'"And pray," asked I, "by whom is paidThe expense of this strange masquerade?""The expense!—Oh that's of course defrayed,"(Said one of these well-fed Hecatombers)"By yonder rascally rice consumers.""What!they, who mustn't eat meat!"—"No matter—"(And while he spoke his cheeks grew fatter),"The rogues may munch theirPaddycrop,But the rogues must still support our shop.And, depend upon it, the way to treatHeretical stomachs that thus dissent,Is to burden all that won't eat meat,With a costlyMeat Establishment."'
'"And pray," asked I, "by whom is paidThe expense of this strange masquerade?""The expense!—Oh that's of course defrayed,"(Said one of these well-fed Hecatombers)"By yonder rascally rice consumers.""What!they, who mustn't eat meat!"—
'"And pray," asked I, "by whom is paid
The expense of this strange masquerade?"
"The expense!—Oh that's of course defrayed,"
(Said one of these well-fed Hecatombers)
"By yonder rascally rice consumers."
"What!they, who mustn't eat meat!"—
"No matter—"(And while he spoke his cheeks grew fatter),"The rogues may munch theirPaddycrop,But the rogues must still support our shop.And, depend upon it, the way to treatHeretical stomachs that thus dissent,Is to burden all that won't eat meat,With a costlyMeat Establishment."'
"No matter—"
(And while he spoke his cheeks grew fatter),
"The rogues may munch theirPaddycrop,
But the rogues must still support our shop.
And, depend upon it, the way to treat
Heretical stomachs that thus dissent,
Is to burden all that won't eat meat,
With a costlyMeat Establishment."'
Sir Roundell Palmer thinks that he has conceded everything which equity requires when he expresses entire agreement with Mr. Miall that 'no State authority ought to interfere with any man's religious belief,' and he clenches that admission by the bold assertion, that the ascendancy of the Church of England no longer involves 'any civil rights, privileges, or advantages whatever.' It might have occurred to him that, even if his statement were strictly accurate, the words 'no longer' pointed to a history of suffering and of struggle which resulted from the existence of an Establishment, and in which Nonconformists have figured as the victims. But is it accurate? Why at the moment the statement was made there was before Parliament—as there is likely to be for some time to come—a measure for extinguishing the clerical monopoly in parochial churchyards; the disabilities of Dissenters at Oxford and Cambridge had not been removed,[41]and there had just been published the new Statutes of Winchester and Harrow schools, which expressly insist that none but members of the Church shall be qualified to act as members of the governing bodies of those institutions! And, even when these grounds of just complaint have been removed, there will still exist in numerous Statutes, or Trusts, or Schemes, or Regulations, affecting matters of parochial, educational, or charitable administration, provisions which, directly or indirectly, exclude Dissenters from the national Church from the enjoyment of rights, privileges, and advantages, which Sir Roundell Palmer would have us believe are as much within the reach of Nonconformists as of Conformists.
That, however, is a very limited view of the subject which supposes that the principle of religious equality is violated only by means of Statutes of the realm which, in so many words, place the members of unestablished bodies on a different footing, as regards civil rights, from that occupied by members of the Establishment. For it may be safely asserted that for every act of exclusion, and every violation of the principle of equity, for which the legislature is responsible, in connection with an Established system, there are twenty others which are the indirect, though inevitable, result of that system. Establishment is a name for more than a collection of Statutes, and a particular mode of appropriating national property: it represents a powerful source of influence—a spring the force of which is felt throughout all the ramifications of society, and is often experienced by those who are unconsciously affected by it. Notwithstanding the lip-homage now paid to the principle of religious equality, even by politicians who once persistently fought against it, the ascendancy of the Church Establishment is sought to be upheld by public functionaries, by corporate bodies, and by individuals, organized and unorganized, in a hundred ways which are independent of legislation, but which, nevertheless, inflict, whether intentionally or not, great injustice on those who are attached to other religious communities.
No one would now venture to declare, as a Conservative journal did years ago, that a 'Dissenter is only half an Englishman,' but, so far as a right to share in all the advantages afforded by civilized society is concerned, that is the position in which he is, or is sought to be placed, even now. The question with which Mr. Leatham fairly startled Mr. Gladstone, 'How long are we, a party of Dissenters, to be led by a cabinet of Churchmen?' suggests other inquiries, of a more searching kind, which are even more strictly relevant to the point we are now considering. Take the public functionaries throughout the kingdom—the Commissioners who administer the affairs of important departments, some of which decide matters vitally affecting the interests of Nonconformists—the occupants of the magisterial bench—the trustees of public charities—the holders of municipal and parochial offices, great and small, and it will be seen that the large majorityare connected with the State-favoured Church, and that offices of responsibility and influence, as well as of emolument, are filled by Dissenters in an inverse proportion to their numbers, their intelligence, and their energetic devotion to public duty.
These are some of the allegations with which we meet Sir Roundell Palmer's assertion that the Establishment no longer inflicts wrong on those who think it right to dissent; but there are others, the aptness of which will be still more apparent, because the facts come within the knowledge of a far larger class. Whatever may be the case in the great centres of population, it is certain that in the small towns, and especially in those rural districts, in which, we are told, the Establishment is so great a blessing, petty persecution, aiming at the repression of dissent, is as rife as when that Establishment could persecute by law. Is the dissenter a farmer? He is kept by Church landlords and landladies out of a whole district, as carefully as the rinderpest itself; or if he happens to be already in it, he is deported as quickly as lease, or agreement, will allow. Is he a shopkeeper? He must hold his head low, and consent to sell his principles with his wares, or he loses half his customers. Does he require education for his children? The day-school is, indeed, open to them, but attendance at the Sunday-school and the church is insisted upon, as part of the price to be paid for the education for which he, in common with other tax-payers, largely pays. Is he poor? So much the worse for him, when coals, blankets, and soup are distributed at Christmas; when parochial charities, intended to be unsectarian, are dispensed, or when misfortune makes him a fitting object for the help and sympathy of all his neighbours. Nay! he may be wholly independent of all around in regard to pecuniary circumstances—may have fortune, culture, and all the gifts and graces of refined and of Christian life; yet, if in the matter of the Lord his God he differs from those who worship at the altars of the Establishment, he, too, pays the penalty for conscientious Nonconformity, in the social exclusion, and the haughty contempt, which to certain minds make country life one of the hardest things to bear, and strongly tempt the children of wealthy Nonconformists to desert, and ultimately to despise, the communities to which they were once attached.
To these representations, as well as to others relating to the social discord created by an Establishment, it has been replied that they describe as much the result of the caste-feeling, which, rightly or wrongly, exists among us, as the result of the Church being established; that hard and fast lines will be drawn by individuals even when State-made distinctions have ceased; that we 'shall not get rid of the Church of England by disestablishing it;' and that 'so far from being less energetic in the assertion of its claims,' it will be 'more energetic than ever.' The rejoinder is, that the existence of a state-maintained Church aggravates social tendencies sufficiently bad enough in themselves to require no encouragement—that, when the possessors of invidious privileges find their privileges endangered, they think themselves justified in doing what they would otherwise condemn—that acts such as we have indicated are committed to a far greater extent by the members of established than of unestablished bodies, and that Episcopalianism in America, and in our own colonies, does not adopt the repressive, and the oppressive, policy to which it resorts at home. Sir Roundell Palmer's dictum that 'One of the advantages of a union which subsists between Church and State is, that it gives to the former an inducement to act in a more liberal and conciliatory spirit than can be relied upon if the relations between the two were different,' is, in our judgment, contrary to the facts of history; and if the Church is, at the present time, 'bound over to keep the peace' as it has not been before, it is just because the ties between Church and State are loosened, and liberality and moderation are necessary to prevent their being quickly severed.
