[Footnote 277]
[Footnote 277:Essays on Mm Progress of Nations, in Civilization, Productive Industry, Wealth, and Population. By Ezra C. Seaman. First and Second Series, 12 mo. PP. 645, 659. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1868.]
The first series of the Essays which compose these two stout volumes appeared as long ago as 1846, and has now been revised, amended, and enlarged, and, after being long out of print, republished in connection with a second collection similar in character and general design. Mr. Seaman's purpose has been to inquire into the principal causes of the welfare of nations, such as morality, education, personal and political liberty, commercial, mechanical, and agricultural development, and those natural conditions of climate and geographical position which man has no power to modify, and to show how these causes have operated at various times and in various countries. To the adequate treatment of so vast a theme, there should be brought the labor of a life-time, the learning of a ripe scholar, and the intellect of a philosopher. Mr. Seaman, we must frankly say, has brought neither of the three. He has attempted what not one man in a thousand would be wise to attempt; and if he has failed, he has at any rate failed in very respectable company. The essays are crude and fragmentary. They lack a sustained train of thought and logical connection; they are encumbered with commonplaces and repetitions; and the statistical and historical illustrations with which they are thickly interwoven have the disadvantage of being borrowed from sources that convey no weight of authority. Citations from incompetent witnesses carry no force, but rather weaken the effect of an author's statements.
The fundamental fault of Mr. Seaman's work is not its raggedness, however; but it is the misapprehension, with which he starts, of the meaning of his subject. He understands "Progress" merely as material prosperity. "Civilization" means nothing in his mind but "Productive Industry, Wealth, and Population." That people is the most advanced which owns the most money and wears the best clothes. The destiny of man is commerce and manufactures. The end of civil society is the acquisition of wealth. Liberty is good because it leaves man free to invent telegraphs and railroads. Government is good because trade would be impossible without it. Education is valuable because it stimulates production and regulates industry. Religion is respectable because it develops the intellectual faculties, and teaches us to restrain the appetites whose free indulgence would undermine the constitution or injure our fellow-man. We do not mean to say that Mr. Seaman teaches these doctrines in so many words. He does not know that he teaches them at all. If he ever sees this article, he will no doubt be shocked at our interpretation of his argument. Yet, pushed to their fair and by no means remote conclusions, these are the teachings to which his essays amount. He seems to forget that man was created to know and love God and promote the divine glory, and that is the highest state of civilization in which he most perfectly fulfils the end of his creation. There is no true progress except toward this end.There is no real prosperity, where this heavenly destiny is lost sight of. There is no education which keeps it not constantly in view. Mr. Seaman treats religion merely as an agency for the development of civilization, whereas it is the very essence of civilization itself. He thinks of the worship of God as a useful mental exercise, which sharpens a man's wits and makes him keener at a bargain. One who has practised his brain in theological controversy must of necessity be the clearer-headed when he has to decide between free-trade and protection, or calculate the rate of exchange and the fluctuations of stocks. But theology is not worship. Religion is a matter of the affections as well as the intellect. The unlettered peasant can praise God, and is bound to praise God, no less than the scholar. A purely intellectual religion could not be of divine origin, since it would only be suitable for a small minority of the human race; it could not be the great business of every man's life, as religion must be, if it is worth anything at all. "Happiness, in a future world as well as in this," says Mr. Seaman, "is the sovereign good of man, and constitutes the end and chief purpose of his existence." That statement may pass if you understand happiness to consist in the promotion of the divine glory; but not if you place it in bank-notes and steam-engines. These seem to be the goal of progress in our author's eyes, and he looks at nothing beyond them.
With his false conceptions of the nature of society and religion, it is not surprising that Mr. Seaman should thoroughly misapprehend the work and purpose of that divinely organized church to which we owe all the true civilization there is in the world, and all the progress we have ever made. The only thread of thought which can be clearly discerned running through his essays, is the idea that Catholicism is the great enemy of civilization. We wish it were quite as clear by what line of argument he purposes to prove it. In one chapter, the church is an enemy to education because she does not teach the people enough. In another she is the enemy of free thought because she teaches them too much. Now her offence is neglect, now it is overmuch care. We don't see how it can be both.
