| VOLUME I. |
| VOLUME II. |
| VOLUME III. |
| VOLUME IV. |
| VOLUME V. |
| VOLUME VI. |
CONTENTS
ESSAYS
SIR WILLIAM
TEMPLE.
GLADSTONE ON CHURCH AND STATE.
LORD CLIVE.
VON RANKE.
LEIGH HUNT.
LORD HOLLAND.
Mr. Courtenay 1has long been well known to politicians as an industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of Parliament. He has been one of the most moderate, and, at the same time, one of the least pliant members of the Conservative party. His conduct has, indeed, on some questions, been so Whiggish, that both those who applauded and those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be considered as a Tory. But his Toryism, such as it is, he has held fast through all changes of fortune and fashion; and he has at last retired from public life, leaving behind him, to the best of our belief, no personal enemy, and carrying with him the respect and good will of many who strongly dissent from his opinions.
This book, the fruit of Mr. Courtenay’s leisure, is introduced by a preface in which he informs us that the
(1) Memoirs of the Life, Works, and Correspondence of Sir
William Temple. By the Right Hon. Thomas Peregrine
Courtenay. 2 vols. 6vo. London: 1836.
2assistance furnished to him from various quarters “has taught him the superiority of literature to politics for developing the kindlier feelings, and conducing to an agreeable life.” We are truly glad that Mr. Courtenay is so well satisfied with his new employment, and we heartily congratulate him on having been driven by events to make an exchange which, advantageous as it is, few people make while they can avoid it. He has little reason, in our opinion, to envy any of those who are still engaged in a pursuit from which, at most, they can only expect that, by relinquishing liberal studies and social pleasures, by passing nights without sleep and summers without one glimpse of the beauty of nature, they may attain that laborious, that invidious, that closely watched slavery which is mocked with the name of power.
The volumes before us are fairly entitled to the praise of diligence, care, good sense, and impartiality; and these qualities are sufficient to make a hook valuable, but not quite sufficient to make it readable. Mr. Courtenay has not sufficiently studied the arts of selection and compression. The information with which he furnishes us, must still, we apprehend, be considered as so much raw material. To manufacturers it will be highly useful; but it is not yet in such a form that it can be enjoyed by the idle consumer. To drop metaphor, we are afraid that this work will be less acceptable to those who read for the sake of reading, than to those who read in order to write.
We cannot help adding, though we are extremely unwilling to quarrel with Mr. Courtenay about politics, that the book would not be at all the worse if it contained fewer snarls against the Whigs of the present day. Not only are these passages out of place in a 3historical work, but some of them are intrinsically such that they would become the editor of a third-rate party newspaper better than a gentleman of Mr. Courtenay’s talents and knowledge. For example, we are told that, “it is a remarkable circumstance, familiar to those who are acquainted with history, but suppressed by the new Whigs, that the liberal politicians of the seventeenth century and the greater part of the eighteenth, never extended their liberality to the native Irish, or the professors of the ancient religion.” What schoolboy of fourteen is ignorant of this remarkable circumstance? What Whig, new or old, was ever such an idiot as to think that it could be suppressed? Really we might as well say that it is a remarkable circumstance, familiar to people well read in history, but carefully suppressed by the Clergy of the Established Church, that in the fifteenth century England was in communion with Rome. We are tempted to make some remarks on another passage, which seems to be the peroration of a speech intended to have been spoken against the Reform Bill: but we forbear.
We doubt whether it will be found that the memory of Sir William Temple owes much to Mr. Courtenay’s researches. Temple is one of those men whom the world has agreed to praise highly without knowing much about them, and who are therefore more likely to lose than to gain by a close examination. Yet he is not without fair pretensions to the most honourable place among the statesmen of his time. A few of them equalled or surpassed him in talents; but they were men of no good repute for honesty. A few may be named whose patriotism was purer, nobler, and more disinterested than his; but they were men of no eminent ability. Morally, he was above Shaftesbury; intellectually, he was above Russell. 4To say of a man that lie occupied a high position in times of misgovernment, of corruption, of civil and religious faction, that nevertheless he contracted no great stain and bore no part in any great crime, that he won the esteem of a profligate Court and of a turbulent people, without being guilty of any disgraceful subserviency to either, seems to be very high praise; and all this may with truth be said of Temple.
Yet Temple is not a man to our taste. A temper not naturally good, but
under strict command; a constant regard to decorum; a rare caution in
playing that mixed game of skill and-hazard, human life; a disposition to
be content with small and certain winnings rather than to go on doubling
the stake; these seem to us to be the most remarkable features of his
character. This sort of moderation, when united, as in him it was, with
very considerable abilities, is, under ordinary circumstances, scarcely to
be distinguished from the highest and purest integrity, and yet may be
perfectly compatible with laxity of principle, with coldness of heart, and
with the most intense selfishness. Temple, we fear, had not sufficient
warmth and elevation of sentiment to deserve the name of a virtuous man.
He did not betray or oppress his country: nay, he rendered considerable
services to her; but he risked nothing for her. No temptation which either
the King or the Opposition could hold out ever induced him to come forward
as the supporter either of arbitrary or of factious measures. But he was
most careful not to give offence by strenuously opposing such measures. He
never put himself prominently before the public eye, except at
conjunctures when he was almost certain to gain and could not possibly
lose, at conjunctures when the 5interest of the State, the views of the Court,
and the passions of the multitude, all appeared for an instant to
coincide. By judiciously availing himself of several of these rare
moments, he succeeded in establishing a high character for wisdom and
patriotism. When the favourable crisis was passed, he never risked the
reputation which he had won. He avoided the great offices of State with a
caution almost pusillanimous, and confined himself to quiet and secluded
departments of public business, in which he could enjoy moderate but
certain advantages without incurring envy. If the circumstances of the
country became such that it was impossible to take any part in politics
without some danger, he retired to his library and his orchard, and, while
the nation groaned under oppression, or resounded with tumult and with the
din of civil arms, amused himself by writing memoirs and tying up
apricots. His political career bore some resemblance to the military
career of Lewis the Fourteenth. Lewis, lest his royal dignity should be
compromised by failure, never repaired to a siege, till it had been
reported to him by the most skilful officers in his service’, that nothing
could prevent the fall of the place. When this was ascertained, the
monarch, in his helmet and cuirass, appeared among the tents, held
councils of war, dictated the capitulation, received the keys, and then
returned to Versailles to hear his flatterers repeat that Turenne had been
beaten at Mariendal, that Condé had been forced to raise the siege of
Arras, and that the only warrior whose glory had never been obscured by a
single check was Lewis the Great. Yet Coudé and Turenne will always be
considered as captains of a very different order from the invincible
Lewis; and we must own that many statesmen who have committed 6great faults,
appear to us to be deserving of more esteem than the faultless Temple. For
in truth his faultlessness is chiefly to be ascribed to his extreme dread
of all responsibility, to his determination rather to leave his country in
a scrape than to run any chance of being in a scrape himself. He seems to
have been averse from danger; and it must be admitted that the dangers to
which a public man was exposed, in those days of conflicting tyranny and
sedition, were of the most serious kind. He could not bear discomfort,
bodily or mental. His lamentations when, in the course of his diplomatic
journeys, he was put a little out of his way, and forced, in the vulgar
phrase, to rough it, are quite amusing. He talks of riding a day or two on
a bad Westphalian road, of sleeping on straw for one night, of travelling
in winter when the snow lay on the ground, as if he had gone on an
expedition to the North Pole or to the source of the Nile. This kind of
valetudinarian effeminacy, this habit of coddling himself, appears in all
parts of his conduct. He loved fame, but not with the love of an exalted
and generous mind. He loved it as an end, not at all as a means; as a
personal luxury, not at all as an instrument of advantage to others. He
scraped it together and treasured it up with a timid and niggardly thrift;
and never employed the hoard in any enterprise, however virtuous and
useful, in which there was hazard of losing one particle. No wonder if
such a person did little, or nothing which deserves positive blame. But
much more than this may justly be demanded of a man possessed of such
abilities, and placed in such a situation. Had Temple been brought before
Dante’s infernal tribunal, he would not have been condemned to the deeper
recesses of the abyss. He would not have 7been boiled with Dundee in the crimson pool of
Bulicame, or hurled with Danby into the seething pitch of Malebolge, or
congealed with Churchill in the eternal ice of Giudecca; but he would
perhaps have been placed in the dark vestibule next to the shade of that
inglorious pontiff—
“Che fece per
viltate il gran rifiuto.”
Of course a man is not bound to be a politician any more than he is bound to be a soldier; and there are perfectly honourable ways of quitting both politics and the military profession. But neither in the one way of life, nor in the other, is any man entitled to take all the sweet and leave all the sour. A man who belongs to the army only in time of peace, who appears at reviews in Hyde Park, escorts the Sovereign with the utmost valour and fidelity to and from the House of Lords, and retires as soon as he thinks it likely that he may be ordered on an expedition, is justly thought to have disgraced himself. Some portion of the censure due to such a holiday-soldier may justly fall on the mere holiday-politician, who flinches from his duties as soon as those duties become difficult and disagreeable, that is to say, as soon as it becomes peculiarly important that he should resolutely perform them.
But though we are far indeed from considering Temple as a perfect statesman, though we place him below many statesmen who have committed very great errors, we cannot deny that, when compared with his contemporaries, he makes a highly respectable appearance. The reaction which followed the victory of the popular party over Charles the First, had produced a hurtful effect on the national character; and this effect was most discernible in the classes and in the places 8which had been most strongly excited by the recent revolution. The deterioration was greater in London than in the country, and was greatest of all in the courtly and official circles. Almost all that remained of what had been good and noble in the Cavaliers and Roundheads of 1642, was now to be found in the middling orders. The principles and feelings which prompted the Grand Remonstrance were still strong among the sturdy yeomen, and the decent God-fearing merchants. The spirit of Derby and Capel still glowed in many sequestered manor-houses; but among those political leaders who, at the time of the Restoration, were still young or in the vigour of manhood, there was neither a Southampton nor a Vane, neither a Falkland nor a Hampden. The pure, fervent, and constant loyalty which, in the preceding reign, had remained unshaken on fields of disastrous battle, in foreign garrets and cellars, and at the bar of the High Court of Justice, was scarcely to be found among the rising courtiers. As little, or still less, could the new chiefs of parties lay claim to the great qualities of the statesmen who had stood at the head of the Long Parliament. Hampden, Pym, Vane, Cromwell, are discriminated from the ablest politicians of the succeeding generation, by all the strong lineaments which distinguish the men who produce revolutions from the men whom revolutions produce. The leader in a great change, the man who stirs up a reposing community, and overthrows a deeply-rooted system, may be a very depraved man; but he can scarcely be destitute of some moral qualities which extort even from enemies a reluctant admiration, fixedness of purpose, intensity of will, enthusiasm, which is not the less fierce or persevering because it is sometimes disguised under the 9semblance of composure, and which bears down before it the force of circumstances and the opposition of reluctant minds. These qualities, variously combined with all sorts of virtues and vices, may be found, we think, in most of the authors of great civil and religious movements, in Cæsar, in Mahomet, in Hildebrand, in Dominic, in Luther, in Robespierre; and these qualities were found, in no scanty measure, among the chiefs of the party which opposed Charles the First. The character of the men whose minds are formed in the midst of the confusion which follows a great revolution is generally very different. Heat, the natural philosophers tell us, produces rarefaction of the air; and rarefaction of the air produces cold. So zeal makes revolutions; and revolutions make men zealous for nothing. The politicians of whom we speak, whatever may be their natural capacity or courage, are almost always characterised by a peculiar levity, a peculiar inconstancy, an easy, apathetic way of looking at the most solemn questions, a willingness to leave the direction of their course to fortune and popular opinion, a notion that one public cause is nearly as good as another, and a firm conviction that it is much better to be the hireling of the worst cause than to be a martyr to the best.