There is one other aspect of the case to which, perhaps, full justice was not done by any of the speakers in the late debate, and that is the influence exerted by the Establishment, in regard to opinion, as affecting both theological belief and ecclesiastical practice. The Nonconformist objection to an Establishment, as popularly put, is, that it appropriates public property to the maintenance of a Church, the advantages of which cannot be shared by large sections of the community. That is true, but it is not the whole truth; for even if the Church found its own capital, and the State gave nothing but authority and privilege, the Nonconformist would still have ground to complain of the injustice done to him by the junction of the two bodies. The pocket objection, strong as it is, is, after all, neither the strongest nor the highest. To the man who, in these days of shifting and uncertain belief, holds definite views of truth, and especially of the highest forms of truth, it is less a grievance that the State should deprive him of his share of public property than that it should exert its influence on behalf of what he believes to be mischievous error—error,possibly, dishonouring to God, as well as detrimental to men. The member for Richmond says that he is at one with the member for Bradford in thinking that 'no State authority ought to interfere with any man's religious belief;' but what is interference with man's religious belief? Is no one's belief interfered with when the Canons of a national Church excommunicateipso factoall impugners of the Articles, the worship, or the government of that Church, until they have repented, and publicly revoked, their 'wicked errors?' Is the Unitarian belief not interfered with by the state-sanctioned Athanasian creed? Or the Baptist belief by the baptismal service? Or the Quaker belief by the eucharistic doctrines of the Church? Or, to put the question in the broadest form, is the Roman Catholic's belief not interfered with when there is established a Protestant Church, which asserts that the leading tenets, or practices, of the Romish Church are damnable and idolatrous?
It is true that everybody in the country is free to protest against the creed and practices of the Establishment, but why should anyone have to protest at all? The Nonconformist may enforce his own views of truth and religious duty, but why should the State, which is invested with authority derived from him, in common with his fellow-citizens, not only compel him to become a Nonconformist, but put a heavy premium on the acceptance of that which he feels it to be his duty to denounce? This is a question, the force of which increases in proportion as the Established clergy assert their right to set at defiance authorized doctrinal standards and rubrics, as well as to disregard the most solemn judicial decisions; for the points of theological antagonism between their teaching and the views of Nonconformists will multiply as confusion grows within the Church. But we are content to enforce our present point by an illustration drawn from a state of things with which we have long been familiar, rather than from any new development of clerical extravagance. Here, for instance, are specimens of the teaching of one of the authorized instructors of the people, taken from a twopenny catechism, entitledSome questions of the Church Catechism, and doctrines involved, briefly explained, for the use of families and parochial schools; by the Rev. J. A. Gace, M.A., Vicar of Great Barling, Essex,[42]and which, we understand, is circulated widely in many parishes far distant from the author's.
'85.Q.We have amongst us various Sects and Denominations who go by the general name of Dissenters. In what light are we to consider them?A.As heretics; and in our Litany we expressly pray to be delivered from the sins of "false doctrine, heresy, and schism."'86.Q.Is then their worship a laudable service?A.No; because they worship God according to their own evil and corrupt imaginations, and not according to His revealed will, and therefore their worship is idolatrous.'87.Q.Is Dissent a great sin?A.Yes; it is in direct opposition to our duty towards God.'94.Q.But why have not Dissenters been excommunicated?A.Because the law of the land does not allow the wholesome law of the Church to be acted upon; but Dissenters have virtually excommunicated themselves by setting up a religion of their own, and leaving the ark of God's Church.'98.Q.Is it wicked then to enter a meeting-house at all?A.Most assuredly; because, as was said above, it is a house where God is worshipped otherwise than He has commanded, and therefore it is not dedicated to His honour and glory; and besides this, we run the risk of being led away by wicked enticing words; at the same time, by our presence we are witnessing our approval of their heresy, wounding the consciences of our weaker brethren, and by our example teaching others to go astray.'99.Q.But is language such as this consistent with charity?A.Quite so: for when there is danger of the true worshippers of God falling into error we cannot speak too plainly, or warn them too strongly of their perilous state; at the same time that it is our duty to declare in express terms to those who are without, that they are living separate from Christ's body, and consequently out of the pale of salvation, so far, at least, as God has thought fit to reveal.'
'85.Q.We have amongst us various Sects and Denominations who go by the general name of Dissenters. In what light are we to consider them?A.As heretics; and in our Litany we expressly pray to be delivered from the sins of "false doctrine, heresy, and schism."
'86.Q.Is then their worship a laudable service?A.No; because they worship God according to their own evil and corrupt imaginations, and not according to His revealed will, and therefore their worship is idolatrous.
'87.Q.Is Dissent a great sin?A.Yes; it is in direct opposition to our duty towards God.
'94.Q.But why have not Dissenters been excommunicated?A.Because the law of the land does not allow the wholesome law of the Church to be acted upon; but Dissenters have virtually excommunicated themselves by setting up a religion of their own, and leaving the ark of God's Church.
'98.Q.Is it wicked then to enter a meeting-house at all?A.Most assuredly; because, as was said above, it is a house where God is worshipped otherwise than He has commanded, and therefore it is not dedicated to His honour and glory; and besides this, we run the risk of being led away by wicked enticing words; at the same time, by our presence we are witnessing our approval of their heresy, wounding the consciences of our weaker brethren, and by our example teaching others to go astray.
'99.Q.But is language such as this consistent with charity?A.Quite so: for when there is danger of the true worshippers of God falling into error we cannot speak too plainly, or warn them too strongly of their perilous state; at the same time that it is our duty to declare in express terms to those who are without, that they are living separate from Christ's body, and consequently out of the pale of salvation, so far, at least, as God has thought fit to reveal.'
Assuming, as we may fairly do, that the author of all this—well! we need not describe it—preaches as he publishes, have the heretics and sinners whom he thus consigns to perdition no right to complain that, besides receiving—according to the 'Clergy List'—£230 a year of public money, he should also be invested with authority by the State? It is idle to say that truth is truth, and falsehood falsehood, and that the one will prevail, and the other perish, no matter whether he who utters it is an established clergyman, or a dissenting preacher. In the long run it will be so, but the struggle between truth and falsehood is prolonged when, instead of the two being left fairly to grapple with each other, the weight of State-influence, as well as of State-gold, is thrown into the wrong scale. To speak plainly, the establishment of a Church is an organized system of bribery in favour of that Church. It may fail to buy the adherence of strong and independent minds, but the minds of the majority are neither the one nor the other. It appealssuccessfully to the self-seeking, the timid, the conventional, the fashion-loving, andtheyare to be found among every class of the community. And, in doing so, it inflicts injustice—injustice to those who reject the established doctrines, even though they may be in possession of every civil right.
'The Established Church will certainly not be weakened by the debate of Tuesday,' was the final conclusion of theTimes, in the three fluctuating leaders devoted to the subject, and that is true in the sense in which it is true that an army hard pressed by an enemy is not weakened by abandoning an untenable position, and by retreating within its inner line of defence. And that is just what the English Establishment has done, so far as its present position is indicated by the late debate. Almost everything in the shape ofà prioriargument on its behalf has been given up, and it has fallen back on the plea of utility alone. In doing so, it has adapted itself to a characteristic of Englishmen, of whom Emerson has smartly said that, while there is nothing which they hate so much as a theory, they will bow down and worship a fact. It does not, however, follow that objectors to the Establishment are bound to confine themselves to the same weapons as those selected for the defence. The reasoning based on religious principle which—strange anomaly! seeing that Parliament charges itself with responsibility for the religious concerns of the nation—is thought to be unfit for the House of Commons, may still be employed with effect in influencing pious and thoughtful minds elsewhere. Nor can the reasoning which appeals to men's sense of equity be disposed of in the summary fashion adopted by Sir Roundell Palmer. An institution based on principles which are radically unsound cannot long be vindicated solely with reference to its alleged usefulness. That which is unjust cannot be permanently upheld, because it is seemingly successful. The painted sepulchre is a sepulchre, though painted; and if an establishment really contravenes the rules of right, its most brilliant, and even its most solid achievements, will ultimately fail to prolong its existence.
