Foreign Influences 297 and was used as a text-book at Oxford, but it does not appear to have had more than academic influence. The Prince of Machiavelli may, possibly, have influenced the careers of particular men such as Edmund Dudley or Thomas Cromwell; but, for the most part, the great Florentine lay outside the circle of English thought. He was very frequently alluded to as though he had been the evil genius of political life; but, even as a bugbear, he did not obtain such a tribute of antagonism as was paid in the latter part of the seventeenth century to the commanding figure of Hobbes. The early writers on political and economic subjects did not confine themselves to formal treatises; of these, there were very few. The thought of the day found incidental expression in literature of every sort in plays and sermons, as well as in essays, satires and pamphlets. There can be no attempt to deal exhaustively with all the references in contemporary English literature to political and economic topics. On the other hand, some question may be raised as to how far all the fugitive pieces dealing with political and economical subjects which have survived attained to the dignity of literature. It certainly is difficult to find any criterion, and to say with confidence what should be dismissed as merely technical; but it is at least to be remembered that Malynes and Misselden and other writers on such highly technical subjects as foreign exchanges were anxious to obtain attention for their writings in polite and courtly circles; they attempted to deck their argument with literary graces in the fashion of the day. It would be churlish to refuse them a place among English authors. Students of political science in recent times have been inclined to classify and compare different types of polity, with the view of elucidating the strong points of each and of noting their various contributions to the sum of political wisdom; but the early writers in England on political subjects seem to have felt no need of adopting this method. They concentrated their attention on England, almost as if it were the only type of polity worthy of consideration, and they discussed its characteristics. The example was set by Fortescue in his De Laudibus Legum Angliae1, but the same tone prevailed among Elizabethan and Jacobean writers. Sir Thomas Smith, who, like Sir Henry Wotton after him, had seen much of foreign lands, does, indeed, in his Discourse on the Commonwealth of England recognise a more general study of politics and alludes to other states, ancient and modern; he has some difficulty 1 See vol. II of the present work, f. 297. in classifying the realm of England under any of the Aristotelian divisions; but, while he assigns a very high place to regal power, he does not, like Bodin, treat England as an example of monarchy, but includes it among the democracies. On the whole, he is prepared to justify the institutions of his country as superior to those of any other land, and to regard it as a well organised commonwealth, in which the crown, the nobility and gentry, the burgesses and yeomen, have each their part to play. The free cooperation of distinct classes for the good of the community is a characteristic feature on which he insists; and a similar political ideal appears to have been in Shakespeare's mind. There is a striking speech in Troilus and Cressida, act I, sc. 3, in which Ulysses insists on the importance of degree, and its necessity in well ordered society: Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities, But by degree, stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead: Between whose endless jar justice resides, Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Shakespeare, too, seems to recognise the supreme importance of the kingly office in a well-ordered community. The conversation between king Henry and his soldiers on the eve of Agincourt is very instructive on this point; and it is clear that his political ideals were closely connected with his conception of the English constitution. The glory and greatness of the English monarchy, as a controlling power in the English realm, is eloquently set forth in the speech assigned to Cranmer at the baptism of queen Elizabeth. A similar conception runs through Bacon's writings; and he also calls attention to the importance of the personal qualities of the prince, since, 'in the great frame of kingdoms and commonwealth, it is in the power of princes or estates to add amplitude and greatness to their Patriotic Feeling 299 kingdoms.' Selden, who was by no means inclined to exalt the kingly office unduly, yet recognises it as the source from which the various titles of honour and grades in the higher ranks of society spring. This well-ordered community, with a monarch at the head, was habitually spoken of as the respublica or commonwealth; and this last was a current term for the English realm long before it was officially adopted under the Long parliament. The importance of a strong personality at the head of a state was apparent in the reigns of Henry VIII and his children; the personality of Elizabeth, in particular, and her success in rallying round her the loyalty of her subjects and in guiding the affairs of state, continued to give actual shape to the vague political ideas of cultivated Englishmen, so that Massinger, in The Maid of Honour, pointed to the English monarchy as a model for less fortunate peoples. This view as to the exceptional merit of the English régime was strengthened by the religious sentiment, and the belief that England was called by God to a high destiny. In looking out on the nations of the world, and on the tyrannies and internecine struggles in Spain and in France, Englishmen of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods felt as if there had been direct divine intervention on behalf of England and, hence, divine approval of the English type of polity. The success of England, in holding her own against the power of Spain and against the dangers which beset the realm from foreign plots, was referred to by archbishop Sandys and others as a token that the course which England had pursued was divinely sanctioned. Such historical writings as Camden's Annales are full of patriotic sentiment; and