This was most strikingly the case with the English statesmen of the generation which followed the Restoration. They had neither the enthusiasm of the Cavalier nor the enthusiasm of the Republican. They had been early emancipated from the dominion of old usages and feelings; yet they had not acquired a strong passion for innovation. Accustomed to see old establishments shaking, falling, lying in ruins all around them, accustomed to live under a succession of 10constitutions of which the average duration was about a twelvemonth, they had no religious reverence for prescription, nothing of that frame of mind which naturally springs from the habitual contemplation of immemorial antiquity and immovable stability. Accustomed, on the other hand, to see change after change welcomed with eager hope and ending in disappointment, to see shame and confusion of face follow the extravagant hopes and predictions of rash and fanatical innovators, they had learned to look on professions of public spirit, and on schemes of reform, with distrust and contempt. They sometimes talked the language of devoted subjects, sometimes that of ardent lovers of their country. But their secret creed seems to have been, that loyalty was one great delusion, and patriotism another. If they really entertained any predilection for the monarchical or for the popular part of the constitution, for episcopacy or for presbyterianism, that predilection was feeble and languid, and instead of overcoming, as in the times of their fathers, the dread of exile, confiscation, and death, was rarely of power to resist the slightest impulse of selfish ambition or of selfish fear. Such was the texture of the presbyterianism of Lauderdale, and of the speculative republicanism of Halifax. The sense of political honour seemed to be extinct. With the great mass of mankind, the test of integrity in a public man is consistency. This test, though very defective, is perhaps the best that any, except very acute or very near observers, are capable of applying; and does undoubtedly enable the people to form an estimate of the characters of the great, which, on the whole, approximates to correctness. But during the Latter part of the seventeenth century, inconsistency 11had necessarily ceased to be a disgrace; and a man was no more taunted with it, than he is taunted with being black at Timbuctoo. Nobody was ashamed of avowing what was common between him and the whole nation. In the short space of about seven years, the supreme power had been held by the Long Parliament, by a Council of Officers, by Barebones’ Parliament, by a Council of Officers again, by a Protector according to the Instrument of Government, by a Protector according to the Humble Petition and Advice, by the Long Parliament again, by a third Council of Officers, by the Long Parliament a third time, by the Convention, and by the King. In such times, consistency is so inconvenient to a man who affects it, and to all who are connected with him, that it ceases to be regarded as a virtue, and is considered as impracticable obstinacy and idle scrupulosity. Indeed, in such times, a good citizen may be bound in duty to serve a succession of Governments. Blake did so in one profession and Hale in another; and the conduct of both has been approved by posterity. But it is clear that when inconsistency with respect to the most important public questions has ceased to be a reproach, inconsistency with respect to questions of minor importance is not likely to be regarded as dishonourable. In a country in which many very honest people had, within the space of a few months, supported the government of the Protector, that of the Rump, and that of the King, a man was not likely to be ashamed of abandoning his party for a place, or of voting for a bill which he had opposed.
The public men of the times which followed the Restoration were by no means deficient in courage or ability; and some kinds of talent appear to have been developed 12amongst them to a remarkable, we might almost say, to a morbid and unnatural degree. Neither Theramenes in ancient, nor Talleyrand in modern times, had a finer perception of all the peculiarities of character, and of all the indications of coming change, than some of our countrymen in that age. Their power of reading things of high import, in signs which to others were invisible or unintelligible, resembled magic. But the curse of Reuben was upon them all: “Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.”
This character is susceptible of innumerable modifications, according to the innumerable varieties of intellect and temper in which it may be found. Men of unquiet minds and violent ambition followed a fearfully eccentric course, darted wildly from one extreme to another, served and betrayed all parties in turn, showed their unblushing foreheads alternately in the van of the most corrupt administrations and of the most factious oppositions, were privy to the most guilty mysteries, first of the Cabal, and then of the Rye-House Plot, abjured their religion to win their sovereign’s favour while they were secretly planning his overthrow, shrived themselves to Jesuits with letters in cipher from the Prince of Orange in their pockets, corresponded with the Hague whilst in office under James, and began to correspond with St. Germain’s as soon as they had kissed hands for office under William. But Temple was not one of these. He was not destitute of ambition. But his was not one of those souls in which unsatisfied ambition anticipates the tortures of hell, gnaws like the worm which dieth not, and burns like the fire which is not quenched. His principle was to make sure of safety and comfort, and to let greatness come if it would. It came: he enjoyed it: and, in the very 13first moment in which it could no longer be enjoyed without danger and vexation, he contentedly let it go. He was not exempt, we think, from the prevailing political immorality. His mind took the contagion, but took it ad modum recipientis, in a form so mild that an undiscerning judge might doubt whether it were indeed the same fierce pestilence that was raging all around. The malady partook of the constitutional languor of the patient. The general corruption, mitigated by his calm and unadventurous temperament, showed itself in omissions and desertions, not in positive crimes; and his inactivity, though sometimes timorous and selfish, becomes respectable when compared with the malevolent and perfidious restlessness of Shaftesbury and Sunderland.
Temple, sprang from a family which, though ancient and honourable, had, before his time, been scarcely mentioned in our history, but which, long after his death, produced so many eminent men, and formed such distinguished alliances, that it exercised, in a regular and constitutional manner, an influence in the state scarcely inferior to that which, in widely different times, and by widely different arts, the House of Neville attained in England, and that of Douglas in Scotland. During the latter years of George the Second, and through the whole reign of George the Third, members of that widely spread and powerful connection were almost constantly at the head either of the Government or of the Opposition. There were times when the cousinhood, as it was once nicknamed, would of itself have furnished almost all the materials necessary for the construction of an efficient Cabinet. Within the space of fifty years, three First Lords of the Treasury, three Secretaries of State, two Keepers 14of the Privy Seal, and four First Lords of the Admiralty were appointed from among the sons and grandsons of the Countess Temple.
So splendid have been the fortunes of the main stock of the Temple family, continued by female succession. William Temple, the first of the line who attained to any historical eminence, was of a younger branch. His father, Sir John Temple, was Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and distinguished himself among the Privy Councillors of that kingdom by the zeal with which, at the commencement of the struggle between the Crown and the Long Parliament, he supported the popular cause. He was arrested by order of the Duke of Ormond, but regained his liberty by an exchange, repaired to England, and there sate in the House of Commons as burgess for Chichester. He attached himself to the Presbyterian party, and was one of those moderate members who, at the close of the year 1648, voted for treating with Charles on the basis to which that Prince had himself agreed, and who were, in consequence, turned out of the House, with small ceremony, by Colonel Pride. Sir John seems, however, to have made his peace with the victorious Independents; for, in 1653, he resumed his office in Ireland.
Sir John Temple was married to a sister of the celebrated Henry Hammond, a learned and pious divine, who took the side of the King with very conspicuous zeal during the civil war, and was deprived of his preferment in the church after the victory of the Parliament. On account of the loss which Hammond sustained on this occasion, he has the honour of being designated, in the cant of that new brood of Oxonian sectaries who unite the worst parts of the Jesuit to the worst parts of the Orangeman, as Hammond, Presbyter, Doctor, and Confessor. 15William Temple, Sir John’s eldest son, was born in London in the year 1628. He received his early education under his maternal uncle, was subsequently sent to school at Bishop-Stortford, and, at seventeen, began to reside at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where the celebrated Cudworth was his tutor. The times were not favourable to study. The Civil War disturbed even the quiet cloisters and bowling-greens of Cambridge, produced violent revolutions in the government and discipline of the colleges, and unsettled the minds of the students. Temple forgot at Emmanuel all the little Greek which he had brought from Bishop-Stortford, and never retrieved the loss; a circumstance which would hardly be worth noticing but for the almost incredible fact that, fifty years later, he was so absurd as to set up his own authority against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and philology. He made no proficiency either in the old philosophy which still lingered in the schools of Cambridge, or in the new philosophy of which Lord Bacon was the founder. But to the end of his life he continued to speak of the former with ignorant admiration, and of the latter with equally ignorant contempt.
After residing at Cambridge two years, he departed without taking a degree, and set out upon his travels. He seems to have been then a lively, agreeable young man of fashion, not by any means deeply read, but versed in all the superficial accomplishments of a gentleman, and acceptable in all polite societies. In politics he professed himself a Royalist. His opinions on religious subjects seem to have been such as might be expected from a young man of quick parts, who had received a rambling education, who had not thought, deeply, who had been disgusted by the morose austerity 16of the Puritans, and who, surrounded from childhood by the hubbub of conflicting sects, might easily learn to feel an impartial contempt for them all.
On his road to France he fell in with the son and daughter of Sir Peter Osborne. Sir Peter held Guernsey for the King, and the young people were, like their father, warm for the royal cause. At an inn where they stopped in the Isle of Wight, the brother amused himself with inscribing on the windows his opinion of the ruling powers. For this instance of malignancy the whole party were arrested, and brought before the governor. The sister, trusting to the tenderness which, even in those troubled times, scarcely any gentleman of any party ever failed to show where a woman was concerned, took the crime on herself, and was immediately set at liberty with her fellow-travellers.
This incident, as was natural, made a deep impression on Temple. He was only twenty. Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said to have been handsome; and there remains abundant proof that she possessed an ample share of the dexterity, the vivacity, and the tenderness of her sex. Temple soon became, in the phrase of that time, her servant, and she returned his regard. But difficulties, as great as ever expanded a novel to the fifth volume, opposed their wishes. When the courtship commenced, the father of the hero was sitting in the Long Parliament; the father of the heroine was commanding in Guernsey for King Charles. Even when the war ended, and Sir Peter Osborne returned to his seat at Chicksands, the prospects of the lovers were scarcely less gloomy. Sir John Temple had a more advantageous alliance in view for his son. Dorothy Osborne was in the mean 17time besieged by as many suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the fame of Portia. The most distinguished on the list was Henry Cromwell. Destitute of the capacity, the energy, the magnanimity of his illustrious father, destitute also of the meek and placid virtues of his elder brother, this young man was perhaps a more formidable rival in love than either of them would have been. Mrs. Hutchinson, speaking the sentiments of the grave and aged, describes him as an “insolent foole,” and a “debauched ungodly cavalier.” These expressions probably mean that he was one who, among young and dissipated people, would pass for a fine gentleman. Dorothy was fond of dogs of larger and more formidable breed than those which lie on modern hearth rugs; and Henry Cromwell promised that the highest functionaries at Dublin should be set to work to procure her a fine Irish greyhound. She seems to have felt his attentions as very flattering, though his father was then only Lord-General, and not yet Protector. Love, however, triumphed over ambition, and the young lady appears never to have regretted her decision; though, in a letter written just at the time when all England was ringing with the news of the violent dissolution of the Long Parliament, she could not refrain from reminding Temple, with pardonable vanity, “how great she might have been, if she had been so wise as to have taken hold of the offer of H. C.”