"A part," he says, "and one of the most efficient parts of government in all civilized countries, consists in the education of the people." And he argues the necessity of education from the fact that "the great mass of mankind … are guided by imitation, precedent, and the instruction of others." They have very few ideas except those which are put into their heads by better educated people, or are derived directly from the senses. "Such people in all countries are under the influence and control … of the aristocracy, the clergy, the members of the learned professions, and the military and civil officers of government." The policy of the pope and the priesthood, he complains, is to retain the masses in a state of ignorance. "The Bible is kept from them; they are denied the right to read, and exercise their own individual judgments in matters of religion, but must allow their priests to read, think, and judge for them, and to form their opinions; and no efforts are made by the priests to establish common schools, or to teach the common people anything beyond the catechism, and the ceremonies and dogmas of religion, and absolute, unconditional submission in all things to their priests and rulers.Their whole efforts in matters of education are directed to founding colleges and high-schools, for training up young men for the priesthood, and instructing and breathing their opinions into the children and youth of the aristocracy and the wealthy classes." Now, before we go any further, let us prick a few of the mistakes in this paragraph. There are so many we hardly know how to begin.
1. The Bible isnotkept from the common people. It is freely circulated in the vernacular, and our current English version is older than the translation of King James. From the time, in fact, when Bishop Ulphilas in the fifth century translated the Bible into the Gothic tongue, down to our own day, it has been the constant practice of the church to supply the faithful with correct translations of the Holy Scriptures. The use of false and garbled versions is indeed forbidden; but that is another matter altogether.
2. Catholics arenotforbidden to read (!), nor do their priests claim the right to read and think for them, or to form their opinions. Mr. Seaman's statements on these points are so preposterous that in his cooler moments we suppose he is sorry for having made them.
3. Efforts havealwaysbeen made by our clergy to establish schools for the common people. The first work of the parish priest after he has built his church is to build a school-house. The free education of the children of the poor has the next place in his care to the service of the altar. There is not a step in the whole system of education, from the alphabet-class to the highest university cursus [Footnote 278], to which the Catholic Church does not devote the labor of some religious order or congregation, blessed and sanctioned and assisted by the supreme Pontiff.
[Footnote 278: Transcriber's note: "course"]
She does not confine, she never has confined, her solicitude to theological studies or the education of the rich. Teaching the poor has been the chosen labor and chief glory of hundreds of her saints, and is now the crowning work of many a flourishing order, such as the Sisters of Charity, the Brethren of the Christian Schools, and similar organizations, the prime object of which, be it remarked, is the education not of the upper classes but of the mass of the population. The Jesuits are more celebrated for their colleges and higher seminaries than for rudimentary schools; but they too have their primary classes in all places where there is both need and opportunity for them; and even in their colleges where every student is supposed to pay for his education, a system of gratuitous instruction is pursued with a delicate secrecy designed to spare the poor scholar any possible mortification. Of course it is chiefly "the masses" who profit by this hidden charity. Even Mr. Seaman himself, in another part of his book, interrupts his censure of religious orders in general by a confession that many of the communities of monks and nuns have done good by devoting themselves to the education of the young: if he had not confessed it, indeed, he must have been a marvel of ignorance or dishonesty. With the history of the common-school agitation led by Bishop Hughes in New York so fresh in mind, he must be a bold partisan who would deny our anxiety to keep in the very van of educational progress. The Catholic demand for a share of the school fund was in reality a demand for the admission of our parochial schools to the common school system of the State. We were ready, nay anxious, to carry out the State programme of instruction to its fullest extent, and admit the State inspectors and examiners to scrutinize our operations whenever they saw fit.But sectarian bigotry has imposed a double tax upon our efforts for the education of our children, and rather than we should teach them about God opposes our teaching them anything at all. We do the best we can. We pay our tax for the support of the schools we do not approve; we pay another voluntary tax for such parish schools as our poverty can afford; and if these are too small to receive our children and too poor to do as much for them as they would be glad to do, the fault is not ours but the law's, which deprives us of the aid to which we are justly entitled from the common fund. One thing is clear to every dispassionate observer: the Catholics do twice as much for education as any other denomination—nay, do that which no other denomination would think of attempting. A state system of gratuitous instruction is often referred to as one of the exclusive boons of Protestantism. Well, in how many of the great countries of the world, besides our own, is such a system known? Only in France and Austria, which are Catholic, and in Prussia and Scotland, which are Protestant. Protestant England has done less for popular education, and has consequently a more grossly ignorant peasantry than any other country on the globe equally advanced in general civilization. Her great universities and grammar-schools are the relics of Catholic foundations. The half a million of pounds annual income which they enjoy is drawn from Catholic endowments, perverted from their ancient uses; and it is estimated that not more than three-fifths of this sum is actually made available for educational purposes in any way whatever. So shamelessly have these legacies of the ancient faith been misapplied, that there are masters drawing large salaries for presiding over schools which have no scholars, and a few years ago it was found that the teachers of 708 inferior schools and 35 grammar-schools signed their returns with a mark! Of late the government has made efforts for a reform, and the various dissenting