Parliament to be taken in malam partem? They were not Whigs,
certainly: neither were Socrates and Plato, nor even St. Paul and
St. John. They may have been honest men as men go, or they may not:
but why is there to be a feeling against them rather than for them?
Why is Henry always called a tyrant, and his Parliament servile? The
epithets have become so common and unquestioned that our
interrogation may seem startling. Still we make it. Why was Henry a
tyrant? That may be true, but must be proved by facts. Where are
they? Is the mere fact of a monarch's asking for money a crime in
him and his ministers? The question would rather seem to be, Were
the moneys for which Henry asked needed or no; and, when granted,
were they rightly or wrongly applied? And on these subjects we want
much more information than we obtain from any epithets. The author
of a constitutional history should rise above epithets: or, if he
uses them, should corroborate them by facts. Why should not
historians be as fair and as cautious in accusing Henry and Wolsey as
they would be in accusing Queen Victoria and Lord Palmerston? What
right, allow us to ask, has a grave constitutional historian to say
that 'We cannot, indeed, doubt that the unshackled and despotic
condition of his friend, Francis I., afforded a mortifying contrast
to Henry? What document exists in which Henry is represented as
regretting that he is the king of a free people?--for such Mr. Hallam
confesses, just above, England was held to be, and was actually in
comparison with France. If the document does not exist, Mr. Hallam
has surely stepped out of the field of the historian into that of the
novelist, a la Scott or Dumas. The Parliament sometimes grants
Henry's demands: sometimes it refuses them, and he has to help
himself by other means. Why are both cases to be interpreted in
malam partem? Why is the Parliament's granting to be always a proof
of its servility?--its refusing always a proof of Henry's tyranny and