Nor was it only the influence of rivals that Temple had to dread. The relations of his mistress regarded him with personal dislike, and spoke of him as an unprincipled adventurer, without honour or religion, ready to render service to any party for the sake of preferment. This is, indeed, a very distorted view of Temple’s 18character. Yet a character, even in the most distorted view taken of it by the most angry and prejudiced minds, generally retains something of its outline. No caricaturist ever represented Mr. Pitt as a Falstaff, or Mr. Fox as a skeleton; nor did any libeller ever impute parsimony to Sheridan, or profusion to Marlborough. It must be allowed that the turn of mind which the eulogists of Temple have dignified with the appellation of philosophical indifference, and which, however becoming it may be in an old and experienced statesman, has a somewhat ungraceful appearance in youth, might easily appear shocking to a family who were ready to fight or to suffer martyrdom for their exiled King and their persecuted church. The poor girl was exceedingly hurt and irritated by these imputations on her lover, defended him warmly behind his back, and addressed to himself some very tender and anxious admonitions, mingled with assurances of her confidence in his honour and virtue. On one occasion she was most highly provoked by the way in which one of her brothers spoke of Temple. “We talked ourselves weary,” she says; “he renounced me, and I defied him.”
Near seven years did this arduous wooing continue. We are not accurately informed respecting Temple’s movements during that time. But he seems to have led a rambling life, sometimes on the Continent, sometimes in Ireland, sometimes in London. He made himself master of the French and Spanish languages, and amused himself by writing essays and romances, an employment which at least served the purpose of forming his style. The specimen which Mr. Courtenay has preserved of these early compositions is by no means contemptible: indeed, there is one passage on 19Like and Dislike which could have been produced only by a mind habituated carefully to reflect on its own operations, and which reminds us of the best things in Montaigne.
Temple appears to have kept up a very active correspondence with his mistress. His letters are lost, but hers have been preserved; and many of them appear in these volumes. Mr. Courtenay expresses some doubt whether his readers will think him justified in inserting so large a number of these epistles. We only wish that there were twice as many. Very little indeed of the diplomatic correspondence of that generation is so well worth reading. There is a vile phrase of which bad historians are exceedingly fond, “the dignity of history.” One writer is in possession of some anecdotes which would illustrate most strikingly the operation of the Mississippi scheme on the manners and morals of the Parisians. But he suppresses those anecdotes, because they are too low for the dignity of history. Another is strongly tempted to mention some facts indicating the horrible state of the prisons of England two hundred years age. But he hardly thinks that the sufferings of a dozen felons, pigging together on bare bricks in a hole fifteen feet square, would form a subject suited to the dignity of history. Another, from respect for the dignity of history, publishes an account of the reign of George the Second, without ever mentioning Whitefield’s preaching in Moorfields. How should a writer, who can talk about senates, and congresses of sovereigns, and pragmatic sanctions, and ravelines, and counterscarps, and battles where ten thousand men are killed, and six thousand men with fifty stand of colours and eighty guns taken, stoop to the Stock-Exchange, to Newgate, to the theatre, to the tabernacle? 20Tragedy has its dignity as well as history; and how much the tragic art has owed to that dignity any man may judge who will compare the majestic Alexandrines in which the Seigneur Oreste and Madame Andromaque utter their complaints, with the chattering of the fool in Lear and of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet.
That a historian should not record trifles, that he should confine himself to what is important, is perfectly true. But many writers seem never to have considered on what the historical importance of an event depends. They seem not to be aware that the importance of a fact, when that fact is considered with reference to its immediate effects, and the importance of the same fact, when that fact is considered as part of the materials for the construction of a science, are two very different things. The quantity of good or evil which a transaction produces is by no means necessarily proportioned to the quantity of light which that transaction affords, as to the way in which good or evil may hereafter be produced. The poisoning of an emperor is in one sense a far more serious matter than the poisoning of a rat. But the poisoning of a rat may be an era in chemistry; and an emperor may be poisoned by such ordinary means, and with such ordinary symptoms, that no scientific journal would notice the occurrence. An action for a hundred thousand pounds is in one sense a more momentous affair than an action for fifty-pounds. But it by no means follows that the learned gentlemen who report the proceedings of the courts of law ought to give a fuller account of an action for a hundred thousand pounds, than of an action for fifty pounds. For a cause in which a large sum is at stake may be important only to the particular 21plaintiff and the particular defendant. A cause, on the other hand, in which a small sum is at stake, may establish some great principle interesting to half the families in the kingdom. The case is exactly the same with that class of subjects of which historians treat. To an Athenian, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, the result of the battle of Delium was far more important than the fate of the comedy of The Knights. But to us the fact that the comedy of The Knights was brought on the Athenian stage with success is far more important than the fact that the Athenian phalanx gave way to Delium. Neither the one event nor the other has now any intrinsic importance. We are in no danger of being speared by the Thebans. We are not quizzed in The Knights. To us the importance of both events consists in the value of the general truth which is to be learned from them. What general truth do we learn from the accounts which have come down to us of the battle of Delium? Very little more than this, that when two armies fight, its not improbable that one of them will be very soundly beaten, a truth which it would not, we apprehend, be difficult to establish, even if all memory of the battle of Delium were lost among men. But a man who becomes acquainted with the comedy of The Knights, and with the history of that comedy, at once feels his mind enlarged. Society is presented to him under a new aspect. He may have read and travelled much. He may have visited all the countries of Europe, and the civilised nations of the East. He may have observed the manners of many barbarous races. But here is something altogether different from every thing which he has seen, either among polished men or among savages. Here is a community politically, intellectually, 22and morally unlike any other community of which he has the means of forming an opinion. This is the really precious part of history, the corn which some threshers carefully sever from the chaff, for the purpose of gathering the chaff into the garner, and flinging the corn into the fire.
Thinking thus, we are glad to learn so much, and would willingly learn more, about the loves of Sir William and his mistress. In the seventeenth century, to be sure, Lewis the Fourteenth was a much more important person than Temple’s sweetheart. But death and time equalise all things. Neither the great King, nor the beauty of Bedfordshire, neither the gorgeous paradise of Marli nor Mistress Osborne’s favourite walk “in the common that lay hard by the house, where a great many young wenches used to keep sheep and cows and sit in the shade singing of ballads,” is any thing to us. Lewis and Dorothy are alike dust. A cotton-mill stands on the rains of Marli; and the Osbornes have ceased to dwell under the ancient roof of Chicksands. But of that information for the sake of which alone it is worth while to study remote events, we find so much in the love letters which Mr. Courtenay has published, that we would gladly purchase equally interesting billets with ten times their weight in state-papers taken at random. To us surely it is as useful to know how the young ladies of England employed themselves a hundred and eighty years ago, how far their minds were cultivated, what were their favourite studies, what degree of liberty was allowed to them, what use they made of that liberty, what accomplishments they most valued, in men, and what proofs of tenderness delicacy permitted them to give to favoured suitors, as to know all about the 23seizure of Franche Comté and the treaty of Nimeguen. The mutual relations of the two sexes seem to us to be at least as important as the mutual relations of any two governments in the world; and a series of letters written by a virtuous, amiable, and sensible girl, and intended for the eye of her lover alone, can scarcely fail to throw some light on the relations of the sexes; whereas it is perfectly possible, as all who have made any historical researches can attest, to read bale after bale of despatches and protocols, without catching one glimpse of light about the relations of governments.
Mr. Courtenay proclaims that he is one of Dorothy Osborne’s devoted servants, and expresses a hope that the publication of her letters will add to the number. We must declare ourselves his rivals. She really seems to have been a very charming young woman, modest, generous, affectionate, intelligent, and sprightly; a royalist, as was to be expected from her connections, with-out any of that political asperity which is as unwomanly as a long beard; religious, and occasionally gliding into a very pretty and endearing sort of preaching, yet not too good to partake of such diversions as London afforded under the melancholy rule of the puritans, or to giggle a little at a ridiculous sermon from a divine who was thought to be one of the great lights of the Assembly at Westminster; with a little turn for coquetry, which was yet perfectly compatible with warm and disinterested attachment, and a little turn for satire, which yet seldom passed the bounds of good-nature. She loved reading; but her studies were not those of Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey. She read the verses of Cowley and Lord Broghill, French Memoirs recommended by her lover, and the travels of Fernando 24Mendez Pinto. But her favourite books were those ponderous French romances which modern readers know chiefly from the pleasant satire of Charlotte Lennox. She could not, however, help laughing at the vile English into which they were translated. Her own style is very agreeable; nor are her letters at all the worse for some passages in which raillery and tenderness are mixed in a very engaging namby-pamby.
When at last the constancy of the lovers had triumphed over all the obstacles which kinsmen and rivals could oppose to their union, a yet more serious calamity befell them. Poor Mistress Osborne fell ill of the smallpox, and, though she escaped with life, lost all her beauty. To this most severe trial the affection and honour of the lovers of that age was not unfrequently subjected. Our readers probably remember what Mrs. Hutchinson tells us of herself. The lofty Cornelia-like spirit of the aged matron seems to melt into a long forgotten softness when she relates how her beloved Colonel “married her as soon as she was able to quit the chamber, when the priest and all that saw her were affrighted to look on her. But God,” she adds, with a not ungraceful vanity, “recompensed his justice and constancy, by restoring her as well as before.” Temple showed on this occasion the same justice and constancy which did so much honour to Colonel Hutchinson. The date of the marriage is not exactly known. But Mr. Courtenay supposes it to have taken place about the end of the year 1654. From this time we lose sight of Dorothy, and are reduced to form our opinion of the terms on which she and her husband were from very slight indications which may easily mislead us.
Temple soon went to Ireland, and resided with his father, partly at Dublin, partly in the county of Carlow. 25Ireland was probably then a more agreeable residence for the higher classes, as compared with England, than it has ever been before or since. In no part of the empire were the superiority of Cromwell’s abilities and the force of his character so signally displayed. He had not the power, and probably had not the inclination, to govern that island in the best way. The rebellion of the aboriginal race had excited in England a strong religious and national aversion to them: nor is there any reason to believe that the Protector was so far beyond his age as to be free from the prevailing sentiment. He had vanquished them; he knew that they were in his power; and he regarded them as a band of malefactors and idolaters, who were mercifully treated if they were not smitten with the edge of the sword. On those who resisted he had made war as the Hebrews made war on the Canaanites. Drogheda was as Jericho; and Wexford as Ai. To the remains of the old population the conqueror granted a peace, such as that which Israel granted to the Gibeonites. He made them hewers of wood and drawers of water. But, good or bad, he could not be otherwise than great. Under favourable circumstances, Ireland would have found in him a most just and beneficent ruler. She found in him a tyrant; not a small teasing tyrant, such as those who have so long been her curse and her shame, but one of those awful tyrants who, at long intervals, seem to be sent on earth, like avenging angels, with some high commission of destruction and renovation.
