Having finished Hume's last volume of English history, covering the period of 1600 to 1688, I'm sorry to say that barbarism continued to dominate European history all the way until the end of his narrative. There is so much to regret and disdain in this period of our history, that again we must postpone any celebration of 'Western' civilization to some later date.
Right up until the end of Hume's history, torture is used to extract confessions of guilt from political prisoners. No court of law offered any protection to the most obviously innocent of people. Hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people, not even excluding helpless women, were tried for various supposed crimes, all of which reduced to being out of favor with the powers that be. Since the powers that be kept shifting between the monarchy and the parliament, it was almost certain that everyone within their lifetime will have been declared a traitor or a malefactor and put on one of these show trials sooner or later. Eye witness evidence was allowed, alone, to convict people, whereas alibis and witnesses in favor of the defendant were not accepted as evidence. People were tried on evidence extorted via self-incrimination. One favorite tactic of courts was to ask people on their honor whether they subscribed to this or that political or religious sentiment, and if they admitted to it, they were executed forthwith. This sort of fishing for criminals, or entrapment, would be detestable in the modern age. Even laws against double jeopardy and habeus corpus (having to actually be told what charges you have been arrested for and what laws you have supposedly broken) were only tentatively passed in the later stages of this period. The gruesomely violent spectacles of public executions via beheading by axes which often took multiple swings to do their violence could not be replaced by any more humane measure, even supposing it were somehow just to eliminate people solely for their political or religious beliefs. It was often accompanied by still more brutal drawing and quartering. There was no freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of anything really.
The catholics continued their predations right up until the end of Hume's history. King Louis the XIV expelled or required the forced conversion of over half a million protestant Hugeonots from France. During the troubled reign of Charles the First, his Irish subjects rose up as one in rebellion and slaughtered every last protestant they could get a hold of in that kingdom. Mercy was not spared men, women, or children, and death wasn't even the worst of their severity. Tortures, mutilations, rapes, and plundering were accompanied alongside the general massacre, even the stripping of protestants in the midst of winter and leaving them to the mercy of the elements was considered laudable, since it was all in the service of Catholicism. Catholics also engaged in the infamous gunpowder plot to blow up the entire government of England, King and Parliament, for not favoring their religion in that kingdom any longer. Not to allow the Catholics sole possessors of religious bigotry, the Protestants likewise oppressed each other. Episcopalians oppressed both Catholics and Presbyterians. Presbyterians, when they came to power, banned Episcopalians and Independents (like Quakers and Anabaptists), and the one Parliament where Independents held authority under Cromwell proposed a general anarchy in assurance that Christ almighty would soon descend to be the next King of England. Instead of learning from the example of Catholicism's abuses that conscience should be left a private matter, and religion shouldn't interfere with the policies of a state, they only learned how to emulate their predecessors and revenge themselves when it was finally their turn to be the oppressor. Such an extreme reprisal was practiced on the Irish for their massacre of the English (which numbered above 40,000 in a time of much lower population), that Cromwell might well be accused of a like massacre of the Irish in turn.
Two ludicrous weaknesses to the English constitution at this period somewhat offset each other. For one, the Legislative branch could be dissolved at the King's whimsy, and needn't be summoned back for years or even decades at a time. But to balance the absurdity of a Legislative branch which can't meet long enough to pass any laws, was an executive branch which had no power to collect taxes or fund the most basic needs of the country's military. Though the King was expected to maintain the army and navy, Parliament never gave him enough funds to do so, and always were so sparing as to vote him funds for only one or two years. For this reason, England continued to be virtually powerless both in prosecuting foreign wars and keeping the domestic peace. Here we see instead of a balance of powers, a complete lack of power for the government to achieve even its most basic ends. Revolutions, conspiracies, and insurrections dotted this entire period just like it had controlled all the previous periods, due to a lack of a standing army. Wars were declared, but no taxes raised to pay the troops, and everything was somehow expected to be paid via debts, from which a King, with no steady source of income, could never promise his lenders a return. All too often, Parliament spent all of its time arguing for new measures to oppress members of other religions, or trying innocent ministers on ludicrous charges of treason, rather than overseeing any laws which could have promoted the welfare or security of the Kingdom. Listening to the endless injustices of parliament, it is with sympathy the reader watches the King dissolve the tumultuous body over and over again.