sects have also done a great deal in the establishment of denominational schools; but no general system of popular instruction has yet been devised. Popular education in fact is a purely Catholic idea, almost as old as Christianity itself, and the germ of the modern common-school system was in the bosom of the ancient church. "After the introduction of Christianity," saysThe American Cyclopaedia, (art. "Common Schools,") "and its accession to power, the duty of the authorities to educate the young was speedily recognized by the bishops and clergy. The object of this education was of course their training in the doctrines of Christianity, but it was the first recognition of the duty of giving instruction to the masses. As early as A.D. 529 we find the council of Vaison recommending the establishment of public schools. In 800 a synod at Mentz ordered that the parochial priests should have schools in the towns and villages, that 'the little children of all the faithful should learn letters from them. Let them receive and teach these with the utmost charity, that they themselves may shine for ever. Let them receive no remuneration from their scholars, unless what the parents through charity may voluntarily offer." A council at Rome in 836 ordained that there should be three kinds of schools throughout Christendom: episcopal, parochial in towns and villages, and others wherever there could be found place and opportunity. The Council of Lateran in 1179 ordained the establishment of a grammar-school in every cathedral for the gratuitous instruction of the poor.This ordinance was enlarged and enforced by the Council of Lyons in 1245. Thus originated the popular or common school as an outgrowth of the Christian Church. "A council of the 16th century speaks of schools in the priests' houses, and the decretals abound in mention of popular instruction as one of the first duties of the clergy and one of the traditional and most ancient glories of the church. "If the important knowledge of reading and writing was spread among the people," says the socialist philosopher St. Simon, "it was owing to the church." If that knowledge, during the political and social disorders of the middle ages became so difficult of attainment that only a favored few could acquire it, it was the church alone who kept the sacred flame of learning alive in the schools and the cloisters, maintained the great universities and grammar classes in the midst of the most turbulent periods; and when society crystallized again into order, brought forth the treasure of knowledge which she had guarded so long, and gave it to the world. [Footnote 279]
[Footnote 279: SeeThe Catholic Worldfor February, 1869-art. "The Ignorance of the Middle Ages."]
Nearly all the most famous institutions of learning in Europe are of Catholic foundation. Rome is especially well provided with schools, and the Roman College gives free instruction in the classics and the sciences. And in "the face of all these facts—knowing as he must know if he has studied the "progress of nations" with a particle of intelligence, that the Catholic Church has been the most munificent patron of learning the world ever saw—Mr. Seaman has the sublime effrontery to say that "no effort has ever been made in any Catholic country to educate the mass of the people or any of the common classes, except some few selected by the priests, to be educated and trained for the ministry," and that "the great body of Catholics seem to be studiously kept in profound ignorance, that they may be managed and governed the more easily"! It seems to us it would be a good and a just thing if the penalties against malpractice by which the law protects the medical profession from ignorant charlatans could be extended to the profession of literature. There is a graceful compliment to the literature of the Catholic Church in Matthew Arnold's essay on "The Pagan and Mediaeval Religious Sentiment." For the benefit of Mr. Seaman and his class we cite the passage nearly at full length:
"In spite of all the shocks which the feeling of a good Catholic has in this Protestant country inevitably to undergo, in spite of the contemptuous insensibility to the grandeur of Rome which he finds so general and so hard to bear, how much has he to console him, how many acts of homage to the greatness of his religion, may he see if he has his eyes open! I will tell him of one of them. Let him go, in London, to that delightful spot, that Happy Island in Bloomsbury, the reading-room of the British Museum. Let him visit its sacred quarter, the region where its theological books are placed. I am almost afraid to say what he will find there, for fear Mr. Spurgeon, like a second Caliph Omar, should give the library to the flames. He will find an immense Catholic work, the collection of the Abbé Migne, lording it over that whole region, reducing to insignificance the feeble Protestant forces which hang upon its skirts. Protestantism is duly represented, indeed; Mr. Panizzi knows his business too well to suffer it to be otherwise; all the varieties of Protestantism are there; there is the library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, learned, decorous, exemplary, but a little uninteresting; there are the works of Calvin, rigid, militant, menacing; there are the works of Dr. Chalmers, the Scotch thistle, valiantly doing duty as the rose of Sharon, but keeping something very Scotch about it all the time; there are the works of Dr. Channing, the last word of religious philosophy in a land where every one has some culture, and where superiorities are discountenanced—the flower of moral and intelligent mediocrity.But how are all these divided against one another, and how, though they were all united, are they dwarfed by the Catholic leviathan, their neighbor! Majestic in its blue and gold unity, this fills shelf after shelf and compartment after compartment, its right mounting up into heaven among the white folios of theActa Sanctorum, its left plunging down into hell among the yellow octavos of theLaw Digest. Everything is there, in that immensePatrologiae Cursus Completus, in thatEncyclopédie Théologique, thatNouvelle Encyclopédie Théologique, thatTroisième Encyclopédie Théologique; religion, philosophy, history, biography, arts, sciences, bibliography, gossip. The work embraces the whole range of human interests; like one of the great middle-age cathedrals, it is in itself a study for a life. Like the net in Scripture, it drags everything to land, bad and good, lay and ecclesiastical, sacred and profane, so that it be but matter of human concern. Wide-embracing as the power whose product it is! a power, for history, at any rate, eminentlythe Church; not, I think, the church of the future, but indisputably the church of the past, and in the past, the church of the multitude.