He was no man of half measures, of mean affronts and ungracious concessions. His Protestant ascendency was not an ascendency of ribands, and fiddles, and statues, and processions. He would never have dreamed of abolishing the penal code and withholding 26from Catholics the elective franchise, of giving them the elective franchise and excluding them from Parliament, of admitting them to Parliament, and refusing to them a full and equal participation in all the blessings of society and government. The thing most alien from his clear intellect and his commanding spirit was petty persecution. He knew how to tolerate; and he knew how to destroy. His administration in Ireland was an administration on what are now called Orange principles, followed out most ably, most steadily, most undauntedly, most unrelentingly, to every extreme consequence to which those principles lead; and it would, if continued, inevitably have produced the effect which he contemplated, an entire decomposition and reconstruction of society. He had a great and definite object in view, to make Ireland thoroughly English, to make Ireland another Yorkshire or Norfolk. Thinly peopled as Ireland then was, this end was not unattainable; and there is every reason to believe that, if his policy had been followed during fifty years, this end would have been attained. Instead of an emigration, such as we now see from Ireland to England, there was, under his government, a constant and large emigration from England to Ireland. This tide of population ran almost as strongly as that which now runs from Massachusetts and Connecticut to the states behind the Ohio. The native race was driven back before the advancing van of the Anglo-Saxon population, as the American Indians or the tribes of Southern Africa are now driven back before the white settlers. Those fearful phænomena which have almost invariably attended the planting of civilised colonies in uncivilised countries, and which had been known to the nations of Europe only by distant and questionable rumour, were now publicly exhibited in 27their sight. The words, “extirpation,” “eradication,” were often in the mouths of the English back-settlers of Leinster and Munster, cruel words, yet, in their cruelty, containing more mercy than much softer expressions which have since been sanctioned by universities and cheered by Parliaments. For it is in truth more merciful to extirpate a hundred thousand human beings at once, and to fill the void with a well-governed population, than to misgovern millions through a long succession of generations. We can much more easily pardon tremendous severities inflicted for a great object, than an endless series of paltry vexations and oppressions inflicted for no rational object at all.
Ireland was fast becoming English. Civilisation and wealth were making rapid progress in almost every part of the island. The effects of that iron despotism are described to us by a hostile witness in very remarkable language. “Which is more wonderful,” says Lord Clarendon, “all this was done and settled within little more than two years, to that degree of perfection that there were many buildings raised for beauty as well as use, orderly and regular plantations of trees, and fences and inclosures raised throughout the kingdom, purchases made by one from another at very valuable rates, and jointures made upon marriages, and all other conveyances and settlements executed, as in a kingdom at peace within itself, and where no doubt could be made of the validity of titles.”
All Temple’s feelings about Irish questions were those of a colonist and a member of the dominant caste. He troubled himself as little about the welfare of the remains of the old Celtic population, as an English farmer on the Swan River troubles himself about the New Hollanders, or a Dutch boor at the Cape about 28the Caffres. The years which he passed in Ireland, while the Cromwellian system was in full operation, he always described as “years of great satisfaction.” Farming, gardening, county business, and studies rather entertaining than profound, occupied his time. In politics he took no part, and many years later he attributed this inaction to his love of the ancient constitution, which, he said, “would not suffer him to enter into public affairs till the way was plain for the King’s happy restoration.” It does not appear, indeed, that any offer of employment was made to him. If he really did refuse any preferment, we may, without much breach of charity, attribute the refusal rather to the caution which, during his whole life, prevented him from running any risk, than to the fervour of his loyalty.
In 1660 he made his first appearance in public life. He sat in the convention which, in the midst of the general confusion that preceded the Restoration, was summoned by the chiefs of the army of Ireland to meet in Dublin. After the King’s return an Irish parliament was regularly convoked, in which Temple represented the county of Carlow. The details of his conduct in this situation are not known to us. But we are told in general terms, and can easily believe, that he showed great moderation, and great aptitude for business. It is probable that he also distinguished himself in debate; for many years afterwards he remarked that “his friends in Ireland used to think that, if he had any talent at all, it lay in that way.”
In May, 1668, the Irish parliament was prorogued, and Temple repaired to England with his wife. His income amounted to about five hundred pounds a year, a sum which was then sufficient for the wants of a family mixing in fashionable circles. He passed two 29years in London, where he seems to have led that easy, lounging life which was best suited to his temper.
He was not, however, unmindful of his interest. He had brought with him letters of introduction from the Duke of Ormond, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, to Clarendon, and to Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, who was Secretary of State. Clarendon was at the head of affairs. But his power was visibly declining, and was certain to decline more and more every day. An observer much less discerning than Temple might easily perceive that the Chancellor was a man who belonged to a by-gone world, a representative of a past age, of obsolete modes of thinking, of unfashionable vices, and of more unfashionable virtues. His long exile had made him a stranger in’ the country of his birth. His mind, heated by conflict and by personal suffering, was far more set against popular and tolerant courses than it had been at the time of the breaking out of the civil war. He pined for the decorous tyranny of the old Whitehall; for the days of that sainted king who deprived his people of their money and their ears, but let their wives and daughters alone; and could scarcely reconcile himself to a court with a seraglio and without a Star-chamber. By taking this course he made himself every day more odious, both to the sovereign, who loved pleasure much more than prerogative, and to the people, who dreaded royal prerogatives much more than royal pleasures; and thus he was at last more detested by the Court than any chief of the Opposition, and more detested by the Parliament than any pandar of the Court.
Temple, whose great maxim was to defend no party, was not likely to cling to the falling fortunes of a minister the study of whose life was to offend all 30parties. Arlington, whose influence was gradually rising as that of Clarendon diminished, was the most useful patron to whom a young adventurer could attach himself. This statesman, without virtue, wisdom, or strength of mind, had raised himself to greatness by superficial qualities, and was the mere creature of the time, the circumstances, and the company. The dignified reserve of manners which he had acquired during a residence in Spain provoked the ridicule of those who considered the usages of the French court as the only standard of good breeding, but served to impress the crowd with a favourable opinion of his sagacity and gravity. In situations where the solemnity of the Escurial would have been out of place, he threw it aside without difficulty, and conversed with great humour and vivacity. While the multitude were talking of “Bennet’s grave looks,” (1) his mirth made his presence always welcome in the royal closet. While Buckingham, in the antechamber, was mimicking the pompous Castilian strut of the Secretary, for the diversion of Mistress Stuart, this stately Don was ridiculing Clarendon’s sober counsels to the King within, till his Majesty cried with laughter, and the Chancellor with vexation. There perhaps never was a man whose outward demeanour made such different impressions on different people. Count Hamilton, for example, describes him as a stupid formalist, who had been made secretary solely on account of his mysterious and important looks. Clarendon, on the other hand, represents him as a man whose “best faculty was raillery,” and who was “for his pleasant and agreeable humour acceptable unto the King.”
(1) “Bennet’s grave looks were a pretence” is a line in one
of the best political poems of that age.
31The truth seems to be that, destitute as Bennet was of all the higher qualifications of a minister, he had a wonderful talent for becoming, in outward semblance, all things to all men. He had two aspects, a busy and serious one for the public, whom he wished to awe into respect, and a gay one for Charles, who thought that the greatest service which could be rendered to a prince was to amuse him. Yet both these were masks which he laid aside when they had served their turn. Long after, when he had retired to his deer park and fish-ponds in Suffolk, and had no motive to act the part either of the hidalgo or of the buffoon, Evelyn, who was neither an unpractised nor an undiscerning judge, conversed much with him, and pronounced him to be a man of singularly polished manners and of great colloquial powers.
Clarendon, proud and imperious by nature, soured by age and disease, and relying on his great talents and services, sought out no new allies. He seems to have taken a sort of morose pleasure in slighting and provoking all the rising talent of the kingdom. His connections were almost entirely confined to the small circle, every day becoming smaller, of old cavaliers who had been friends of his youth or companions of his exile. Arlington, on the other hand, beat up everywhere for recruits. No man had a greater personal following, and no man exerted himself more to serve his adherents. It was a kind of habit with him to push up his dependents to his own level, and then to complain bitterly of their ingratitude because they did not choose to be his dependents any longer. It was thus that he quarrelled with two successive Treasurers, Gifford and Danby. To Arlington Temple attached himself, and was not sparing of warm professions of 32affection, or even, we grieve to say, of gross and almost profane adulation. In no long time he obtained his reward.
England was in a very different situation with respect to foreign powers from that which she had occupied during the splendid administration of the Protector. She was engaged in war with the United Provinces, then governed with almost regal power by the Grand Pensionary, John de Witt; and though no war had ever cost the kingdom so much, none had ever been more feebly and meanly conducted. France had espoused the interests of the States-General. Denmark seemed likely to take the same side. Spain, indignant at the close political and matrimonial alliance which Charles had formed with the House of Braganza, was not disposed to lend him any assistance. The great plague of London had suspended trade, had scattered the ministers and nobles, had paralysed every department of the public service, and had increased the gloomy discontent which misgovernment had begun to excite throughout the nation. One continental ally England possessed, the Bishop of Munster, a restless and ambitious prelate, bred a soldier, and still a soldier in all his tastes and passions. He hated the Dutch for interfering in the affairs of his see, and declared himself willing to risk his little dominions for the chance of revenge. He sent, accordingly, a strange kind of ambassador to London, a Benedictine monk, who spoke bad English, and looked, says Lord Clarendon, “like a carter.” This person brought a letter from the Bishop, offering to make an attack by land on the Dutch territory. The English ministers eagerly caught at the proposal, and promised a subsidy of 500,000 rix-dollars to their new ally. It was determined to send an English 33agent to Munster; and Arlington, to whose department the business belonged, fixed on Temple for this post.
Temple accepted the commission, and acquitted himself to the satisfaction of his employers, though the whole plan ended in nothing, and the Bishop, finding that France had joined Holland, made haste, after pocketing an instalment of his subsidy, to conclude a separate peace. Temple, at a later period, looked back with no great satisfaction to this part of his life; and excused himself for undertaking a negotiation from which little good could result, by saying that he was then young and very new to business. In truth, he could hardly have been placed in a situation where the eminent diplomatic talents which he possessed could have appeared to less advantage. He was ignorant of the German language, and did not easily accommodate himself to the manners of the people. He could not bear much wine; and none but a hard drinker had any chance of success in Westphalian Society. Under all these disadvantages, however, he gave so much satisfaction that he was created a baronet, and appointed resident at the viceregal court of Brussels.
Brussels suited Temple far better than the palaces of the boar-hunting and wine-bibbing princes of Germany. He now occupied one of the most important posts of observation in which a diplomatist could be stationed. He was placed in the territory of a great neutral power, between the territories of two great powers which were at war with England. From this excellent school he soon came forth the most accomplished negotiator of his age.