When the Church of England, put upon its defence as a Church established by law, insists that it is the source of blessings to the community, amply worth the price which the community is required to pay for them, it indicates no lack of Christian or of generous feeling to examine these claims in the same practical way in which they are put forward. Especially is it necessary to discriminate between the action of the Church simply as such, and its action as a Church specially favoured by the State, as well as to see that, while acknowledging all its deeds of goodness, we do not draw from them a totally erroneous inference. It does not seem to us that very much is conceded, if we admit the correctness of Sir Roundell Palmer's assertion that the Church of England is exerting more influence over the country than all the other religious bodies put together. Why—to quote the language of theTimes, used for an opposite purpose—'a man of education might be expected to remember that modern Dissent can only boast a history of a hundred and fifty years, and that before it arose the whole system of the Church of England was firmly consolidated.' And, besides the advantage of a long start, she has had wealth, power, and prestige—all three being enjoyed at the expense of Nonconformity, and yet the nett result is, that she only does more than all the unestablished bodies, and in doing so, leaves masses of the people almost untouched by her ministrations! Let it be remembered also, that these descriptions of the Establishment, which are intended to reconcile us to its existence, are descriptions which, to a large extent, have been applicable only during the last fifty years. No one would speak of the Church in the days of the Georges as he may rightly speak of her in the days of Victoria; for one of her own clergy—the Rev. Sydney Smith—has characteristically declared that during the former period 'the clergy of England had no more influence over the people than the cheesemongers of England.' And whence the change? Is it attributable to the action of the Establishment principle—to the retention of Parliamentary grants, or to the multiplication of political privileges? On the contrary, not until voluntaryism had to so great an extent supplied the deficiency existing in connection with State-endowments and compulsory exactions, and not until the process of disestablishment had, in principle, been commenced, has the Church of England earned the eulogiums of which she is now deservedly the subject. Sir Roundell Palmer asks for the gratitude of Dissenters because the zeal and energy of the Church have given to them a powerful stimulus, and reminds us that, in regard to architecture, to music, and to modes of worship, they have not hesitated to copy the Church from which they dissent. Well! we are as thankful as he is for that 'communityof feeling between the most enlightened and best of men on both sides,' which not only brings them together, but leads them to select for imitation each other's wisest and best methods. But is the obligation all on one side? Does the Church owe nothing to Nonconformity, in regard to zeal, to organization, to education, to hymnology, to preaching, and, above all, to the pecuniary aspects of voluntaryism? She is welcome to all she has borrowed, and we hope that it may be possible to import into her own system other admitted excellencies, to be found in those of Nonconformists; but does this interchange of influence between different Churches justify the placing of one in an exceptional position, to the prejudice of the rest; and is Nonconformity,
'Like a young eagle, who has lost his plumeTo fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,'
'Like a young eagle, who has lost his plume
To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,'
to have an Establishment foisted upon it in perpetuity, because it has done so much to make such institution more tolerable than in days of yore? And what authority had Sir Roundell Palmer for the assertion that Mr. Miall wished, 'for certain theoretical reasons, to destroy the whole of the immense machinery by which all this good is done?' If by this it was intended to suggest that all the good effected by the Church of England comes out of its legal position, Mr. Miall would deny the correctness of the suggestion; while, on the other hand, if no inconsiderable portion of that good be the result of the piety and devotedness of Churchmen—manifested in spite, rather than as the result, of Establishment—he would repudiate any intention to destroy, or in any way to hinder their work.
We have said that the case of the Establishment has been made to rest solely on the utilitarian argument; and we now add that the range of that argument is practically limited to the rural parishes. Sir Roundell Palmer admits that in the large towns the Church of England is not overtaking the spiritual wants of the population; though he thinks that its efforts to do so are greater than those of Dissenters. That is to say, the influence of the Establishment is smallest where the intellectual and moral forces which ultimately decide the country's destinies exist—a large admission, and one which will have cumulative weight as time progresses. Mr. Miall, he complained, 'did not sufficiently distinguish between the position of the working classes in the towns and the working classes in the country,' and, with regard to the last, he affirmed that, 'speaking generally, they are members of the Church, and through the Church they are partakers of benefits of every description, spiritual, moral, and even temporal.' 'Those,' he added, 'who know the rural districts of this country, will bear testimony to the existence of multitudes upon multitudes of poor people who have in them both "sweetness and light."' And then—utterly ignoring the influence exercised by all other agencies—he stated that he could not 'imagine any institution to which this character of the labouring poor is due more than to that which has placed in the centre of the population of every part of the country a man educated and intelligent, whose business it is to do them good, whose whole and sole business is to take care of their souls as far as by God's help he is enabled to do so, in every way and in all circumstances of life to be their friend and counsellor.'
We assume that Scotland is not included in the sphere within which the Established system has wrought thus beneficently. We assume also that, after the facts and figures for which the House and country are indebted to Mr. Richard, M.P., the Principality of Wales also may be excluded from the map of the territory over which the sun of the Establishment sheds these blessings, and, probably, a candid Episcopalian would hesitate to claim for his Church credit for all the civilization and Christianity to be found in Cornwall, and some other districts. So that, tried by a geographical test, the argument may be pared down even yet lower than it has been by the speaker himself.
But are we to be satisfied with Arcadian pictures, or to seek to build on solid fact? We repeat Mr. Miall's question—what is the condition of the rural parishes? and for an answer refer, not to Blue Books alone, but to the knowledge of living men. How are 'the men whose whole and sole business it is to take care of the souls' of our villagers discharging their high function? Are they feeding them with the bread of life, or with 'the husks which the swine do eat,' in the shape of superstitious teaching, or of vapid formalism? Is it not in our village parishes that there are to be found the most stolid ignorance and the grossest superstition? Can there not be reckoned up by hundreds parishes in which spiritual deadness and intellectual stagnation are the prevailing characteristics of the population—or where the only ray of lightissues from the mission-station of the despised itinerant preacher, and the only mental activity is due to the self-sacrificing efforts of a handful of, perhaps, persecuted Dissenters? These are the kind of questions which will be stirred up by Sir Roundell Palmer's statements, and other recent utterances of the like kind. Those statements are, no doubt, true of certain parishes, and the number of those parishes is, we are glad to believe, increasing; but that they accurately describe the majority of rural parishes we utterly disbelieve, and surprise must not be felt if, henceforth, there is less reticence than there has been in regard to the real working of the Establishment in those districts in which it is now alleged to be the greatest blessing.
We have heard of those who represent the world as resting upon the back of a tortoise; and now the case of the English Establishment is based upon the agricultural labourer. Even a journal having so unclerical a bias as thePall Mall Gazettegravely declares that
'Without the parson of the parish the English parish itself would revert to that barbarism from which it is, even under existing circumstances, not so very distantly removed. The agricultural labourers of this country have been not altogether unjustly described as a class without hope; but whatever chance of kindness or consolation they may have in need, sickness, or the approach of death, depends in the main on the presence and the comparative affluence of the parish clergyman.'
Thus, as Earl Russell once vindicated the Irish Establishment by alleging that it gave the farmer in every parish a customer for his eggs and butter, so in England it has now become the fashion to look upon the Established clergy as auxiliary relieving officers, or as a supplementary county police. It is not a high conception of their functions; while it indicates the kind of impression which the Church, as a spiritual institution, has made upon the political and religiously-indifferent class. Nor will it reconcile good men, whether in the Church of England or out of it, to a continuance of the evils, the anomalies and the perplexities which are now admitted to be inseparably connected with its position as an establishment. The eggs and butter argument did not save the Irish Establishment; and neither will the resident gentlemen theory save that of England. An institution is, in fact, doomed when its advocates are thus obliged to descend from the higher ground which they previously occupied, to one—comparatively speaking—so miserably low. The question 'what will become of the rural parishes if the Church be disestablished?' is one which should be and can be answered; but, even if no satisfactory answer were forthcoming, it would not be practicable to maintain intact all the elaborate and costly machinery which goes by the name of an establishment.