"This is why the man of imagination—nay, and the philosopher, too, in spite of her propensity to burn him—will always have a weakness for the Catholic Church; because of the rich treasures of human life which have been stored within her pale. The mention of other religious bodies, or of their leaders, at once calls up in our mind the thought of men of a definite type as their adherents; the mention of Catholicism suggests no such special following. Anglicanism suggests the English Episcopate; Calvin's name suggests Dr. Candlish; Chalmers's, the Duke of Argyll; Channing's, Boston Society; but Catholicism suggests —what shall I say?—all the pellmell of the men and women of Shakespeare's plays. This abundance the Abbé Migne's collection faithfully reflects. People talk of this or that work which they would choose, if they were to pass their life with only one; for my part, I think I would choose the Abbé Migne's collection.Quicqnid agunt homines—everything, as I have said, is there."
But Mr. Seaman complains, not only that the Catholic Church neglects to teach the people, but that she neglects to let them alone. Not only has she never had any schools, but she has had too many schools. She has taken no care of education, and moreover she has meddled officiously with popular instruction when she ought to have confined herself to masses and sermons. The clergy, being for long ages the only teachers of letters, science, philosophy, and religion, acquired an influence over men's conduct and opinions which can only be regarded as unfortunate. Yet, a little while ago, he said that in all conditions of society the majority of mankind are ruled by the thoughts and instructions of others, and that education is one of the most important parts of government. Is it better that this tremendous influence should be exerted by the wisest and most virtuous class, or by those who are eminent only because they are the most powerful? If any set of men are to mould the opinions of the rest, should they not be the men who are best qualified by study and by sacred pursuits to exercise that function with intelligence and sincerity? We believe that when the child passes from the hands of the parent, its best guides are the servants of the church who have devoted themselves to the training of the young in order that they may do good to their fellow creatures and give glory to God. Mr. Seaman would entrust this sacred duty to pot-house politicians, who covet office for the sake of gain. The theory of a paternal government, which watches over all our relations in life, and rears children to be good citizens, may be all very well; but we know what governments are in practice, and petty office-holders are the last men we should want to trust with moulding the opinions of society. There is something too demoralizing in the means by which they generally get their places; and, after they have got them, how many are fit for them?It is the duty of government to promote education and general culture, that is very true; buthowthis ought to be done is another question. Mr. Seaman says the proper way is to remove children from the influence of the two institutions which God has designed for their guides and educators—the family and the church—and to put them under the control of place-hunters, who may possibly have a special talent for instruction, but are just as likely to be fools and rogues. But he has no arguments to support his opinions, and it is not worth while to answer sheer dogmatism.
Mr. Seaman is not satisfied with once gravely declaring that "in all Roman Catholic countries education by means of schools and books is confined to the wealthy classes," and then blaming the priests for interfering with the secular studies of the people instead of confining themselves to religious teaching; asserting that the Church has "usurped the whole domain of metaphysics and philosophy," and yet that she has never done anything for education at all; praising the Presbyterians of Scotland for making schools a part of their religious establishment, so that the young might be instructed "in the principles of religion, grammar, and the Latin tongue," and upbraiding the church because centuries earlier she had done the same thing; but he returns time and again to the same misstatements and the same contradictions. During the Dark Ages, he says, coming back again to the Bible question, "the Scriptures were in the possession of those only who were learned in the dead languages.They had never been translated into any of the modern languages.A good explanation of this remarkable fact may possibly be that the modern languages, at the period to which Mr. Seaman refers, had not yet taken a literary form. He probably means to say that the sacred books had not been translated into the vernacular of any people. If he does, he makes a great mistake. In the first place, the Latin Vulgate was by no means a sealed volume. That version had been made expressly to render the Scriptures accessible to all. The tongue into which it was turned was the one most generally understood by whoever had education enough to read any book at all; and during the so-called Dark Ages, Latin was still in common use all over the continent of Europe. It was not then a dead language, so far as books were concerned, though in the conversation of common life it had passed out of use. Moreover, as we have already seen, translations of the Bible into other languages were made as fast as those languages took shape. Translations of the New Testament were made very early into all the tongues then spoken by Christians. Portions of the Scriptures were turned into Saxon by Adhelm, Egbert, the Venerable Bede, and others, between the 8th and 10th centuries; and there was a complete English version as early as 1290, that is to say, 90 years before Wycliffe's, which Hallam erroneously calls the earliest. The first book printed at Guttenberg's press was a Latin Bible, and in Italy, under the very eye of the church, there were translations in use in the 15th century. The popular fable that Luther first threw open the sacred book to the world is one of the most mischievous falsehoods in history.