this faith also inspired many of the efforts for expansion which were made by Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Ralegh. In reading the journal in which the first of these empire builders recorded his adventures in sailing round the world, we see how keenly he felt that it would be a crime against God and man to leave the newly discovered lands to be dominated by Spanish influence, and that there was a positive duty in striving to bring about the expansion of England. So far as internal political problems are concerned, discussion in Tudor times turned almost exclusively on the conflict between public and private interests. The doctrines of Mandeville, that private vices were public virtues, and of Bastiat, that private interests necessarily cooperated for public good, were unknown, and would have been wholly repugnant, to Elizabethan writers. Private interest appeared to be diametrically opposed to patriotic sentiment. The writers of the first half of the sixteenth century who describe the social evils of that period of rapid economic transition are constantly inveighing against the mischief wrought by private men who disregarded public welfare. They had little sympathy with the spirit of competition, since the efforts of individuals to get on in the world might easily come to be inconsistent with the maintenance of each man's proper degree, and of the whole social order. This idea appears to have taken hold of the mind of Edward VI; it found expression in the prologue of Fitzherbert's Husbandry and in Caxton's Game and playe of the Chesse as well as in Starkey's Dialogue between Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset and in More's Utopia. The anarchy which Shakespeare describes as arising from Cade's rebellion is a picture of the disorder which ensues when private interest has free play and the maintenance of social order is neglected. In the latter part of the sixteenth century, there was increasing difficulty in seeing what classes or persons were to be trusted to act for the public good in the present and in the future, and as willing to leave in the background private tastes and personal interests which conflicted with public duty. There are frequent complaints as to the neglect of country gentlemen to play their part in the work of local government; the new type of nonresident proprietors was regarded with special suspicion, and depopulating and enclosing, which continued to be denounced from time to time, seemed to be a survival of the ruthless evictions which had moved the indignation of bishop Latimer, and of John Hales in his Discourse of the Commonweal. While the gentry were thus negligent, the mercantile classes and the burghers in the towns appeared to need direction and guidance, if the reputation of our manufactures was to be maintained and the commerce of the country to develop. So far as old traditions survived among the industrial classes, they favoured a narrow civic patriotism rather than the good of the realm; while the merchants concentrated in London were affected by the new commercial morality, and inclined to commercial enterprises, from which political trouble might easily ensue. Every class needed to be kept up to the sense of public duty; the clergy and ecclesiastical corporations were not above diminishing the future value of their livings with a view to immediate gain. The council, inspired by the ceaseless activity of Burghley, was continually engaged in putting down abuses at which men, who ought to have been public-spirited citizens, were accustomed Public Welfare 301 to connive. Under these circumstances, it was plausible to look to the crown as the one hope of public-spirited conduct throughout the realm, and to regard the king as being not only the source of honour, the fount of justice and the arm of military power, but as supreme trustee for the public good in all the affairs of life. This, in substance, is the claim which was put forward by king James in The True Law of Free Monarchies, and it would probably have been admitted as sound by men who were repelled by the arguments with which his adherents endeavoured to support it. The real refutation was a practical one; and it was the misfortune of James and Charles that many of the undertakings in which they endeavoured to execute this trusteeship miscarried disastrously, and not only interfered with private interests, but proved detrimental to the realm as a whole. As a consequence, under the early Stewarts, the legitimacy of giving free play to private interests was advocated in a way in which it had never been done before; and an attempt was made to treat as merely private many matters which had hitherto been regarded as of public concern. It is, of course, true that, in a body politic, no action can be exclusively private; the interconnection between individuals in the body politic is so close that wrong done by an individual may be at least a bad example and injurious to the community. Religion, which many today regard as a merely personal affair, was generally thought of in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods as of supreme importance to the state. Christianity, as understood and practised by Englishmen, was held to be the foundation of Christian morality; and, hence, was a matter of public concern in which the king might be bound to interfere. The extreme Erastianism of men like Cranmer, or, for that matter, of Luther, is a surprise to many in the present day; but, among Englishmen generally in Elizabeth's time, there was little sympathy with the scruples of a private conscience which set itself up against the established order, though sympathy was growing. While freedom, within limits, for conscientious conviction was coming to be regarded as not unreasonable, the freedom of the individual to carry on his business as he liked, and where he liked, apart from old moral restrictions or considerations of what was expedient for the public good, asserted itself more and more. Under Elizabeth and Burghley, it had been taken as an axiom that the direction of commercial intercourse between this country and foreign nations was a matter of public concern, and that even the internal trade of the country, so far as regards the necessaries |