It is not our purpose to deduce from the debate on which we have been commenting any practical lessons for the guidance of those whose principles and aims it was the object of Mr. Miall to advance. The leaders of the movement are not likely to be led by any elation of feeling, resulting from the recent rapidity of their progress, to relax the exertions needed to overcome the difficulties still awaiting them; while they are acute enough to perceive the direction in which they must in future work. If the passing of the Irish Church Act demonstrated the possibility of disuniting Church and State by peaceful, legal, and constitutional means, it has now been made equally evident that, whenever public opinion calls for a similar measure for England and for Scotland, our statesmen will be prepared to comply with the demand. And, although we are not sanguine enough to expect that the remaining stages of the controversy will be passed through with the placidity which characterized the recent debate, we yet hope that the fairness of spirit, and the generosity of feeling, which were conspicuous from its commencement to its close, will exert a perceptible influence on disputants in a less elevated arena. The issue to be tried is one which, from its very nature, should restrain, rather than excite evil passions, and which pre-eminently calls for the manifestation of a broad and catholic feeling, instead of a narrow and acrid sectarianism. If it be useless to cry 'Peace—peace!' amid the din of conflict, that conflict may yet be carried on in a spirit which will make it easy for victor and vanquished presently to rejoice together, in what will be ultimately felt to be a gain for interests which are equally precious to both.
Contemporary Literature.
HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, AND TRAVELS.
The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland.ByJ. P. Prendergast, Barrister-at-law. Second Edition. Enlarged. With a Facsimile of a Cromwellian Debenture. Longmans. 1870.
It is the tritest of common places to deplore thepersistency with which the Irish will go back to early times, and explain the failure of the well-meant attempts of modern legislation by narrating old persecutions. They will do it; and the practical effect of their doing so is seen, in the agitation for 'home government' among the wilder spirits in Fenianism, among men like Mr. Butt and Mr. J. Martin. But, though we regret the 'over-long memory' of the Irish, we cannot but feel that Englishmen have never paid attention enough to the history of the sister island. To most English readers everything beyond what it suited the purpose of Macaulay and Carlyle and Froude to tell them, is a mere blank. Educated men read with surprise in Mr. Hill-Burton's Scotland, the statement that Ireland was the oldScotia, theScotia majorwhen it becomes necessary to make a distinction, and that theperfervidum ingeniumwhich carried four Scotia missionaries over the whole continent, is that very temperament which makes the Irish of to-day so impatient of English rule. Mr. Reichel's lectures, again (chiefly known, we fear, only through the appreciative notices of them in theSaturday Review) have been a sort of new revelation of the way in which Popery was forced upon Ireland by the English invaders, and of the general state of the country in Plantagenet times. Even Mr. Froude continually overthrows preconceived opinions—as when he proves that in Elizabeth's time the only part of Ireland where there was anything like peace and security was that which was still ruled by native princes; 'the pale' being ground down by taxation and ravaged by an unpaid soldiery, the successors of those 'paddy persons' who under Leicester had made England despicable in the Netherlands, whilst Ulster, under Shane O'Neil, was quiet and prosperous. What Englishman, again, had anything like a true notion of the disgraceful horrors of '98, till he read Massey's George the Third? Yet Irishmen know and ponder over all these things. A whole library of cheap historical monographs has for many years spread the knowledge of them broadcast; and to this reading, unhappily so one-sided, is due that stubborn 'ingratitude' as we call it, which even the Disestablishment and the Land Bill fail to satisfy.
Mr. Prendergast's book (which we see has reached a second edition) is perhaps the very best that an Englishman could read in order to master the causes of Irish discontent. It is well written in every sense; full of minute research, which the author's office as cataloguer of the Carte papers in the Bodleian enabled him to make; graphic in its descriptions, and abounding in a kind of grim humour which suits the story well. It is the work, in fact, of an educated Irishman.
Its object is to show how the Long Parliament, taking occasion from the massacre of 1641, declared the whole of Ireland forfeited, and, assigning Connaught as a home for the native population, divided the rest into lots, which were given, partly to those who advanced money to raise the Parliamentary army, partly in lieu of pay to the officers and soldiers of that army. Mr. Prendergast does not give many details of Cromwell's conquest—sufficiently known from Carlyle's Letters; but he traces narrowly the history of the deportation, and shows how, after causing incredible misery, it failed in 'thoroughness.'
The only doubtful portion of the book is the preliminary attempt to explain away what our author styles 'the so-called massacre of 1641.' The attempt will hardly satisfy anyone, and in some it may awaken an unfair prejudice against the rest of the work. No doubt as to this 'massacre' there was immense exaggeration. It gave occasion for just the sort of cry which the Parliament wanted to strengthen their hands against Charles. He and Strafford, tolerant for their own ends, had no prejudice against the use of those Irish Papists whom the great majority of the King's party looked on much as Chatham in the American war looked on our Red Indian allies. He therefore encouraged the Irish of the North, smarting under the sense of James's confiscations and Strafford's oppression, to arm with the view of helping him against the Scots. They were to have come over and joined the Highlanders in crushing the army of the Covenant. There is no doubt about it: since Mr. Prendergast wrote, facts cited by Mr. Burton in his recent history, prove that O'Neil's commission was not (as one historian after another has repeated) 'a forgery with an old seal torn off an abbey charter stuck upon it,' it was a bonâ fide document sealed withthe Great Seal of Scotland—a bit of that clumsy 'statecraft' which the Stuarts learned from Elizabeth, for the Scotch seal had, of course, no real power in Ireland.
Unfortunately for Charles both Irish and Scotch went to work more quickly than he had expected. The first thought was naturally enough that to recover their own lands was at least as important as to aid Charles; so Sir Phelim O'Neil began his rising by driving out all the English settlers instead of waiting till Ormonde was ready to seize the strong places, and above all to get possession of Dublin. The Scots, again, did not stop till Charles, who knew well enough that he could not trust his English troops, had brought over his Irish forces against them. They crossed the border, and the fight at Newburn and the capture of Newcastle were the results. The actual killing done by the rebels in 1641 has (we have said) been vastly exaggerated; the mischief was that thousands were turned out of house and home and driven off Dublin-wards in very inclement weather. Mr. Prendergast stoutly asserts that it was the English and Scotch who began the killing: their reprisals were certainly fearfully severe. Even Sir J. Turner, seasoned as he had been to cruelty in the thirty years' war, shuddered at the work which he was expected to do in Ireland: his description of the massacre at Newry-bridge, where priests ('popish pedlars'), merchants who had taken no share in the defence of the town, and women were flung into the river and then fired at like drowning-rats, is very shocking (Hill-Burton, vol. vii. 154). The fact is that the report of Irish atrocities, industriously magnified by the Parliament, hadmaddened the other side; and the Indian Mutiny, and the Jamaica trouble, show what the Anglo-Saxon is capable of when he is excited by garbled reports. Along with this feeling of race was mixed that religious rancour which led the 'new English' to include the 'old English' (mostly Papists) in the same category as the aborigines. Parliament fostered—conscientiously, but still in opposition to all sound toleration principles—this religious hatred, in order to alarm the Cavaliers, who were mostly as anti-Romanist as their opponents, and so to deprive Charles of any advantage from the Irish Romanists. Parliament, moreover, knew that the 'massacre' was exaggerated; else they would not have been content to levy troops for the Irish war, and then to employ them in England instead, quietly leaving Ireland to itself till Cromwell had leisure to conquer it.