On almost every page we find errors hardly less monstrous. "Not one valuable invention, discovery, or improvement," says Mr. Seaman, "during the last three centuries and a half, has originated where the human mind has been subject to Catholicism …. and the same may be said of jurisprudence, government, and science, as well as the useful arts."The impudence of this assertion is enough to take away one's breath. France, then, has done nothing for the arts or for science, Catholic Germany has done nothing, Belgium has done nothing, Italy has done nothing. Nay, more; if the Church for three hundred and fifty years has blighted material progress, if the Catholic clergy during that time have, as our amazingly ignorant author declares, "restrained the human mind from the prosecution of new discoveries in natural science under pretence that the new opinions promulgated were contrary to Scripture, and therefore impious and heretical," how does it happen that the world made any discoveries at all before that period? Why, does Mr. Seaman forget that the art of printing itself, the greatest invention of all time, dates from that "dark age" when the power of the Church was at its height, and Luther had not yet arisen, and that its first use was in the service of the sanctuary? Does he forget that Copernicus was a Catholic priest? that some of the most brilliant of modern discoveries in the positive sciences, in astronomy, in medicine, in natural philosophy, have emanated from Catholic Italy and France, and that the science of jurisprudence, to which he especially refers, owes more to those two countries and Germany than to all the rest of the world? The case of Galileo, to which of course he alludes, has so recently been examined in two elaborate articles in this magazine that we need give but little space to it here. It is enough to say that although the Florentine philosopher was forbidden to wrest Scripture to the support of his theory, and was censured for his disobedience of a solemn obligation to let theology alone and confine himself to science, the Church stood throughout his patron and protector, and the Pope and the Cardinals were the most zealous among his disciples. Mr. Seaman's statement that "when Galileo taught in Italy the Copernican system of astronomy as late as the year 1633, it was decided by the POPE and a COUNCIL OF CATHOLIC CARDINALS AND BISHOPS" that the doctrine was absurd and heretical, and he was "consigned to thedungeonsof the INQUISITION and compelled to recant and abjure his opinions in order to save his life," (the capitals and Italics are Mr. Seaman's,) is a plain up-and-down falsehood. There is no justification of it in any reputable history. "The Pope and a council of Catholic Cardinals and Bishops" never pronounced any judgment whatever either upon Galileo or his doctrines, and never had anything to do with the affair. The judgment, such as it was, expressed merely the opinion of the "qualifiers," or examiners of the Inquisition—an irresponsible committee attached to a civil tribunal, whose report carried no theological weight, and no more represented the doctrine of the Church, or the sentiments of Pope, Cardinals, and Bishops than the Munchausenisms of Mr. Seaman represent the sober verdict of history. The Church is not to be reproached for the blunders of her individual members. Moreover, Galileo never was consigned to the "dungeons of the Inquisition," and never was in peril of his life.