In the mean time the government of Charles had suffered a succession of humiliating disasters. The 34extravagance of the court had dissipated all the means which Parliament had supplied for the purpose of carrying on offensive hostilities. It was determined to wage only a defensive war; and even for defensive war the vast resources of England, managed by triflers and public robbers, were found insufficient. The Dutch insulted the British coasts, sailed up the Thames, took Sheerness, and carried their ravages to Chatham. The blaze of the ships burning in the river was seen at London: it was rumoured that a foreign army had landed at Gravesend; and military men seriously proposed to abandon the Tower. To such a depth of infamy had a bad administration reduced that proud and victorious country, which a few years before had dictated its pleasure to Mazarine, to the States-General, and to the Vatican. Humbled by the events of the war, and dreading the just anger of Parliament, the English Ministry hastened to huddle up a peace with France and Holland at Breda.
But a new scene was about to open. It had already been for some time apparent to discerning observers, that England and Holland were threatened by a common danger, much more formidable than any which they had reason to apprehend from each other. The old enemy of their independence and of their religion was no longer to be dreaded. The sceptre had passed away from Spain. That mighty empire, on which the sun never set, which had crushed the liberties of Italy and Germany, which had occupied Paris with its armies, and covered the British seas with its sails, was at the mercy of every spoiler; and Europe observed with dismay the rapid growth of a new and more formidable power. Men looked to Spain and saw only weakness disguised and increased by pride, 35dominions of vast bulk and little strength, tempting, unwieldy, and defenceless, an empty treasury, a sullen and torpid nation, a child on the throne, factions in the council, ministers who served only themselves, and soldiers who were terrible only to their countrymen. Men looked to France, and saw a large and compact territory, a rich soil, a central situation, a bold, alert, and ingenious people, large revenues, numerous and well-disciplined troops, an active and ambitious prince, in the flower of his age, surrounded by generals of unrivalled skill. The projects of Lewis could be counteracted only by ability, vigour, and union on the part of his neighbours. Ability and vigour had hitherto been found in the councils of Holland alone, and of union there was no appearance in Europe. The question of Portuguese independence separated England from Spain. Old grudges, recent hostilities, maritime pretensions, commercial competition separated England as widely from the United Provinces.
The great object of Lewis, from the beginning to the end of his reign, was the acquisition of those large and valuable provinces of the Spanish monarchy, which lay contiguous to the eastern frontier of France. Already, before the conclusion of the treaty of Breda, he had invaded those provinces. He now pushed on his conquest with scarcely any resistance. Fortress after fortress was taken. Brussels itself was in danger; and Temple thought it wise to send his wife and children. to England. But his sister, Lady Giffard, who had been some time his inmate, and who seems to have been a more important personage in his family than his wife, still remained with him.
De Witt saw the progress of the French arms with painful anxiety. But it was not in the power of 36Holland alone to save Flanders; and the difficulty of forming an extensive coalition for that purpose appeared almost insuperable. Lewis, indeed, affected moderation. He declared himself willing to agree to a compromise with Spain. But these offers were undoubtedly mere professions, intended to quiet the apprehensions of the neighbouring powers; and, as his position became every day more and more advantageous, it was to be expected that he would rise in his demands.
Such was the state of affairs when Temple obtained from the English Ministry permission to make a tour in Holland incognito. In company with Lady Gif-fard he arrived at the Hague. He was not charged with any public commission, but he availed himself of this opportunity of introducing himself to De Witt. “My only business, sir,” he said, “is to see the things which are most considerable in your country, and I should execute my design very imperfectly if I went away without seeing you.” De Witt, who from report had formed a high opinion of Temple, was pleased by the compliment, and replied with a frankness and cordiality which at once led to intimacy. The two statesmen talked calmly over the causes which had estranged England from Holland, congratulated each other on the peace, and then began to discuss the new dangers which menaced Europe. Temple, who had no authority to say any thing on behalf of the English Government, expressed himself very guardedly. De Witt, who was himself the Dutch Government, had no reason to be reserved. He openly declared that his wish was to see a general coalition formed for the preservation of Flanders. His simplicity and openness amazed Temple, who had been accustomed to the affected solemnity of his patron, the Secretary, and to 37the eternal doublings and evasions which passed for great feats of statesmanship among the Spanish politicians at Brussels. “Whoever,” he wrote to Arlington, “deals with M. de Witt must go the same plain way that he pretends to in his negotiations, without refining or colouring or offering shadow for substance.” Temple was scarcely less struck by the modest dwelling and frugal table of the first citizen of the richest state in the world. While Clarendon was amazing London with a dwelling more sumptuous than the palace of his master, while Arlington was lavishing his ill-gotten wealth on the decoys and orange-gardens and interminable conservatories of Euston, the great statesman who had frustrated all their plans of conquest, and the roar of whose guns they had heard with terror even in the galleries of Whitehall, kept only a single servant, walked about the streets in the plainest garb, and never used a coach except for visits of ceremony.
Temple sent a full account of his interview with De Witt to Arlington, who, in consequence of the fall of the Chancellor, now shared with the Duke of Buckingham the principal direction of affairs. Arlington showed no disposition to meet the advances of the Dutch minister. Indeed, as was amply proved a few years later, both he and his master were perfectly willing to purchase the means of misgoverning England by giving up, not only Flanders, but the whole Continent, to France. Temple, who distinctly saw that a moment had arrived at which it was possible to reconcile his country with Holland, to reconcile Charles with the Parliament, to bridle the power of Lewis, to efface the shame of the late ignominious war, to restore England to the same place in Europe 38which she had occupied under Cromwell, became more and more urgent in his representations. Arlington’s replies were for some time couched in cold and ambiguous terms. But the events which followed the meeting of Parliament, in the autumn of 1667, appear to have produced an entire change in his views. The discontent of the nation was deep and general. The administration was attacked in all its parts. The King and the ministers laboured, not unsuccessfully, to throw on Clarendon the blame of past miscarriages; but though the Commons were resolved that the late Chancellor should be the first victim, it was by no means clear that he would be the last. The Secretary was personally attacked with great bitterness in the course of the debates. One of the resolutions of the Lower House against Clarendon was in truth a censure of the foreign policy of the Government, as too favourable to France. To these events chiefly we are inclined to attribute the change which at this crisis took place in the measures of England. The Ministry seem to have felt that, if they wished to derive any advantage from Clarendon’s downfall, it was necessary for them to abandon what was supposed to be Clarendon’s system, and by some splendid and popular measure to win the confidence of the nation. Accordingly, in December, 1667, Temple received a despatch containing instructions of the highest importance. The plan which he had so strongly recommended was approved; and he was directed to visit De Witt as speedily as possible, and to ascertain whether the States were willing to enter into an offensive and defensive league with England against the projects of France. Temple, accompanied by his sister, instantly set out for the Hague, and laid the propositions of the English Government before the Grand Pensionary. 39The Dutch statesman answered with characteristic straightforwardness, that he was fully ready to agree to a defensive confederacy, but that it was the fundamental principle of the foreign policy of the States to make no offensive alliance under any circumstances whatever. With this answer Temple hastened from the Hague to London, had an audience of the King, related what had passed between himself and De Witt, exerted himself to remove the unfavourable opinion which had been conceived of the Grand Pensionary at the English court, and had the satisfaction of succeeding in all his objects. On the evening of the first of January, 1668, a council was held, at which Charles declared his resolution to unite with the Dutch on their own terms. Temple and his indefatigable sister immediately sailed again for the Hague, and, after weathering a violent storm in which they were very nearly lost, arrived in safety at the place of their destination.
On this occasion, as on every other, the dealings between Temple and De Witt were singularly fair and open. When they met, Temple began by recapitulating what had passed at their last interview. De Witt, who was as little given to lying with his face as with his tongue, marked his assent by his looks while the recapitulation proceeded, and, when it was concluded, answered that Temple’s memory was perfectly correct, and thanked him for proceeding in so exact and sincere a manner. Temple then informed the Grand Pensionary that the King of England had determined to close with the proposal of a defensive alliance. De Witt had not expected so speedy a resolution; and his countenance indicated surprise as well as pleasure. But he did not retract, and it was speedily arranged that England and Holland should unite for the purpose 40of compelling Lewis to abide by the compromise which he had formerly offered. The next object of the two statesmen was to induce another government to become a party to their league. The victories of Gustavus and Torstenson, and the political talents of Oxenstiern, had obtained for Sweden a consideration in Europe, disproportioned to her real power: the princes of Northern Germany stood in great awe of her; and De Witt and Temple agreed that if she could be induced to accede to the league, “it would be too strong a bar for France to venture on.” Temple went that same evening to Count Dona, the Swedish Minister at the Hague, took a seat in the most unceremonious manner, and, with that air of frankness and good-will, by which he often succeeded in rendering his diplomatic overtures acceptable, explained the scheme which was in agitation. Dona was greatly pleased and flattered. He had not powers which would authorize him to conclude a treaty of such importance. But he strongly advised Temple and De Witt to do their part without delay, and seemed confident that Sweden would accede. The ordinary course of public business in Holland was too slow for the present emergency; and De Witt appeared to have some scruples about breaking through the established forms. But the urgency and dexterity of Temple prevailed. The States-General took the responsibility of executing the treaty with a celerity unprecedented in the annals of the federation, and indeed inconsistent with its fundamental laws. The state of public feeling was, however, such in all the provinces, that this irregularity was not merely pardoned but applauded. When the instrument had been formally signed, the Dutch Commissioners embraced the English Plenipotentiary with the warmest expressions 41of kindness and confidence. “At Breda,” exclaimed Temple, “we embraced as friends, here as brothers.”
This memorable negotiation occupied only five days. De Witt complimented Temple in high terms on having effected in so short a time what must, under other management, have been the work of months; and Temple, in his despatches, spoke in equally high terms of De Witt. “I must add these words, to do M. de Witt right, that I found him as plain, as direct and square in the course of this business as any man could be, though often stiff in points where he thought any advantage could accrue to his country; and have all the reason in the world to be satisfied with him; and for his industry, no man had ever more I am sure. For these five days at least, neither of us spent any idle hours, neither day nor night.”
Sweden willingly acceded to the league, which is known in history by the name of the Triple Alliance; and, after some signs of ill-humour on the part of France, a general pacification was the result.
The Triple Alliance may be viewed in two lights, as a measure of foreign policy, and as a measure of domestic policy; and under both aspects it seems to us deserving of all the praise which has been bestowed upon it.
Dr. Lingard, who is undoubtedly a very able and well-informed writer, but whose great fundamental rule of judging seems to be that the popular opinion on a historical question, cannot possibly be correct, speaks very slightingly of this celebrated treaty; and Mr. Courtenay, who by no means regards Temple with that profound veneration which is generally found in biographers, has conceded, in our opinion, far too much to Dr. Lingard. 42The reasoning of Dr. Lingard is simply this. The Triple Alliance only compelled Lewis to make peace on the terms on which, before the alliance was formed, he had offered to make peace. How can it then be said that this alliance arrested his career, and preserved Europe from his ambition? Now, this reasoning is evidently of no force at all, except on the supposition that Lewis would have held himself bound by his former offers, if the alliance had not been formed; and, if Dr. Lingard thinks this a reasonable supposition, we should be disposed to say to him, in the words of that great politician, Mrs. Western; “Indeed, brother, you would make a fine plenipo to negotiate with the French. They would soon persuade you that they take towns out of mere defensive principles.” Our own impression is that Lewis made his offer only in order to avert some such measure as the Triple Alliance, and adhered to his offer only in consequence of that alliance. He had refused to consent to an armistice. He had made all his arrangements for a winter campaign. In the very week in which Temple and the States concluded their agreement at the Hague, Franche Comté was attacked by the French armies, and in three weeks the whole province was conquered. This prey Lewis was compelled to disgorge. And what compelled him? Did the object seem to him small or contemptible? On the contrary, the annexation of Franche Comté to his kingdom was one of the favourite projects of his life. Was he withheld by regard for his word? Did he, who never in any other transaction of his reign showed the smallest respect for the most solemn obligations of public faith, who violated the Treaty of the Pyrenees, who violated the Treaty of Aix, who violated the Treaty of Nimoguen, 43who violated the Partition Treaty, who violated the Treaty of Utrecht, feel himself restrained by his word on this single occasion? Can any person who is acquainted with his character and with his whole policy doubt that, if the neighbouring powers would have looked quietly on, he would instantly have risen in his demands? How then stands the case? He wished to keep Franche Comté. It was not from regard to his word that he ceded Franche Comté. Why then did he cede Franche Comté? We answer, as all Europe answered at the time, from fear of the Triple Alliance.