Mr. Prendergast's strong points are, first, the silence of all records—a silence which is complete (he says) till the Commission, sent over five years after, begins to get up evidence. Second, the certainty (in his eyes) that the English began the murderings: on this we have the counter-evidence of Sir Charles Coote, in the trial of Maguire; but Coote was emphatically a man of blood even in that bloody age; he had made a great part of Connaught a desert; and as a witness he is worthless. Third, the assertion that nearly all such killing as there was, was in the way of ordinary war, as war then and there was carried on.
But whether the reader is persuaded or not that our author has proved his point as to 1641, there is unfortunately no doubt at all as to what follows. The transplantation was an attempt to exile a whole nation; and it failed as it deserved to fail. No doubt there was plenty of justification for such a deed. The Jesuits and the house of Austria had already done something of the kind on a small scale in several parts of Germany; the St. Bartholomew had shown how impossible it is for Rome to keep politics and religion apart. And the theory of a compact Protestant Saxondom with the Shannon for its western boundary was just what would commend itself to the most earnest minds of the time. When even M. Guizot nowadays doubts whether we can extend to Rome the same measures of toleration to which other sects have an undoubted right, we can well understand how the men of that day, fresh from the smart of Rome's blows, should have felt all pact with her to be impossible. The priest was one of the 'three burdensome beasts'—the others being the wolf (whose numbers had vastly increased during this time of misery) and the 'Tory'i.e., the dispossessed landowner who refused to go into Connaught, and lived as a freebooter till he was shot down or hanged. For all these three, as we have said, rewards were offered, and for the 'sport' of hunting them we refer the reader to our author's pages. The anti-Popish feeling was equally strong in the king's party. Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon) writes in 1654, 'Fiennes is made Chancellor of Ireland. And they doubt not toplantthat kingdom without opposition. And truly if we can get it again, we shall find difficulties removed which a virtuous prince and more quiet times could never have compassed.' The plan was not original: in Henry VIII.'s time it was regularly systematized (State Papers, vol. i. 177); and Cowley's treatise in the State Papers (i. 323) is in this respect but an anticipation of Spenser's well-known State of Ireland.
Of the misery which was caused by this wholesale eviction—after the work had been facilitated by the banishment to Spanish service of 40,000 fighting men and the transportation of crowds more to Barbadoes and elsewhere—some idea may be formed from the following picture. 'A party of horse (Prendergast, p. 308), Tory-hunting on a dark night, saw a light in the distance, which they found to proceed from a ruined cabin, wherein was a great fire of wood, and sitting round about it a company of miserable old women and children, and betwixt them and the fire a dead corpse lay broiling, which as the fire roasted they cut off collops and ate.' This is the record of Colonel Richard Lawrence, an eye-witness. No wonder the wolves multiplied so that even the environs of Dublin became unsafe.
That part of the Parliament's doings which grates most on modern ears is their abundant use of Old Testament passages to enforce their edicts. The Irish had such 'an evil witchery,' as Mr. Froude calls it, that even the incoming Puritans got on friendly terms with them. The most stringent orders were therefore issued to keep the two asunder. The Irish are 'a people of God's wrath,' and to intermarry with them is forbidden in the language used by Ezra to forbid the mixed marriages of the Jews. Officers guilty of such a crime are cashiered; dragoons are reduced to common soldiers; soldiers are flogged and made pioneers. 'The moderate Cavalier,' 1675, says that he and his fellows
Rather than marrie an Irish wifeWould batchellers remain for tearme of life.
Rather than marrie an Irish wife
Would batchellers remain for tearme of life.
Of course the mode of paying troops with patches of land was wholly delusive, as the history of the Roman Cæsars might have warned those who adopted it that it would be. Instead of getting a compact body of settlers forming a sort of 'military frontier,' the Parliament unwittingly created vast estates and introduced absenteeism. The soldiers did not care to stay in a poor wasted country where native labour was scarcely to be had: they sold their 'lots' to their officers or others for a horse, a barrel of beer, a little ready money, &c. Thus was laid the foundation of colossal estates like that of the Pettys. It was the same with the small debenture holders; a London vintner or cook who had contributed £25 to the good cause, and held a debenture to that amount for land in Kerry, was not likely to go out and turn backwoodsman. He sold to one of the larger holders; and these larger holders were soon obliged to connive at the gradual return of the dispossessed Irish, who were content (except the Tories) to till as cottiers and hinds the lands which they had lately owned. Thus it was that, despite such a mixture of zeal and cruelty as that to which the bookbears witness, the Puritan idea was never realized.
We shall not be suspected of undervaluing our Puritan forefathers: they were the salt of the earth in their day; they did the Lord's work right well in many ways. But in Ireland they failed because, while taking Scripture for their guide, they forgot the truth that 'the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.'
The English Colonization of America during the Seventeenth Century.ByEdward D. Neill. Strahan and Co.
Mr. Neill is one of those inconvenient persons who will permit no romance of story-telling to condone falsehood or exaggeration. He would have been a terrible bore to Hume, who is said to have deprecated fresh materials from the State Paper Office, lest they should disturb his conclusions. He would spoil the best anecdote in the world by asking, 'Is it true?' His book is written avowedly to rectify historical fictions respecting the English colonization of America; and it certainly does destroy some very pretty stories, which have furnished themes for both romance and poetry. His book, however, is in itself a history, as well as a correction; and although it can boast no glowing narrative or artistic skill, it reads very pleasantly. One of the romances that he entirely destroys is that of 'Pocahontas and John Rolfe.' Even Bancroft speaks of Rolfe as a young, amiable, enthusiastic Englishman, who, even in his dreams, heard 'a voice crying in his ears that he should strive to make Pocahontas, a young Indian maiden, a Christian, and constrained by the love of Christ, uniting her to himself by the holy bonds of matrimony.' Mr. Neill conclusively proves, by documentary evidence, drawn from the records of the London Company's Transactions, that Rolfe had been for some years previously a married man, and that at his death he left a white widow and some children, beside his son by Pocahontas; and that Pocahontas herself, instead of a romantic Indian maiden, was a bit of an intriguer—with a slightly disreputable character.
Another myth to which Bancroft gives his sanction is that 'the settlers of Maryland were most of them Roman Catholic gentlemen.' Mr. Neill proves that, so far from the old Virginian families being derived from any aristocratic source, the colony was an early Van Dieman's Land, to which King James transported 'divers dissolute persons' and other convicts. It was, in short, a penal settlement, whose residents hailed from 'Bridewell,' fifty or a hundred at a time. Edinburgh used to banish there its 'night-walking women.' Thus, according to Sir Josiah Child's 'New Discourse of Trade,' 1698,—'Virginia and Barbadoes were first peopled by a sort of loose, vagrant people, and destitute of means at home, being either unfit for labour, or such as could find none to employ themselves about, or had so misbehaved themselves by whoreing, thieving, and debauchery, that none would give them work; which merchants and masters of ships, by their agents or spirits, as they were called, gathered up about the streets of London and other places, to be employed upon plantations.' 'As the descendants of these people,' says Mr. Neill, 'increased in wealth, they grew ashamed of their fathers, and became manufacturers, not of useful wares, but of spurious pedigrees'—illustrations of which he gives. The preamble to the statutes of Williamsburgh College presents a dark picture of the illiterate condition of Virginia at the commencement of the eighteenth century. In striking contrast with which is a recent report of Professor Henry B. Smith, D.D., which proves that the largest development and increase of Christianity in this century has been in the United States, the increase of Church membership having relatively outrun the increase of the population. It was in the ratio of one to fifteen in 1800; it is now in the ratio of one to six.
