LEFT AND RIGHT IN TUDOR TIMES
I have often argued that a Leftist personality underlies the rhetoric of the Leftist ideologue. I think all history shows that Leftists are basically unhappy people with big ego needs -- needs that make them crave attention, praise and -- ultimately -- power. And along with that goes a hatred of any success, happiness or power in others. And the Leftist aims to exercise power by taking away the liberties and regulating the lives of ordinary people. But if such a Leftist personality does exist, it should have been around for a long time -- far longer than we have had the term “Leftist” for it. I believe that evidence of such personalities does abound in history and we see it in fact in one of the great eras of English history -- in the Elizabethan era. Note the following excerpts from a discussion of two of the most powerful politicians in the reign of Elizabeth I -- Sir Walter Ralegh and Elizabeth’s Prime Minister -- Robert Cecil:
Cecil's shrinking heart probably allowed him to receive only the unpleasing news of how much he was in Ralegh's debt. ‘He worked with a cold fervour for the things of this world,' writes C. V. Wedgwood, ‘but he did not love the world at all ... it seemed to him no more than a painful, unrewarding purgatory.'
Ralegh loved the world, and his work in it.
Robert Cecil was Secretary of State as well as Leader of the House of Commons, and made earnest efforts to regulate the private lives of citizens into a neat and tidy pattern. His paternal policy was one that has often since led to disaster. He tried to enforce economy by law; it was ‘most necessary' to insist on coarser bread, and thinner beer, and fewer ale-houses, and ‘opening hours' for them; they must be closed at least one day a week (as in the modern ‘Six Day Licence') and then, so he argued, people would grow more food. Sheep-grazing was also wrong, and must be replaced by crops of hemp and corn; though as he added, ‘in these last few wet years', their deaths might as reasonably be blamed on the weather. Cecil's piety failed to convince some of the M.P.s that men should be ‘compelled by penalties', as one complained, to grow the regulation amounts of wheat and hemp, etc.
Francis Bacon's outstanding intellect came to Cecil's help with heavily embroidered eloquence. This would be a ‘law tending to God's honour'....
By contrast with Bacon's incomprehensible rhetoric, Ralegh's forthright attack on the bill is startling. His pungent rejoinders made short work of the Government's high-flown theories. The practical knowledge he had gained as a child on his father's farm had shown him at first hand how absurd it was to try to legislate for land without experience of it. And there was something at stake more important to him even than the land -- and that was individual liberty. ‘I do not like this constraining of men to manure or use their ground at our wills; let every man use it to that which it is most fit for, and use his own discretion.' Let Parliament set corn and hemp at liberty, ‘and leave every man free, which is the desire of a true Englishman'.
IIe won over the whole House. They shouted ‘Away with the bill!' and persistently rejected it, though the Government pushed it twice to a division.
Ralegh, that 'liberal-minded independent',' also [opposed] the bills to enforce a right religion. There was one against the Sect of Brownists, whom he had agreed gravely were `worthy to be rooted out of any commonwealth'. But just how, demanded the uncompromising realist, were they to set about rooting them out? (`I am sorry for it, I believe there be ten or twelve thousand of them in England.') If by banishment, who was to pay their transport, and to where? And who was to maintain their wives and families? And did the House really know what exactly the Brownists were, even after a Committee had been locked in by Cecil to study a book of their Articles of Belief? They should be judged, Ralegh insisted, only by their acts, not by their opinions. Like his Queen, he would not admit to anyone the right to set up `window to peer into men's souls'.
His loathing of such spiritual tyranny helped to cut out the cruellest measures of repression. It was expressed again, in terms of sheer hard common sense, against the new bill to make church attendance compulsory, and the church-wardens act as informers to the J.P.s. With the brisk logic of mathematics, Ralegh pointed out that if there were only two offenders in each parish, their sum total, together with the church-wardens, would add four hundred and eighty persons to every quartersessions, and `what great multitudes-what quarrelling and danger may happen, besides giving authority to a mean churchwarden'.
In matters more vital it was Ralegh's voice more than any that persistently championed the poor. He attacked with open scorn the meanness of rich men who called it good policy to squeeze the pockets of the poor and oppress their liberties.
He championed the humble housewife as keenly as he did his sovereign lady, and more dangerously for himself. Robert Cecil spoke in patriotic praise of the news that ‘some poor people were selling their pots and pans to pay the subsidy.... Neither pots nor pans, nor dish nor spoon should be spared', he announced unctuously. He was sure it would have an excellent effect on the King of Spain when he heard ‘how willing we are to sell all in defence of God's religion', etc. His listeners applauded this noble sentiment. It has a hollow echo coming from a man who had made a large fortune, as Master of the Wards
His complacent eagerness to sacrifice the household goods of poor folk was backed by Bacon. The poor ought to be taxed as heavily as the rich: because, as he quoted in Latin, it was a right and ‘sweet course to pull together in an equal yoke'.
This smug hypocrisy brought Ralegh to his feet. `Call you this an equal yoke, when a poor man pays as much as a rich? His estate may be no better than he is assessed at, while our estates are entered as £30 or £40 in the Queen's books -- not the hundredth part of our wealth!' His outrageous frankness over this unfair advantage given to his own class, shocked his opponents. His final blow demolished them: ‘It is neither sweet nor equal.'
(Quoted from p. 136 - 138 of That Great Lucifer: A portrait of Sir Walter Ralegh by Margaret Irwin [Bungay, Suffolk: Reprint Society, 1960])
So we see that, even back then, it was the conservative defender of individual liberty (Ralegh) who was -- as conservatives have always claimed -- the true champion and helper of the poor. While the power-mad control freaks such as the scheming Cecil and the intellectual Bacon had no real concern for the poor at all. Nothing has changed.
And in another very modern touch, Queen Elizabeth ended her reign by announcing a big tax cut (by abolishing government-granted monopolies) -- to much popular acclaim (p. 158). Big tax-cutters such as Thatcher and Reagan thus have a most respected and successful predecessor in English history.
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FOOLISH CHANGE IN BRITAIN TODAY
Tony Blair’s sudden announcement that he is going to abolish Britain’s ancient unwritten constitution and replace it with more “modern” arrangements is rightly being decried by most conservatives. A major objective is to make the appointment of judges less politicized, yet, as it points out here, the British judiciary is in fact already much LESS politicized than most. It is certainly less politicized than the US judiciary. So replacing such a successful system seems crazy. One reason that has been suggested for this attack on the British constitution is that Tony Blair and most of his senior ministers are in fact Scotsmen, who have no love for anything English. I think that is a red herring, however. It is almost certainly just another example of the Leftist conviction that they can “improve” anything by ever more legislation. Robert Cecil would understand.
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ELSEWHERE
There’s some amusing stuff in the WSJ today about clinical depression at Guantanamo Bay and the evils of dihydrogen hydroxide.
President Bush said Wednesday that he and other world leaders would not tolerate nuclear weapons in Iran. And after Iraq, that carries weight.
Carnival of the Vanities is up again with reading for all.
Chris Brand has a discussion of the connection between white guilt and coloured immigration.
Michael Darby has some thoughts about explaining tax reform better.
The Wicked one points out that George Bush supports big government.
In my academic posting here (or here), I re-do some research originally reported by Marxist psychologists and get results that totally undermine their conclusions.
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