Today we take for granted that the Legislature is practically always in session, and that no power can impede its meeting, or prevent new elections upon set periods. None of this was known to the ancient English. Likewise, today we have a military dedicated to civil liberty with no wish to rule themselves, but infinitely formidable to private adventurers and factions which would otherwise seek to usurp power in the face of such a vacuum of resistance. Neither of these blessings were known to the English, and the resulting chaos that spanned all their history can only be considered a natural result of their stupid system. Though two kings were deposed between 1600-1688 and replaced with new governments by military force, America has yet to suffer a single non-democratic, unconstitutional transfer of power in 250 years. We have elected 44 presidents in a row, and usurped none, in our illustrious history. During that time, only one Civil War broke out, and rebellions such as 'Shay's Rebellion' and the "Whiskey Rebellion" were so slight as to barely merit the name. The peace we take for granted was entirely unknown to history before the founding of our republic, except we can imagine in some remote corners like Iceland or Switzerland. And yet the only difference between us and them was our superior system for transferring and retaining power -- composed of the same people, we were able to accomplish so much more just by having a better Constitution. It is remarkable how much human progress was still possible through the most basic of political principles. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the right to a fair trial, no self-incrimination, the abolishing of torture, the elimination of cruel and unusual punishments, the leveling of the rights/classes of man, habeus corpus, no double jeopardy, an elected executive branch, a regularly elected and assembled legislative branch, a steady and consistent tax and trade law that commerce could depend on and predict ahead of time -- such simple blessings and yet entirely lacking so late as 1700!
At this time, Europe was too jealous of each other to engage in free trade between their realms. Blessed with the technology in ships to carry goods from all over the world to all the various ports of Europe, their own jealousies and animosities cut off most commerce to the barest trickle. Bullion was horded as though it had some worth independent of the products it could purchase that truly serve man -- food, clothing, houses, furniture, etc. England even went to war multiple times with Holland for the sole crime of competing with them in the carrying of trade goods throughout Europe and the world at large. Can anyone imagine how disastrous to the world economy it would be, for states to declare war on any rivals who built better cars or phones than they themselves could produce, so long as they still had the ascendancy in arms? And yet these principles were amorally, and thoughtlessly, practiced by everyone at the time as the most sensible projects of self-interest and national glory. France, having no pretext other than 'I want it,' declared war on all her neighbors and attempted the conquest of Spain, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Holland, and anyone else their borders happened to be touching at the time. This certainly managed to kill many people and exhaust many budgets, but its unknown what possible use France could have put to such a grand empire, given the same people would be living there as before, all of whom would hate and despise their French overlords, and rebel at the slightest chance from there on. Even supposing armies could have been maintained to keep all its subjects in check, what possible profit could the French gain from such acquisitions which would drain, rather than fill, their treasury? From stupid wars such as these was created the failed state of Belgium, which to this day grapples for a return to its ancient freedom.
It was also during this time that Austria so persecuted the denizens of Hungary on account of various religious differences, that Hungary went so far as to invite the Turks to conquer them instead, where they had hope of a more just and tolerant Sultan. So far cast down into the darkness of religious and nationalist bigotry had Europe descended!
What can be said about this last period of Hume's history? Slaves were steadily being exported into the colonies, a terrible abuse that had been absent from Europe for over a thousand years. Wars of plunder and religious bigotry were waged, instead of self defense, or as a means to disseminate the fruits of progress to more backwards regions, or as a measure of gaining liberty and sovereignty for an abused minority. Trade was imperfect, and manufacturing had not yet truly begun. And though the arts and sciences continued to improve, it was no thanks to the government or the people among whom these artists and scientists lived. Newton and Boyle received no state support despite their enlightening the world, and even the most renowned of artists literally starved to death, some even known and liked by the king for their works. It beggars belief that such important arenas of public good weren't supported in any way by the public. Armies continued to improve in strength, discipline, gunpowder weapons, and numbers -- but lacking regular funding were prone to insurrection and banditry as often as their (generally evil) wars they were meant to be fighting. And for every step forward we find of increasing population, we find some step backwards in more calamitous sufferings, like the fire of London, the constant recurrence of the plague, or the attempted Irish genocide.
We must content ourselves with the reflection, that humanity had never been more numerous, richer, more powerful, more knowledgeable, or more artistic than they were at this period. But as far as their servility, ignorance, superstition, intolerance, cruelty, and other traits, all were still the height of barbarism. Several revolutions had to be passed through to reach the most remote glimmerings of the civilization we enjoy today. Such obvious tenets such as invading neighbors who have done you no wrong is wrong, or executing people just for believing something different from you is wrong, or torture is wrong, or slavery is wrong, or the separation of church and state, or freedom of speech, or the just power of government coming from the consent of the governed, or the ludicrousness of inheriting merits and titles instead of earning them oneself, nothing was known at this time.
Today, it is almost impossible to believe that someone could be tried, tortured, or executed for offending the president or Congress. It is unimaginable that minute speculative differences between protestant sects, and protestants and catholics, used to lead to burnings, hangings, and wholesale slaughters of the weaker party, as though only people's opinion on angels or the holy ghost mattered, and every other portion of someone's common humanity was irrelevant. It is abhorrent, that wars were fought out of envy and avarice, long before anyone thought to war for freedom or self-defense. These things simply don't happen anymore. We are so far removed from them, that they don't even strike us as human. Who were these people, why were they so lacking in compassion or justice, and how both brainless and heartless could they be? We are not they. They aren't our history. Our history had to have begun later, when people started to feel, think, and act like us. Before then, our ancestors are no more related to us than the apes that came before them.
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