Mr. Neill gives us interesting details concerning the settlement of the American colonies, derived from records, statutes, memoirs, and letters. The history is one of heroic enterprise and romantic experiences. It comprises the emigration of the New England Pilgrims—theMay Flowerseems to have been destined for Northern Virginia, and to have been treacherously taken to Cape Cod; the singular history too of American Quakerism. We regret that we cannot follow into details the information of Mr. Neill's honest and singularly interesting book.
The Annals of our Time; a Diurnal of Events Social and Political, Home and Foreign, from the Accession of Queen Victoria, June 20, 1837.ByJoseph Irving. A new edition, carefully revised, and brought down to the peace of Versailles, February 20, 1871. Macmillan and Co.
History is just now made very fast, and is of a character that will stand out very prominently in the annals of our century. The Peace of Versailles is certainly not aterminus ad quem. It is already half forgotten in the astounding events that have followed; but Mr. Irving could not wait for the stream to stop, and every presumption was that the Peace of Versailles was afinaleat which an ordinary annalist might pause. Mr. Irving's book has been before the public more than two years, and its plan and execution have alike commended themselves to the student and the statesman. Proceeding in a chronological order, he records, after the manner of a diarist, the noteworthy events and incidents of our national history—politics, ecclesiastical events, incidents of fire and flood, everything, indeed, that one would care to know about; these he narrates in a succinct way, and illustrates by quotations from the journals—from the speeches and sayings of remarkable men—from official reports, biographies, histories—nothing comes amiss to him that gives information. He supplies precisely that information which has not yet passed into history, but which memory can only imperfectly retain. He also preserves for us that class of events which is interesting for a generation or twoonly, and of which no educated man can conveniently be ignorant. The loving labour bestowed by Mr. Irving on his work has been immense. In this second edition of it he has corrected errors, supplied omissions, readjusted proportions, condensed information, and carried on his chronicle to the time of publication. Every name and date and entry has been verified. The ten years between 1837 and 1847 have grown from 127 to 230 pages; the obituary notices, from 425 to 1,000; the volume itself, from 734 to 1,034. The index has been carefully revised and extended. The book, indeed, is as invaluable as it is unique; it is a dictionary of dates expanded into a history; it is a history condensed into a chronicle; it is the cream of our social life for thirty-five years; it links together in a light and useful way, so as to present each as a whole, chains of events and incidents in Parliament, Church and social life, debates, duels, controversies, and personal incidents. We have read on from page to page, unwilling to leave off. It is indispensable for every public man.
The Red River Expedition.By CaptainG. L. Huyshe. Macmillan and Co.
This is a curious episode in the history of our Canadian colonies, which, at the time of its occurrence last year, attracted but little attention, owing to the absorbing interest of the Franco-Prussian war. The present writer was in Toronto before the return of the expedition, but even there heard no mention of it. The Red River settlement is an almost unapproachable position, near the centre of our North American Dominions, about 600 miles northwest of Lake Superior, and about 1,200 miles from Toronto. It is reached by crossing the Lakes Huron and Superior, by traversing rivers, and by prairie tracks. The settlement was made by Lord Selkirk in 1813, and was planted by Scotch emigrants. It has attained a mixed population of 15,000 souls. In the negotiations about the confederation of the British North American Provinces, in 1867, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Dominion Government, and the Imperial Government, do not seem sufficiently to have considered the feelings of the little Red River Colony. The French half-breeds in the colony took advantage of this; disputes about lands aggravated it; the Roman Catholic priests fomented it. Louis Riel was placed at their head. They resolved to oppose the Canadian, authorities; formed a 'Provisional Government,' seized Fort Garry, a little fortified town just on the border line of British and American territory; expelled Mr. M'Dougall, the Lieutenant Governor, sent by the Canadian authorities, and proclaimed their independence. After fruitless negotiations, it was resolved to send an armed expedition from Toronto to re-establish Canadian, or rather Imperial authority, and to punish the rebels, especially as Riel had shot one of the Canadian soldiers, after a trial by court-martial. 1,200 troops, under Colonel Wolseley, were, after careful selection and thoughtful provision, sent off. Captain Huyshe was one of the expedition, and this is the record of it. The rebellion itself affords but little incident; it collapsed at once on the arrival of the force, and Riel escaped across the frontier. We regret to find that the American authorities at first threw every obstacle in the way of the expedition, hoping to profit by the disturbance. They refused permission to it to pass through the canal connecting Lake Huron with Lake Superior, and even stopped theChicorasteamer on her regular trip, lest it should give facilities. This involved great embarrassment, delay, and expense. The remonstrances of Mr. Thornton, at Washington, at length procured the removal of this interdict. All means of progression known to the human race, except balloons, had to be made use of. 200 boats had to be built, a commissariat organized, road-makers, &c., to be employed. The time occupied by the expedition was eight months, the cost £400,000. The organization and success were perfect. Captain Huyshe's record is interesting, both as a journal of travel, and as a military operation. It is an Abyssinian expedition on a small scale; not a shot was fired, not a life was lost. The achievement was altogether a remarkable and a creditable one, and has found a capable and pleasant historian.
A Manual of Systematic History.By Dr.Martin Reed. Containing, I., Chronological, Genealogical, and Statistical Tables of Modern History; II., the Biography of Modern History; III., the Facts of English History, Military, Diplomatic, Constitutional, and Social. Jarrold and Sons.
It is impossible to do more than describe this stout and useful volume, which is one of those admirable manuals for the library, desk, or school which enable a ready reference to the facts of history, biography, and social economy that constantly turn up in the work of the student.
In the first part, a series of chronological tables present the memorable facts of British and general history in divisions of centuries, with the names of sovereigns and the date of their accession, of statesmen, authors, artists, &c., together with genealogies and full statistical tables, especially of the cost of different wars in money and men. The second part is a brief biographical dictionary brought down to the present day. The third part is a synopsis and chronology of the principal facts of British history, military, constitutional, institutional, and social—a cyclopædia, indeed, of useful information. Of course we have attempted no verifications of dates, but assuming accuracy, Dr. Reed has furnished a very valuable manual for every literary man's desk.
The Life of John Milton, narrated in connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his time.ByDavid Masson, M.A., LL.D. Vol. II. Macmillan and Co.