But grant that Lewis was not really stopped in his progress by this famous league; still it is certain that the world then, and long after, believed that he was so stopped, and that this was the prevailing impression in France as well as in other countries. Temple, therefore, at the very least, succeeded in raising the credit of his country, and in lowering the credit of a rival power. Here there is no room for controversy. No grubbing among old state-papers will ever bring to light any document which will shake these facts; that Europe believed the ambition of France to have been curbed by the three powers; that England, a few months before the last among the nations, forced to abandon her own seas, unable to defend the mouths of her own rivers, regained almost as high a place in the estimation of her neighbours as she had held in the times of Elizabeth and Oliver; and that all this change of opinion was produced in five days by wise and resolute counsels, without the firing of a single gun. That the Triple Alliance effected this will hardly be disputed; and therefore, even if it effected nothing else, it must still be regarded as a master-piece of diplomacy. 44Considered as a measure of domestic policy, this treaty seems to be equally deserving of approbation. It did much to allay discontents, to reconcile the sovereign with a people who had, under his wretched administration, become ashamed of him and of themselves. It was a kind of pledge for internal good government. The foreign relations of the kingdom had at that time the closest connection with our domestic policy. From the Restoration to the accession of the House of Hanover, Holland and France were to England what the right-hand horseman and the left-hand horseman in Burger’s fine ballad were to the Wildgraf, the good and the evil counsellor, the angel of fight and the angel of darkness. The ascendency of France was inseparably connected with the prevalence of tyranny in domestic affairs. The ascendency of Holland was as inseparably connected with the prevalence of political liberty and of mutual toleration among Protestant sects. How fatal and degrading an influence Lewis was destined to exercise on the British counsels, how great a deliverance our country was destined to owe to the States, could not be foreseen when the Triple Alliance was concluded. Yet even then all discerning men considered it as a good omen for the English constitution and the reformed religion, that the Government had attached itself to Holland, and had assumed a firm and somewhat hostile attitude towards France. The fame of this measure was the greater, because it stood so entirely alone.. It was the single eminently good act performed by the Government during the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution. (1) Every person who had the smallest part in it, and some who had no part
(1) “The only good public thing that hath been done since
the King came Into England.”—Pepys’s Diary, February 14,
1667-8.
45in it at all, battled for a share of the credit. The most parsimonious republicans were ready to grant money for the purpose of carrying into effect the provisions of this popular alliance; and the great Tory poet of that age, in his finest satires, repeatedly spoke with reverence of the “triple bond.”
This negotiation raised the fame of Temple both at home and abroad to a great height, to such a height, indeed, as seems to have excited the jealousy of his friend Arlington. While London and Amsterdam resounded with acclamations of joy, the Secretary, in very cold official language, communicated to his friend the approbation of the King; and, lavish as the Government was of titles and of money, its ablest servant was neither ennobled nor enriched.
Temple’s next mission was to Aix-la-Chapelle, where a general congress met for the purpose of perfecting the work of the Triple Alliance. On his road he received abundant proofs of the estimation in which he was held. Salutes were fired from the walls of the towns through which he passed; the population poured forth into the streets to see him; and the magistrates entertained him with speeches and banquets. After the close of the negotiations at Aix he was appointed Ambassador at the Hague. But in both these missions he experienced much vexation from the rigid, and, indeed, unjust parsimony of the Government. Profuse to many unworthy applicants, the Ministers were niggardly to him alone. They secretly disliked his politics; and they seem to have indemnified themselves for the humiliation of adopting his measures, by cutting down his salary and delaying the settlement of his outfit.
At the Hague he was received with cordiality by De Witt, and with the most signal marks of respect by 46the States-General. His situation was in one point extremely delicate. The Prince of Orange, the hereditary chief of the faction opposed to the administration of De Witt, was the nephew of Charles. To preserve the confidence of the ruling party, without showing any want of respect to so near a relation of his own master, was no easy task. But Temple acquitted himself so well that he appears to have been in great favour, both with the Grand Pensionary and with the Prince.
In the main, the years which he spent at the Hague seem, in spite of some pecuniary difficulties occasioned by the ill-will of the English Ministers, to have passed very agreeably. He enjoyed the highest personal consideration. He was surrounded by objects interesting in the highest degree to a man of his observant turn of mind. He had no wearing labour, no heavy responsibility; and, if he had no opportunity of adding to his high reputation, he ran no risk of impairing it.
But evil times were at hand. Though Charles had for a moment deviated into a wise and dignified policy, his heart had always been with France; and France employed every means of seduction to lure him back. His impatience of control, his greediness for money, his passion for beauty, his family affections, all his tastes, all his feelings, were practised on with the utmost dexterity. His interior Cabinet was now composed of men such as that generation, and that generation alone, produced; of men at whose audacious profligacy the renegades and jobbers of our own time look with the same sort of admiring despair with which our sculptors contemplate the Theseus, and our painters the Cartoons. To be a real, hearty, deadly enemy of the liberties and religion of the nation was, in that dark conclave, an honourable distinction, a distinction which belonged 47only to the daring and impetuous Clifford. His associates were men to whom all creeds and all constitutions were alike; who were equally ready to profess the faith of Geneva, of Lambeth, and of Rome; who were equally ready to be tools of power without any sense of loyalty, and stirrers of sedition without any zeal for freedom.
It was hardly possible even for a man so penetrating as De Witt to foresee to what depths of wickedness and infamy this execrable administration would descend. Yet, many signs of the great woe which was coming on Europe, the visit of the Duchess of Orleans to her brother, the unexplained mission of Buckingham to Paris, the sudden occupation of Lorraine by the French, made the Grand Pensionary uneasy; and his alarm increased when he learned that Temple had received orders to repair instantly to London. De Witt earnestly pressed for an explanation. Temple very sincerely replied that he hoped that the English Ministers would adhere to the principles of the Triple Alliance. “I can answer,” he said, “only for myself. But that I can do. If a new system is to be adopted, I will never have any part in it. I have told the King so; and I will make my words good. If I return you will know more: and if I do not return you will guess more.” De Witt smiled, and answered that he would hope the best, and would do all in his power to prevent others from forming unfavourable surmises.
In October, 1670, Temple reached London; and all his worst suspicions were immediately more than confirmed. He repaired to the Secretary’s house, and was kept an hour and a half waiting in the ante-chamber, whilst Lord Ashley was closeted with Arlington. When at length the doors were thrown open, Arlington was 48dry and cold, asked trifling questions about the voyage, and then, in order to escape from the necessity of discussing business, called in his daughter, an engaging little girl of three years old, who was long after described by poets “as dressed in all the bloom of smiling nature,” and whom Evelyn, one of the witnesses of her inauspicious marriage, mournfully designated as “the sweetest, hopefullest, most beautiful child, and most virtuous too.” Any particular conversation was impossible: and Temple, who with all his constitutional or philosophical indifference, was sufficiently sensitive on the side of vanity, felt this treatment keenly. The next day he offered himself to the notice of the King, who was snuffing up the morning air and feeding his ducks, in the Mall. Charles was civil, but, like Arlington, carefully avoided all conversation on politics. Temple found that all his most respectable friends were entirely excluded from the secrets of the inner council, and were awaiting in anxiety and dread for what those mysterious deliberations might produce. At length he obtained a glimpse of fight. The bold spirit and fierce passions of Clifford made him the most unfit of all men to be the keeper of a momentous secret. He told Temple, with great vehemence, that the States had behaved basely, that De Witt was a rogue and a rascal, that it was below the King of England, or any other king, to have any thing to do with such wretches; that this ought to be made known to all the world, and that it was the duty of the Minister at the Hague to declare it publicly. Temple commanded his temper as well as he could, and replied calmly and firmly, that he should make no such declaration, and that, if he were called upon to give his opinion of the States and their Ministers, he would say exactly what he thought. 49He now saw clearly that the tempest was gathering fast, that the great alliance which he had formed and over which he had watched with parental care was about to be dissolved, that times were at hand when it would be necessary for him, if he continued in public life, either to take part decidedly against the Court, or to forfeit the high reputation which he enjoyed at home and abroad. He began to make preparations for retiring altogether from business. He enlarged a little garden which he had purchased at Sheen, and laid out some money in ornamenting his house there. He was still nominally ambassador to Holland; and the English Ministers continued during some months to flatter the States with the hope that he would speedily return. At length, in June, 1671, the designs of the Cabal were ripe. The infamous treaty with France had been ratified. The season of deception was past, and that of insolence and violence had arrived. Temple received his formal dismission, kissed the King’s hand, was repaid for his services with some of those vague compliments and promises which cost so little to the cold heart, the easy temper, and the ready tongue of Charles, and quietly withdrew to his little nest, as he called it, at Sheen.
There he amused himself with gardening, which he practised so successfully that the fame of his fruit-trees soon spread far and wide. But letters were his chief solace. He had, as we have mentioned, been from his youth in the habit of diverting himself with composition. The clear and agreeable language of his despatches had early attracted the notice of his employers; and, before the peace of Breda, he had, at the request of Arlington, published a pamphlet on the war, of which nothing is now known, except that it had some vogue at the time, and that Charles, not a contemptible 50judge, pronounced it to be very well written. Temple had also, a short time before he began to reside at the Hague, written a treatise on the state of Ireland, in which he showed all the feelings of a Cromwellian. He had gradually formed a style singularly lucid and melodious, superficially deformed, indeed, by Gallicisms and Hispanicisms, picked up in travel or in negotiation, but at the bottom pure English, which generally flowed along with careless simplicity, but occasionally rose even into Ciceronean magnificence. The length of his sentences has often been remarked. But in truth this length is only apparent. A critic who considers as one sentence every thing that lies between two full stops will undoubtedly call Temple’s sentences long. But a critic who examines them carefully will find that they are not swollen by parenthetical matter, that their structure is scarcely ever intricate, that they are formed merely by accumulation, and that, by the simple process of now and then leaving out a conjunction, and now and then substituting a full stop for a semicolon, they might, without any alteration in the order of the words, be broken up into very short periods, with no sacrifice except that of euphony. The long sentences of Hooker and Clarendon, on the contrary, are really long sentences, and cannot be turned into short ones, without being entirely taken to pieces.