The course of Mr. Seaman's argument leads him to a sketch of the constitution and history of the church, and here he wanders in such a maze of error, that it is bewildering to follow him.He tells us that the Pope and the bishops have the most absolute and unlimited power over the inferior clergy, sending them wherever they choose, and appointing and removing them at pleasure, and that the Pope exercises similar authority over the bishops. Has our learned historian ever heard of such a thing ascanon law, which secures to the inferior clergy a perfect immunity from arbitrary interference by their superiors, and which is in force all over the Christian world, except in new countries, where the church is yet too young to complete her organization? He tells us that the church invented and upholds the doctrine of the divine right of kings, and teaches that the people are bound to submit passively under all circumstances, and that no amount or continuance of oppression and tyranny can justify resistance or rebellion in any case whatever. All history contradicts this statement—contradicts it so plainly that we can hardly account for the author's temerity. If we had the patience to read his book straight through, we should probably find him on some other page blaming the Popes for encouraging rebellion and insurrection. As it is, he declares that "this tyrannical and despotic doctrine, … is the work of the clergy of a comparatively modern period, and as late as the year 1682 the University of Oxford, in England, adopted it." We presume Mr. Seaman is aware that Oxford University in 1682 wasProtestant. He tells us that the Catholic Church is a cruel and persecuting church, and refers to the penal statutes against heresy, which were in force in England, from the 14th to the 16th century, and under which, during the reign of Queen Mary, "several hundred persons were burned;" but he seems not to know thatalldenominations, in those cruel times, persecuted one another impartially; that Henry VIII. had set Mary the example, and Elizabeth was a worthy follower of her father and Calvin and the continental reformers were as bad as "bloody Mary," and even the Protestant settlers of America had little conception of the principle of religious freedom, until it was taught them by the Catholics of Maryland. He declares that the persecution of heretical sects during the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries, and the tyranny of the ecclesiastical aristocracy were the actual causes of the decline of the Roman empire. This is too much! Why, the commencement of the decline dates from the second century, and the Roman ascendency was entirely overthrown by the middle of the fourth; and during this period of decay, the church had no power in the state, but was herself persecuted and driven into the darkness of caverns.
We have spoken our mind plainly about this book, because we think it is one of a class that deserve no mercy. A man who sets himself to write history without consulting even the ordinary sources of historical information commits an offence against truth and against society. Ignorance does not excuse him. Ignorance in such a case is a crime. Of course we do not suppose that Mr. Seaman intentionally makes false statements. But he makes random statements which the slightest examination would have satisfied him were false. He was bound to undertake such an examination, and not having done it, he bears the responsibility of the falsehood. The passage we have already cited about Galileo is a good example of what we mean. There is no color of authority for the erroneous version of the case which Mr. Seaman gives.He could only have evolved that story out of a vague impression that the Pope and the Cardinals had done some very cruel and illiberal thing to the philosopher; and he must have put it into the words he used, because he considered those words effective in representing the action of the church in a black aspect. But the errors are very serious ones. They amount to the assertion that the church has declared a scientific fact to be a theological heresy. If this were true, the church would be no church. Not being true, the words amount to a gross slander. If Mr. Seaman, having been educated in a prejudice against Catholics, and believing that they are cruel and vindictive people who ought to be excluded from good society, should print a pamphlet, charging the Archbishop of New York and his Vicar-General, and the editors ofThe TabletandThe Catholic Worldwith a conspiracy to torture or murder the Rev. Dr. Prime, the fact that he thought it probable the accusationmightbe true, would be no justification, and would not save him from the consequences of a libel suit. The author who is guilty of slander in writing the history of the past, cannot be mulcted in damages like the criminal who carelessly destroys a private character; but he deserves to be placed in the pillory of moral criticism and to be held as a literary outlaw.
Its sounds were hushed by weeping love,A sad heart bade it cease to move,And one long hour of sorrow prove.A heart and it did beat their last,A trembling hand before it passed,And endless silence on it cast.A spectre from the silent lands,A shadow of life's grief it stands,Still pleading with uplifted hands,Whose awful stillness seems to say;Here was the closing of his day—Here was the loosing of the clay.Forget not one, of old so dear,Lift up your hearts for him in prayerAs we are ever lifted here.It shames the soul—that silent clock,Its mournful muteness seems to mockThe love we thought no years could shock.Our sighs and tears of fond distressHave changed to smiles of happinessIt stands unchanged, dumb, motionless!Geraldine.
Its sounds were hushed by weeping love,A sad heart bade it cease to move,And one long hour of sorrow prove.A heart and it did beat their last,A trembling hand before it passed,And endless silence on it cast.A spectre from the silent lands,A shadow of life's grief it stands,Still pleading with uplifted hands,Whose awful stillness seems to say;Here was the closing of his day—Here was the loosing of the clay.Forget not one, of old so dear,Lift up your hearts for him in prayerAs we are ever lifted here.It shames the soul—that silent clock,Its mournful muteness seems to mockThe love we thought no years could shock.Our sighs and tears of fond distressHave changed to smiles of happinessIt stands unchanged, dumb, motionless!Geraldine.
The point of view in which we propound this problem is that of the adequacy of the Christian Church, by its organic institutions, to counteract, in America, those social and political aberrations which, in the eastern hemisphere, have developed and maintained the scourge of pauperism. On this question, history is prophecy; an incomplete prophecy, yet containing all the principles of action which a plastic intelligence and fresh inspiration from its fountain life may enable the church to adapt to our present exigencies.