Professor Masson has not convinced us of the excellence of his method by his formal defence of it, in which he urges, first, his deliberate purpose, and next his disregard of preconceived ideas of literary form. The former simplyaffirms that his book has not drifted by accident into its present shape; in the latter every writer is to be judged solely by success. There is, moreover, a strong presumption in favour of a 'combination of a biography with a contemporary history.' Every biography is a necessary part of contemporary history, and the question is simply one of degree. Whether a method such as Professor Masson's is justified, depends solely upon the degree in which the hero of the biography contributes to the history with which his name is associated, and in which he can say,quorum pars magna fuit. Concerning Cromwell, for instance, there could scarcely be a doubt as to its propriety. Mr. Christie is justified in adopting the same method in his biography of the first Earl of Shaftesbury; both were men whose lives entered greatly into the history of their time, not only in the sense of being identified with it, in all that made them notable, but in the sense of moulding and constituting it; so that without them—the former especially—the history itself would have been very different. Milton scarcely played such a part in the history of the Commonwealth; although the most illustrious man in it, the sphere of his especial greatness was not of it. It is difficult to suppose that the course and character of the Commonwealth would in any important particular have been essentially different had he not existed. As Cromwell's secretary, and still more as a vigorous pamphleteer, he doubtless contributed powerfully to the idea and defence of the Commonwealth, especially of its ecclesiastical polity; but only as Dryden and Swift contributed to the polity of their day. In the period which this volume comprises—1638–1643—we are almost ludicrously impressed with the insignificant relations of Milton to the events that it narrates. In the huge sandwich which the volume constitutes, the biographical chapters are not even the thinnest slices of meat, they are at the most the mustard. Professor Masson has not been able to avoid in history the solecism in geography of the renowned minister of the lesser Cumbrae. It is a study of the individual man in his relations to the universe. It is, therefore, neither a perfectly detailed history, nor an independent biography; while the biography is full and perfect, such portions of the history only are narrated as are supposed to relate to the life and thought of Milton, but of necessity this is an arbitrary and fluctuating quantity. There is a sense of disproportion and of artificiality throughout which disturbs our enjoyment of the scholarly and vigorous qualities of the book; for Professor Masson is justly entitled to take his place among the few genuine historians of the day. Every page bears witness to his unwearied labour, his great learning, his original research, and his perfect conscientiousness; both as a historian and a biographer, he is equally able and trustworthy. It is, as he affirms, 'a work of independent research and method from first to last.' Much of his labour was done before the State papers relating to the period were calendared. 'There is not a single domestic document extant of those that used to be in the State Paper Office which I have not passed through my hands and scrutinized.' His book, therefore, both in its facts and in its judgments, is an independent and valuable contribution to history. There is about the style a little squaring of the elbows, and what might not irreverently be called a little fussiness, which makes some parts unnecessarily diffuse; but with this qualification, the work is vigorous in expression, noble in sentiment, and elevated in its judicial fairness. It is full of vivid portraits and pictures of the men and of the times, and, better still, it is inspired with noble sympathies for the great principles of political and religious freedom which were so grandly contested. The present volume opens with a narration of the Presbyterian revolt in Scotland and the two 'Bishops' Wars,' which Professor Masson thinks have hardly had attached to them sufficient relative importance. Between the first and the second, the Short Parliament lived its little life; after the second, the Long Parliament was called, a detailed account of the composition of which is given by Professor Masson. After nine months of general legislation, the movement for the reform of the English Church took shape, the chief question being the exclusion of the bishops from Parliament; which, after long debate, fluctuating opinion, and abortive reaction, was effected in February, 1642, chiefly at the moment through the blind blunder of Archbishop Williams in engaging the bishops to a protest against all laws, &c., passed in their absence from the House of Peers. 'The bishops,' said Lord Falkland, 'had been the destruction of unity under pretence of uniformity.' They had been some of them so 'absolutely, directly, and cordially Papists, that it is all that fifteen hundred pounds a year can do to keep them from confessing it.'
The relation of Milton to public affairs at this time was solely that of a pamphleteer. The Church question was uppermost, both in Scotland and in England. Milton is supposed to have aided theSmectymnuansin the composition of their famous pamphlet. The word was made up of the initials of the writers, Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow. It was a reply to Bishop Hall's 'Humble Remonstrance,' and to his 'Episcopacy by Divine Right.' Soon after, Milton began to publish his anti-Episcopal pamphlets, of five of which Professor Masson gives an account. These were directed against Hall, Bishop of Exeter, afterwards of Norwich, so often belauded for his moderation and spirituality, but of whose scholarship and conduct Milton had not a very exalted estimate, in which Professor Masson agrees with him. 'I have seen,' says Professor Masson, 'disagreeable private letters of information written by him to Laud respecting nests of sectaries in London whom it would be well to extirpate; and my distinct impression is, that in his conduct generally, and even in his writings, when carefully examined, there will be found a meaner element than our literarydilettantiand antiquaries have been able todiscover in so celebrated a bishop.' No reader of Milton's prose works needs to be told that, while their arguments are cogent, their fierce and terrific declamation is simply overwhelming; indeed, the coarse vituperation of both sides is hardly conceivable to those who have not read the controversy. We may commend the arguments, as, indeed, the public questions that were debated, and the course of events, to the consideration of Church parties of the present day. Those too who are so enthusiastic about 'our incomparable liturgy,' may with advantage read Milton's incisive criticisms thereupon. An ominous parallel—happily, however, not in spirit—might be traced between the questions of that day and our own. The secular claims of bishops, and the implication in secular politics of the Established Church, have from that time to this been a fruitful source of political and social embarrassment and evil.
Professor Masson traces the way in which the nation drifted into civil war, and makes a valuable contribution to history by giving a detailed statistical and personal account of the forces and leaders on both sides. The history is a thrilling one. Both Mr. Christie and Professor Masson give us new recitals of it. It cannot be told too often, if told in the spirit of conscientious fidelity and generous sympathy of these writers. The greatest lesson that Englishmen can learn, the seeds of the noblest things they can realize, were contained in it. All that is to be said of Milton is, that he was not in the army, which Professor Masson regrets for his own sake, and that about this time he married Mary Powell.
The volume concludes with a most able and valuable account of English Presbyterianism and English Independency, introduced by a biographical analysis of the Westminster Assembly.
Professor Masson, in a very masterly way, traces the rise and history of English Independency from the first Brownists of 1580; gives an account of the Separatists in Holland from 1592 to 1640; of the Separatist congregations in London from 1610 to 1632; of the New England Pilgrims and their Church from 1620 to 1640; of the persistency, reinvigoration, and growth of Independency in England from 1632 to 1643; and closes his volume by representing the array of Presbyterianism and Independency in July, 1643, and their prospects in the Westminster Assembly, which met on the first day of that month, and which, as Professor Masson justly observes, 'for more than five years and a half is to be borne in mind as a power or institution in the English realm, existing side by side with the Long Parliament, and in constant conference and co-operation with it. The number of its sittings during these five years and a half was 1,163 in all, which is at the rate of about four sittings every week for the whole time. The earliest years of the Assembly were the most important. All in all, it was an Assembly which left remarkable and permanent effects in the British Islands, and the history of which ought to be more interesting, in some homely respects, to Britons now, than the history of the Council of Basel, the Council of Trent, or any other of the great ecclesiastical councils, more ancient and œcumenical, about which we hear so much.' We can neither condense nor criticise here the very able and impartial narrative of this section of Professor Masson's history. We may at a future time return to it. We simply commend it to the attention of both Churchmen and Nonconformists, as a very masterly sketch of a historic movement which both should be familiar with, which the former is too apt to speak of with a sneer which only ignorance could render possible, and which is destined to produce great ecclesiastical and national results.
A Life of Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury, 1621–1683.ByW. D. Christie.Macmillan and Co.