The best known of the works which Temple composed during his first retreat from official business are an Essay on Government, which seems to us exceedingly childish, and an Account of the United Provinces, which we value as a master-piece in its kind. Whoever compares these two treatises will probably agree with us in thinking that Temple was not a very deep or accurate reasoner, but was an excellent observer, 51that he had no call to philosophical speculation, but that he was qualified to excel as a writer of Memoirs and Travels.
While Temple was engaged in these pursuits, the great storm which had long been brooding over Europe burst with such fury as for a moment seemed to threaten ruin to all free governments and all Protestant churches. France and England, without seeking for any decent pretext, declared war against Holland. The immense armies of Lewis poured across the Rhine, and invaded the territory of the United Provinces. The Dutch seemed to be paralysed by terror. Great towns opened their gates to straggling parties. Regiments flung down their arms without seeing an enemy. Guelderland, Overyssel, Utrecht were overrun by the conquerors. The fires of the French camp were seen from the walls of Amsterdam. In the first madness of despair the devoted people turned their rage against the most illustrious of their fellow-citizens. De Ruyter was saved with difficulty from assassins. De Witt was torn to pieces by an infuriated rabble. No hope was left to the Commonwealth, save in the dauntless, the ardent, the indefatigable, the unconquerable spirit which glowed under the frigid demeanour of the young Prince of Orange.
That great man rose at once to the full dignity of his part, and approved himself a worthy descendant of the line of heroes, who had vindicated the liberties of Europe against the house of Austria. Nothing could shake his fidelity to his country, not his close connection with the royal family of England, not the most earnest solicitations, not the most tempting offers. The spirit of the nation, that spirit which had maintained the great conflict against the gigantic power of Philip, 52revived in all its strength. Counsels, such as are inspired by a generous despair, and are almost always followed by a speedy dawn of hope, were gravely concerted by the statesmen of Holland. To open their dykes, to man their ships, to leave their country, with all its miracles of art and industry, its cities, its canals, its villas, its pastures, and its tulip gardens, buried under the waves of the German ocean, to bear to a distant climate their Calvinistic faith and their old Batavian liberties, to fix, perhaps with happier auspices, the new Stadthouse of their Commonwealth, under other stars, and amidst a strange vegetation, in the Spice Islands of the Eastern seas; such were the plans which they had the spirit to form; and it is seldom that men who have the spirit to form such plans are reduced to the necessity of executing them.
The Allies had, during a short period, obtained success beyond their hopes. This was their auspicious moment. They neglected to improve it. It passed away; and it returned no more. The Prince of Orange arrested the progress of the French armies. Lewis returned to be amused and flattered at Versailles. The country was under water. The winter approached. The weather became stormy. The fleets of the combined kings could no longer keep the sea. The republic had obtained a respite; and the circumstances were such that a respite was, in a military view, important, in a political view almost decisive.
The alliance against Holland, formidable as it was, was yet of such a nature that it could not succeed at all, unless it succeeded at once. The English Ministers could not carry on the war without money. They could legally obtain money only from the Parliament; and they were most unwilling to call the Parliament 53together. The measures which Charles had adopted at home were even more unpopular than his foreign policy. He had bound himself by a treaty with Lewis to reestablish the Catholic religion in England; and, in pursuance of this design, he had entered on the same path which his brother afterwards trod with greater obstinacy to a more fatal end. The King had annulled, by his own sole authority, the laws against Catholics and other dissenters. The matter of the Declaration of Indulgence exasperated one half of his subjects, and the manner the other half. Liberal men would have rejoiced to see a toleration granted, at least to all Protestant sects. Many high churchmen had no objection to the King’s dispensing power. But a tolerant act done in an unconstitutional way excited the opposition of all who were zealous either for the Church or for the privileges of the people, that is to say, of ninety-nine Englishmen out of a hundred. The ministers were, therefore, most unwilling to meet the Houses. Lawless and desperate as their counsels were, the boldest of them had too much value for his neck to think of resorting to benevolences, privy-seals, ship-money, or any of the other unlawful modes of extortion which had been familiar to the preceding age. The audacious fraud of shutting up the Exchequer furnished them with about twelve hundred thousand pounds, a sum which, even in better hands than theirs, would not have sufficed for the war-charges of a single year. And this was a step which could never be repeated, a step which, like most breaches of public faith, was speedily found to have caused pecuniary difficulties greater than those which it removed. All the money that could be raised was gone; Holland was not conquered; and the King Lad no resource but in a Parliament. 54Had a general election taken place at this crisis, it is probable that the country would have sent up representatives as resolutely hostile to the Court as those who met in November, 1640; that the whole domestic and foreign policy of the Government would have been instantly changed; and that the members of the Cabal would have expiated their crimes on Tower Hill. But the House of Commons was still the same which had been elected twelve years before, in the midst of the transports of joy, repentance, and loyalty which followed the Restoration; and no pains had been spared to attach it to the Court by places, pensions, and bribes. To the great mass of the people it was scarcely less odious than the Cabinet itself. Yet, though it did not immediately proceed to those strong measures which a new House would in all probability have adopted, it was sullen and unmanageable, and undid, slowly indeed, and by degrees, but most effectually, all that the Ministers had done. In one session it annihilated their system of internal government. In a second session it gave a death-blow to their foreign policy.
The dispensing power was the first object of attack. The Commons would not expressly approve the war; but neither did they as yet expressly condemn it; and they were even willing to grant the King a supply for the purpose of continuing hostilities, on condition that he would redress internal grievances, among which the Declaration of Indulgence held the foremost place.
Shaftesbury, who was Chancellor, saw that the game was up, that he had got all that was to be got by siding with despotism and Popery, and that it was high time to think of being a demagogue and a good Protestant. The Lord Treasurer Clifford was marked out by his 55boldness, by his openness, by his zeal for the Catholic religion, by something which, compared with the villany of his colleagues, might almost be called honesty, to be the scapegoat of the whole conspiracy. The King came in person to the House of Peers for the purpose of requesting their Lordships to mediate between him and the Commons touching the Declaration of Indulgence. He remained in the House while his speech was taken into consideration; a common practice with him; for the debates amused his sated mind, and were sometimes, he used to say, as good as a comedy. A more sudden turn his Majesty had certainly never seen in any comedy of intrigue, either at his own play-house, or at the Duke’s, than that which’ this memorable debate produced. The Lord Treasurer spoke with characteristic ardour and intrepidity in defence of the Declaration. When he sat down, the Lord Chancellor rose from the woolsack, and, to the amazement of the King and of the House, attacked Clifford, attacked the Declaration for which he had himself spoken in Council, gave up the whole policy of the Cabinet, and declared himself on the side of the House of Commons. Even that age had not witnessed so portentous a display of impudence.
The King, by the advice of the French Court, which cared much more about the war on the Continent than about the conversion of the English heretics, determined to save his foreign policy at the expense of his plans in favour of the Catholic church. He obtained a supply; and in return for this concession he cancelled the Declaration of Indulgence and made a formal renunciation of the dispensing power before he prorogued the Houses.
But it was no more in his power to go on with the 56war than to maintain his arbitrary system at home. His Ministry, betrayed within, and fiercely assailed from without, went rapidly to pieces. Clifford threw down the white staff, and retired to the woods of Ugbrook, vowing, with bitter tears, that he would never again see that turbulent city, and that perfidious Court. Shaftesbury was ordered to deliver up the Great Seal, and instantly carried over his front of brass and his tongue of poison to the ranks of the Opposition. The remaining members of the Cabal had neither the capacity of the late Chancellor, nor the courage and enthusiasm of the late Treasurer. They were not only unable to carry on their former projects, but began to tremble for their own lands and heads. The Parliament, as soon as it again met, began to murmur against the alliance with France and the war with Holland; and the murmur gradually swelled into a fierce and terrible clamour. Strong resolutions were adopted against Lauderdale and Buckingham. Articles of impeachment were exhibited against Arlington. The Triple Alliance was mentioned with reverence in every debate; and the eyes of all men were turned towards the quiet orchard, where the author of that great league was amusing himself with reading and gardening.
Temple was ordered to attend the King, and was charged with the office of negotiating a separate peace with Holland. The Spanish Ambassador to the Court of London had been empowered by the States-General to treat in their name. With him Temple came to a speedy agreement; and in three days a treaty was concluded.
The highest honours of the State were now within Temple’s reach. After the retirement of Clifford, the 57white staff had been delivered to Thomas Osborne, soon after created Earl of Danby, who was related to Lady Temple, and had, many years earlier, travelled and played tennis with Sir William. Danby was an interested and dishonest man, but by no means destitute of abilities or of judgment. He was, indeed, a far better adviser than any in whom Charles had hitherto reposed confidence. Clarendon was a man of another generation, and did not in the least understand the society which he had to govern. The members of the Cabal were ministers of a foreign power, and enemies of the Established Church; and had in consequence raised against themselves and their master an irresistible storm of national and religious hatred. Danby wished to strengthen and extend the prerogative; but he had the sense to see that this could be done only by a complete change of system. He knew the English people and the House of Commons; and he knew that the course which Charles had recently taken, if obstinately pursued, might well end before the windows of the Banqueting-House. He saw that the true policy of the Crown was to ally itself, not with the feeble, the hated, the down-trodden Catholics, but with the powerful, the wealthy, the popular, the dominant Church of England; to trust for aid, not to a foreign Prince whose name was hateful to the British nation, and whose succours could be obtained only on terms of vassalage, but to the old Cavalier party, to the landed gentry, the clergy, and the universities. By rallying round the throne the whole strength of the Royalists and High-Churchmen, and by using without stint all the resources of corruption, he flattered himself that he could manage the Parliament. That he failed is to be attributed less to himself than to his master. 58Of the disgraceful dealings which were still kept up with the French Court, Danby deserved little or none of the blame, though he suffered the whole punishment.
Danby, with great parliamentary talents, had paid little attention to European politics, and wished for the help of some person on whom he could rely in the foreign department. A plan was accordingly arranged for making Temple Secretary of State. Arlington was the only member of the Cabal who still held office in England. The temper of the House of Commons made it necessary to remove him, or rather to require him to sell out; for at that time the great offices of State were bought and sold as commissions in the army now are. Temple was informed that he should have the Seals if he would pay Arlington six thousand pounds. The transaction had nothing in it discreditable, according to the notions of that age, and the investment would have been a good one; for we imagine that at that time the gains which a Secretary of State might make, without doing any thing considered as improper, were very considerable. Temple’s friends offered to lend him the money; but he was fully determined not to take a post of so much responsibility in times so agitated, and under a Prince on whom so little reliance could be placed, and accepted the embassy to the Hague, leaving Arlington to find another purchaser.
Before Temple left England he had a long audience of the King, to whom he spoke with great severity of the measures adopted by the late Ministry. The King owned that things had turned out ill. “But,” said he, “if I had been well served, I might have made a good business of it.” Temple was alarmed at this language, 59and inferred from it that the system of the Cabal had not been abandoned, but only suspended. He therefore thought it his duty to go, as he expressed it, “to the bottom of the matter.” He strongly represented to the King the impossibility of establishing either absolute government, or the Catholic religion in England; and concluded by repeating an observation which he had heard at Brussels from M. Gourville, a very intelligent Frenchman well known to Charles: “A King of England,” said Gourville, “who is willing to be the man of his people, is the greatest king in the world, but if he wishes to be more, by heaven he is nothing at all!” The King betrayed some symptoms of impatience during this lecture; but at last he laid his hand kindly on Temple’s shoulder, and said, “You are right, and so is Gourville; and I will be the man of my people.”