Under myriad forms and faces, pauperism is the sphinx that devours every society which cannot, within a certain time, find its solution, unless wars have anticipated its fate.
Result of international wars, and source of intestine wars—those irruptions of organized crime—pauperism is the ulcer on the leg of civilization which betrays the impurity of its blood.
It behoves us on the threshold of this inquiry to distinguish between accidental impoverishment, and pauperism as an organic malady, which develops, as in Great Britain,pari passuwith population and even with the increase of wealth.
An earthquake devastates Peru, prostrates its cities and destroys its harvests: its inhabitants suffer the greatest privations, but having ready access to the soil in that prolific climate, little or no chronic pauperism will result. The white population of our immense South has been recently reduced by war to an extreme distress. Flanders, Germany, France, the most prosperous countries of Europe, have been scourged still more severely; yet industrious generations suffice to efface the trace of war. Pestilences, which decimate the population of a country, yet respect property, and do not pauperize the survivors, but the contrary; for they have freer access to the means of production. But why is it that Great Britain—the old monarch of the seas, with her predatory grasp on the neck of the Indies, with all her stupendous machinery of production, and fearing no enemy from abroad—is rotting with pauperism amid peace and wealth, perishing like an old eagle, condemned to starvation by the excessive curvature of his overlapping beak?Behold our mother country, she whose laws and institutions we are now in the main reproducing, she whose crimes against charity we reorganize by exposing our soil to the cupidity of speculators, whose pauperism we inherit by emigration, and whose fate we must share, as certainly as the same causes produce the same effects, unless we reform in our youth.
One hope, one faith, one path of social salvation, remains for us both and for all the world—namely, cooperative Christian association, that, baffling pride and greed, restores to the workman the produce of his work, and renders the practical love of our neighbor the means of satisfaction for our own needs, whether of the senses or the soul. Now, Rochdale and its kindred co-operative enterprises, whose success is so encouraging in England; the masons and other artisan associations of Paris, like the trades co-operations of Barcelona and the old Italian cities; even the Hanseatic League, so monastic in its discipline—all proceed in direct line from the Columbans, the Cistercians, and other religious orders of the Benedictine group, who initiated the agricultural Christianity of Europe. The seed sown in the mediaeval heart did not rot amid that dissolution of society which is called theReformation. It has survived the oppressions of aristocracy and capital no longer tempered by monastic orders; it has survived the internecine competition of our modernproletariat; and now the same organic type, under new names, puts forth its leaf, buds, blooms, and fruits.
"If we look," says Balmes, "at the different systems which ferment in minds devoted to the study of pauperism and its remedies, we shall always find there association under one form or another. Now, association has been at all times one of the favorite principles of Catholicity, which, by proclaiming unity in faith, proclaims unity in all things. If we examine the religious institutions characteristic of Europe in its darkest period of ignorance, corruption, and social dissolution, we observe that the monks of the west were not content with sanctifying themselves; from the first they influenced society. Society had need of strong efforts to preserve its life in the terrible crisis through which it had to pass. The secret of strength is in the union of individual forces, inassociation. This secret has been taught to European society as by a revelation from heaven."
Sufficient attention has not perhaps been paid to the merit of the industrial organization, introduced into Europe from the earliest ages, and which became more and more diffused after the twelfth century. We allude to the trades-unions and other associations, which, established under the influence of the Catholic religion, had pious foundations for the celebration of their feasts, and for assisting each other in their necessities.
We must recognize here that highly effective organizations of labor had taken root in Europe, either by the initiative of the religious orders, (to whom the north owed its civilization,) or in the congenial atmosphere of Catholicity; that in this organization, co-operation, the Christian spirit, had supplanted or prevented internecine competition, the secular spirit; that this system of labor rendered pauperism impossible and elevated the working classes to a plane of virtue, of dignity and prosperity elsewhere unattained; that it had conquered and kept its ground against feudal oppression and aggression, by a series of bloodless battles in which wisdom and patience, self-control and forethought, perseverance and the love of honorable uses, vindicated the political superiority of the Christian principle; finally that it possessed within itself vigorous reproductive or propagative forces, and had indeed become the manifest destiny of Europe at that epoch when schism in the church sowed everywhere hatreds and discord, and denatured civilization, substituting the ideal of individualism for that of solidarity.Hence, incoherence and destructive competition alike in the market as in the church. For labor, its result is pauperism; for piety, despair.
