of Christ: or Hints on the Principles, Ordinances, and Constitution of the Catholic Church. Member of the Society of Friends. By F. MAURICE, M.A., Chaplain of Guy's Hospital. 3 Vols. 12mo. London: Darton and Clarke. THE HE intellectual universe, as well as the material, has its comets, whose eccentric courses, if they subserve no other end, may at least teach us to be thankful, that the laws of our own motions never whirl us away into such trackless deserts of space; and whose fitful and brief glare, if it serves no useful purpose of either diurnal or nocturnal illumination, may, notwithstanding, admonish us to estimate more justly those steadier and more orderly fountains of light by which our mortal pilgrimage is directed and cheered. But yet for our own parts, we have really no sort of objection to an occasional visit either from the material or the intellectual comet, provided only that these rather startling and ominous phenomena be not too frequent, and approach not too near. In the one case there is at least a high gratification in contemplating those rare and marvellous bodies of light which occasionally visit our planetary regions, notwithstanding the prognostications which the astrological speculations of our ancestors have attributed to them; and in the other case there is an analogous, though confessedly an inferior gratification, in beholding the gyrations, the headlong plunges, the fell swoops, the lurid glare, or threatening |