Mr. Christie's qualities as an historian are critical rather than philosophical, scholarly rather than pictorial. He laudably prides himself upon scrupulous accuracy, and has the patient industry and conscientious truthfulness which deem no labour too great, no minuteness too trivial, for the achievement of this result. His work, therefore, is a critical rather than a constructive work: or, rather, he constructs by a critical process of vindication. The first Earl of Shaftesbury has fared badly at the hands of history. 'He lived in times of violent party fury, and calumny, which fiercely assailed him living, pursued him in his grave, and still darkens his name. He lived in times when the public had little or no authentic information about the proceedings of members of the Government or of Parliament, when errors in judging public men were more easy than now, and when venal pamphleteers, poets, and play-writers drove a profitable trade in libels on public men.' Shaftesbury not only fell into the hands of political enemies, but his political tergiversations rendered his vindication difficult for his friends. A young man of twenty-one at the commencement of the Civil War, his life ran parallel with the events of that eventful period; he lived through the Restoration to within five years of the Revolution of 1688, and was closely connected with political affairs through the greater part of his life. A Royalist in early life, he became an ardent Parliamentarian; a Royalist again, he played an important part with Monk in bringing back Charles II.; and the problem which Mr. Christie has set himself is to vindicate his honour in these convenient changes; and with the array of great names against him, including even those of Hallam and Macaulay, an arduous task it is; the invective of Macaulay is almost as terrible as that of Dryden. Of course such a career affords rich material for writers on both sides. Dryden, whose unscrupulous pen is no condemnation, unmercifully consigned Shaftesbury to infamy in the judgment of the multitude who read poetry, and know nothing of political history, by making him the Achitophel of his great satire, published just a week before Shaftesbury's trial for high treason, and by lampooning him in 'The Medal,' referring to the medal which Shaftesbury'sfriends had struck on his acquittal. Hume, again, by the power of his literary genius, for a long time brought popular condemnation upon all Whigs and Whiggery, and until his Tory proclivities for the Stuarts were counteracted by recent and more careful historians, made the worse appear the better reason. These falsehoods of detraction, as Mr. Christie justly observed, 'produced counter-falsehoods of excuse and eulogy, and the result has been a greater agglomeration of errors.' In his old age, Shaftesbury began an autobiography, doubtless with a view of self-vindication, but proceeded only so far as his twenty-first year. Locke, who resided in Shaftesbury's house many years as his physician and friend, meditated a biography, but only collected a few materials for it. The fourth Earl, the son of the author of the 'Characteristics,' placed all the materials he possessed in the hands of a Mr. Benjamin Martin, for the purpose of a biography, which he began in 1734, but he was unfitted for the task, and the result was unsatisfactory. The MS., in 1766, was put, for improvement, into the hands of Dr. Sharpe, Master of the Temple; then into those of Dr. Kippis, editor of the 'Biographia Britannica,' after which it was printed, but the fifth Earl was so dissatisfied with it that the whole impression was destroyed, with the exception of two copies. Mr. Bentley republished it in 1836, edited—incompetently, Mr. Christie says—by Mr. George Wingrove Cooke. Stringer, Shaftesbury's solicitor, seems to have furnished Locke with information, fragments of which, in MS., in Locke's handwriting, are among the Shaftesbury papers at St. Giles's; but Stringer is inaccurate and confused. With these materials, and, of course, access to all the family papers, Mr. Christie has constructed his history—or, rather, his vindication—for his book has, throughout, the character of a polemic. It would have been more interesting, and more generally valuable, had Mr. Christie written an affirmative history relegating to appendices or footnotes the polemical discussions which different points demanded. As it is, he has furnished material and sifted it, for the use of the historian proper, and he has done this with rare acuteness and scrupulous fairness.
The entire history of the Great Revolution, the Commonwealth, and the Restoration, passes under review before us, and it could not be examined by a more competent critic.
Anthony Ashley Cooper was of good Hampshire blood on both sides. His father, John Cooper, of Rockborne, was made a baronet the year after his son's birth. His mother was the only daughter of Sir Anthony Ashley, Knt., who was also made a baronet the day before Mr. Cooper; the order of baronets having been created by James I. ten years before; it was to be limited to two hundred. Every baronet paid £1,095 for the honour, and had to be possessed of £1,000 per annum clear of all incumbrances. It was imperative, too, that he should have had a grandfather who had borne arms. Anthony was a little, fragile fellow, but of great abilities, and his family connections gave him a good standing in Oxford, where he became a reformer of abuses. Against one savage and stupid custom, 'tucking freshmen,' he led a successful resistance. The seniors made the freshmen 'hold out their chin, and they, with the nail of their right thumb left long for the purpose, grate off all the skin from the lip to the chin, and then cause them to drink a beer glass of water and salt.' Senators of the House of Commons were then chosen young; some being only sixteen. Cooper was the champion of the Tewkesbury yeomen against a bullying squire at a civic feast, and was rewarded by being sent, at the age of nineteen, as their representative to the House of Commons. Henceforth his life is part of the history of the county. Cooper was with King Charles at Nottingham, and gallantly stormed Wareham; but he soon after, and, as we think Mr. Christie has proved, honourably, went over to the side of the Parliament, and became one of Cromwell's privy counsellors. The motives of neither of his great changes are very clear, but Mr. Christie has shown that they were at least disinterested and unsuspected. He was an intriguer, like most of the men of his time, but his sympathies were uniformly liberal, and he resisted oppressive measures—the Act of Uniformity for instance—at much risk to his own interests. As a reward for his part in the Restoration of Charles, he was made Baron Ashley. He became Lord of the Treasury, and Lord Chancellor. He was one of the notorious Cabal ministry, but Mr. Christie has succeeded in proving that he opposed, though unsuccessfully, the worst measures of that miserable clique, especially the notorious 'Stop of the Exchequer.' The most suspicious thing about him is that he continued in Charles's favour, who made him his Lord Chancellor and created him Earl of Shaftesbury. It seems odd to us that a man without special legal knowledge should have been made the head of the legal profession. In this capacity he is included in Lord Campbell's 'Lives of the Chancellors,' from whose inaccurate criticism Mr. Christie has to rescue him. Charles is said to have justified his choice by saying that Shaftesbury had more law than all his judges, and more religion than all his bishops. Charles's bishops may have been doubtful, but Sir Matthew Hale was one of his judges. He gave general satisfaction to suitors during his year of office, which is saying much. His dismission probably influenced his politics, for he joined the Whig Opposition. His closing years were characterized by fierce conflict with the king, and he was twice sent a prisoner to the Tower, accused of high treason; his acquittal was celebrated by great public rejoicings. At length he concocted, with Russell and Monmouth, a rising against the King, and had to escape to Holland, where, in 1683, just before James II. came to the throne, he died. He was a man of brilliant genius, and a great statesman. He played a not ignoble part in the greatest drama of our English history. He was frail in health, but courageous and high-minded, and an uncompromising champion of liberty. By no means immaculate, either in political principles or personal morals, he has yet, beyondall question, been grossly calumniated. Mr. Christie's volumes throw much interesting light upon not only the political events, but the manners and morals of the times. There are few more melancholy chapters in English history than the reign of Charles II. Political venality, patriotic dishonour, and personal vice vie with each other. Mr. Christie's volumes abundantly justify the conclusions which have at length been reached by Liberals in politics and by Nonconformists in ecclesiastical matters. We earnestly commend them to all students of history as scholarly, acute, and just.
The Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham, written by himself.Vol. II. Blackwood and Co.
Reserving until the completion of this work the more ample consideration and criticism to which The Life and Character of Lord Brougham are entitled, we simply report concerning this second volume that it covers the eventful period between 1808–1828, and narrates Brougham's strenuous and successful struggle for the repeal of the Orders in Council, which he terms 'my greatest achievement'—ultimately achieved under the excitement caused by the assassination of Spencer Perceval. Even Horner described Brougham's exertions as 'unexampled in the modern history of Parliament.' Also, his costly and unsuccessful struggle for the representation of Liverpool, which cost the Liberals £8,000 and the Tories £20,000, during which Brougham made 160 speeches, two or three persons were killed, others severely wounded, and votes were bought at £30 apiece. 'All who knew Liverpool formerly say nothing was ever seen so quiet at an election there.' There were five candidates. Canning beat Brougham by some 200 votes. Such were the good old times. The description of the election is very racy. The chief interest of the volume, however, centres in its detailed account of the family feuds of George III., the relations of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the trial of the Queen. In 1810, Brougham became the legal adviser of the Princess, and from that time took an active part on her side in the vicissitudes of this dirty and ignominious history. Brougham most strongly affirms, in contradiction of much gossip to the contrary, that he and all the legal advisers of the Queen had a clear and unhesitating conviction of her innocence. The narrative throws a clearer light than has hitherto been thrown upon the whole history, clears away many misconceptions, and solves some mysteries.
In an explanatory note, the editor informs us that Lord Brougham, then in his eighty-fourth year, began his account of the trial, after examining his letters and papers, on the 8th of October, 1861. In September, 1862, he began the political part. In November, 1863, he began the account of his early life. In his search for materials he found the manuscript of 'Memnon.' This he marked in pencil, on the first page, thus—'At B——m (Brougham), 1792.' He believed he had 'composedit, entirely forgetting that it was only a translation—probably a task set him by his tutor—a very pardonable mistake, after a lapse of seventy years.' No doubt; but is not the responsibility the editor's, and not Brougham's?