Besides the religious motives which brought property into the hands of the monks, there is another title, remarks Balmes, which has always been regarded as one of the most just and legitimate. The monks cultivated waste lands, dried up marshes, constructed roads, restrained rivers within their beds, and built bridges over them. Over a considerable portion of Europe, which was in a state of rude nature, the monasteries founded here and there have been centres of agriculture and the arts of social life. Is not he who reclaims the wilderness, cultivates it, and fills it with inhabitants, worthy of preserving large possessions there?
The religious and moral influence of the monks contributed greatly, in early European epochs, to the respect of property as well as persons against attacks which were so frequent in the turbulent ages succeeding the overthrow of the Roman empire by barbarian nations, that in some countries almost every castle was a den of robbers, from which its chief overlooked the country and sallied forth to collect spoils.
The man who is constantly obliged to defend his own is also constantly led to usurp the property of others: the first thing to do to remedy so great an evil was to locate and fix the population by means of agriculture, and to accustom them to respect property, not only by reasons drawn from private interest, but also by the sight of large domains belonging to establishments regarded as inviolable, and against which a hand could not be raised without sacrilege. Thus religious ideas were connected with social ones, and they slowly prepared an organization which was to be completed in more peaceable times.
It is to the protection afforded to farmers by the monasteries in retired places that we owe the dissemination of the people in rural districts, which would have been otherwise impossible. Those who have lived in a country convulsed by war, like our South, can best appreciate this.
Mallet (History of the Swiss, vol. i. p. 105, a Protestant authority) tells us that "the monks softened by their instructions the ferocious manners of the people, and opposed their credit to the tyranny of the nobility, who knew no other occupation than war, and grievously oppressed their neighbors. On this account the government of monks was preferred to theirs. The people sought them for judges, (that is, as umpires.) It was a usual saying that it was better to be governed by the bishop's crosier than the monarch's sceptre."
The kindness and charities performed by the religious orders, remarks Cobbett, (History of the Protestant Reformation,) made them objects of great veneration, and the rich made them in time the channels of their benevolence to the poor. Kings, queens, princes, princesses, nobles, and gentlefolk founded monasteries and convents, that is, erected the buildings and endowed them with estates for their maintenance.Others—some in the way of atonement for their sins, and some from a pious motive, gave while alive, or bequeathed at their death, lands, houses, or money to monasteries already erected. So that in time the monasteries became the owners of great landed estates; they had the lordship over innumerable manors, and had a tenantry of prodigious extent, especially in England, where the monastic orders were always held in great esteem, in consequence of Christianity having been introduced into the kingdom by a community of monks.
One of the greatest advantages attending the monasteries in the political economy of the country was that they of necessity caused the revenues of a large part of the lands to be spent on the spot whence those revenues arose. The hospitals and all the other establishments of the kind had the same tendency, so that the revenues of the land were diffused immediately among the people at large. We all know how the state of a parish changes for the worse when a great land-owner quits his mansion in it, and leaves that mansion shut up, and what an effect this has upon the poor-rates. What, then, must have been the effect of twenty monasteries in every county, expending constantly a large part of their incomes on the spot? If Ireland had still her seven hundred or eight hundred monastic institutions, there would be no periodical famines and typhus fevers there; no need of sunset or sunrise laws shutting the people up at night to prevent insurrections; no projects for preventing the increase of families; no schemes for getting rid of a "surplus population;" no occasion for the people to live on third-rate potatoes—not enough, at that; for their nakedness, their hunger, their dying of hundreds with starvation, while their ports are crowded with ships carrying provisions from their shores, and while an army is fed in the country, the business of which army is to keep the starving people quiet.
Sir Walter Scott thus exposes the nonsense of the "economists on the non-influence of absenteeism." In the year 1817, when the poor stood so much in need of employment, a friend asked the Duke of Buccleugh why his grace did not prepare to go to London in the spring? By way of answer, the duke showed him a list of laborers then employed in improvements on his different estates; the number of whom, exclusive of his regular establishments, amounted to nine hundred and forty-seven men, who, with those whose support depended on their wages, would reckon several thousand; many of whom must have found it difficult to obtain subsistence had the duke not foregone the privilege of his rank in order to provide with more convenience for them. The result of such conduct is twice blessed, both in the means which it employs and in the end which it attains in the general economy of the country. This anecdote forms a good answer to those theorists who pretend that the residence of proprietors on their estates is, a matter of indifference to the inhabitants of the district. Had the duke been residing and spending his revenues elsewhere, one-half of these poor people would have wanted employment and food, and would probably have been little comforted by any metaphysical arguments upon population which could have been presented to their investigation.
"Many such things may be daily heard," says Howitt, "of the present Duke of Portland."