With this assurance Temple repaired to the Hague in July, 1674. Holland was now secure, and France was surrounded on every side by enemies. Spain and the Empire were in arms for the purpose of compelling Lewis to abandon all that he had acquired since the treaty of the Pyrenees. A congress for the purpose of putting an end to the war was opened at Nimeguen under the mediation of England in 1675; and to that congress Temple was deputed. The work of conciliation, however, went on very slowly. The belligerent powers were still sanguine, and the mediating power was unsteady and insincere.
In the mean time the Opposition in England became more and more formidable, and seemed fully determined to force the King into a war with France. Charles was desirous of making some appointments which might strengthen the administration and conciliate the confidence of the public. No man was more esteemed by 60the nation than Temple; yet he had never been concerned in any opposition to any government. In July, 1677, he was sent for from Nimeguen. Charles received him with caresses, earnestly pressed him to accept the seals of Secretary of State, and promised to bear half the charge of buying out the present holder. Temple was charmed by the kindness and politeness of the King’s manner, and by the liveliness of his Majesty’s conversation; but his prudence was not to be so laid asleep. He calmly and steadily excused himself. The King affected to treat his excuses as mere jests, and gaily said, “Go; get you gone to Sheen. We shall have no good of you till you have been there; and when you have rested yourself, come up again.” Temple withdrew and staid two days at his villa, but returned to town in the same mind; and the King was forced to consent at least to a delay.
But while Temple thus carefully shunned the responsibility of bearing a part in the general direction of affairs, he gave a signal proof of that never-failing sagacity which enabled him to find out ways of distinguishing himself without risk. He had a principal share in bringing about an event which was at the time hailed with general satisfaction, and which subsequently produced consequences of the highest importance. This was the marriage of the Prince of Orange and the Lady Mary.
In the following year Temple returned to the Hague; and thence he was ordered, in the close of 1678, to repair to Nimeguen, for the purpose of signing the hollow and unsatisfactory treaty by which the distractions of Europe were for a short time suspended. He grumbled much at being required to affix his name to bad articles which he had not framed, and still more at having to 61travel in very cold weather. After all, a difficulty of etiquette prevented him from signing, and he returned to the Hague. Scarcely had he arrived there when he received intelligence that the King, whose embarrassments were now far greater than ever, was fully resolved immediately to appoint him Secretary of State. He a third time declined that high post, and began to make preparations for a journey to Italy; thinking, doubtless, that he should spend his time much more pleasantly among pictures and ruins than in such a whirlpool of political and religious frenzy as was then raging in London.
But the King was in extreme necessity, and was no longer to be so easily put off. Temple received positive orders to repair instantly to England. He obeyed, and found the country in a state even more fearful than that which he had pictured to himself.
Those are terrible conjunctures, when the discontents of a nation, not light and capricious discontents, but discontents which have been steadily increasing during a long series of years, have attained their full maturity. The discerning few predict the approach of these conjunctures, but predict in vain. To the many, the evil season comes as a total eclipse of the sun at noon comes to a people of savages. Society which, but a short time before, was in a state of perfect repose, is on a sudden agitated with the most fearful convulsions, and seems to be on the verge of dissolution; and the rulers who, till the mischief was beyond the reach of all ordinary remedies, had never bestowed one thought on its existence, stand bewildered and panic-stricken, without hope or resource, in the midst of the confusion. One such conjuncture this generation has seen. God grant that we may never 62see another! At such a conjuncture it was that Temple landed on English ground in the beginning of 1679.
The Parliament had obtained a glimpse of the King’s dealings with France; and their anger had been unjustly directed against Danby, whose conduct as to that matter had been, on the whole, deserving rather of praise than of censure. The Popish Plot, the murder of Godfrey, the infamous inventions of Oates, the discovery of Colman’s letters, had excited the nation to madness. All the disaffection which had been generated by eighteen years of misgovernment had come to the birth together. At this moment the King had been advised to dissolve that Parliament which had been elected just after his restoration, and which, though its composition had since that time been greatly altered, was still far more deeply imbued with the old cavalier spirit than any that had preceded, or that was likely to follow it. The general election had commenced, and was proceeding with a degree of excitement never before known. The tide ran furiously against the Court. It was clear that a majority of the New House of Commons would be, to use a word which came into fashion a few months later, decided Whigs. Charles had found it necessary to yield to the violence of the public feeling. The Duke of York was on the point of retiring to Holland. “I never,” says Temple, who had seen the abolition of monarchy, the dissolution of the Long Parliament, the fall of the Protectorate, the declaration of Monk against the Rump, “I never saw greater disturbance in men’s minds.”
The King now with the utmost urgency besought Temple to take the seals. The pecuniary part of the 63arrangement no longer presented any difficulty; and Sir William was not quite so decided in his refusal as he had formerly been. He took three days to consider the posture of affairs, and to examine his own feelings; and he came to the conclusion that “the scene was unfit for such an actor as he knew himself to be.” Yet he felt that, by refusing help to the King at such a crisis, he might give much offence and incur much censure. He shaped his course with his usual dexterity. He affected to be very desirous of a seat in Parliament; yet he contrived to be an unsuccessful candidate; and, when all the writs were returned, he represented that it would be useless for him to take the seals till he could procure admittance to the House of Commons; and in this manner he succeeded in avoiding the greatness which others desired to thrust upon him.
The Parliament met; and the violence of its proceedings surpassed all expectation. The Long Parliament itself, with much greater provocation, had at its commencement been less violent. The Treasurer was instantly driven from office, impeached, sent to the Tower. Sharp and vehement votes were passed on the subject of the Popish Plot. The Commons were prepared to go much further, to wrest from the King his prerogative of mercy in cases of high political crimes, and to alter the succession to the Crown. Charles was thoroughly perplexed and dismayed. Temple saw him almost daily, and thought him impressed with a deep sense of his errors, and of the miserable state into which they had brought him. Their conferences became longer and more confidential: and Temple began to flatter himself with the hope that he might be able to reconcile parties at home as he had reconciled hostile 64States abroad; that he might be able to suggest a plan which should allay all heats, efface the memory of all past grievances, secure the nation from misgovernment, and protect the Crown against the encroachments of Parliament.
Temple’s plan was that the existing Privy Council, which consisted of fifty members, should be dissolved, that there should no longer be a small interior council, like that which is now designated as the Cabinet, that a new Privy Council of thirty members should be appointed, and that the King should pledge himself to govern by the constant advice of this body, to suffer all his affairs of every kind to be freely debated there, and not to reserve any part of the public business for a secret committee.
Fifteen of the members of this new council were to be great officers of State. The other fifteen were to be independent noblemen and gentlemen of the greatest weight in the country. In appointing them particular regard was to be had to the amount of their property. The whole annual income of the counsellors was estimated at 300,000l. The annual income of all the members of the House of Commons was not supposed to exceed 400,000l. The appointment of wealthy counsellors Temple describes as “a chief regard, necessary to this constitution.”
This plan was the subject of frequent conversation between the King and Temple. After a month passed in discussions to which no third person appears to have been privy Charles declared himself satisfied of the expediency of the proposed measure, and resolved to carry it into effect.
It is much to be regretted that Temple has left us no account of these conferences. Historians have, 65therefore, been left to form their own conjectures as to the object of this very extraordinary plan, “this Constitution,” as Temple himself calls it. And we cannot say that any explanation which has yet been given seems to us quite satisfactory. Indeed, almost all the writers whom we have consulted appear to consider the change as merely a change of administration, and so considering it, they generally applaud it. Mr. Courtenay, who has evidently examined this subject with more attention than has often been bestowed upon it, seems to think Temple’s scheme very strange, unintelligible, and absurd. It is with very great diffidence that we offer our own solution of what we have always thought one of the great riddles of English history. We are strongly inclined to suspect that the appointment of the new Privy Council was really a much more remarkable event than has generally been supposed, and that what Temple had in view was to effect, under colour of a change of administration, a permanent change in the Constitution.
The plan, considered merely as a plan for the formation of a Cabinet, is so obviously inconvenient, that we cannot easily believe this to have been Temple’s chief object. The number of the new Council alone would be a most serious objection. The largest cabinets of modern times have not, we believe, consisted of more than fifteen members. Even this number has generally been thought too large. The Marquess Wellesley, whose judgment on a question of executive administration is entitled to as much respect as that of any states man that England ever produced, expressed, during the ministerial negotiations of the year 1812, his conviction that even thirteen was an inconveniently large number. But in a Cabinet of thirty members what chance could 66there he of finding unity, secrecy, expedition, any of the qualities which such a body ought to possess? If, indeed, the members of such a Cabinet were closely bound together by interest, if they all had a deep stake in the permanence of the Administration, if the majority were dependent on a small number of leading men, the thirty might perhaps act as a smaller number would act, though more slowly, more awkwardly, and with more risk of improper disclosures. But the Council which Temple proposed was so framed that if, instead of thirty members, it had contained only ten, it would still have been the most unwieldy and discordant Cabinet that ever sat. One half of the members were to be persons holding no office, persons who had no motive to compromise their opinions, or to take any share of the responsibility of an unpopular measure, persons, therefore, who might be expected, as often as there might be a crisis requiring the most cordial co-operation, to draw off from the rest, and to throw every difficulty in the way of the public business. The circumstance that they were men of enormous private wealth only made the matter worse. The House of Commons is a checking body; and therefore it is desirable that it should, to a great extent, consist of men of independent fortune, who receive nothing and expect nothing from the Government. But with executive boards the case is quite different. Their business is not to check, but to act. The very same things, therefore, which are the virtues of Parliaments may be vices in Cabinets. We can hardly conceive a greater curse to the country than an Administration, the members of which should be as perfectly independent of each other, and as little under the necessity of making mutual concessions, as the representatives of London and Devonshire in the House of 67Commons are and ought to be. Now Temple’s new Council was to contain fifteen members who were to hold no offices, and the average amount of whose private estates was ten thousand pounds a year, an income which, in proportion to the wants of a man of rank of that period, was at least equal to thirty thousand a year in our time. Was it to be expected that such men would gratuitously take on themselves the labour and responsibility of Ministers, and the unpopularity which the best Ministers must sometimes be prepared to brave? Could there be any doubt that an Opposition would soon be formed within the Cabinet itself, and that the consequence would be disunion, altercation, tardiness in operations, the divulging of secrets, every thing most alien from the nature of an executive council?
Is it possible to imagine that considerations so grave and so obvious should have altogether escaped the notice of a man of Temple’s sagacity and experience? One of two things appears to us to be certain, either that his project has been misunderstood, or that his talents for public affairs have been overrated.
We lean to the opinion that his project has been misunderstood. His new Council, as we have shown, would have been an exceedingly bad Cabinet. The inference which we are inclined to draw is this, that he meant his Council to serve some other purpose than that of a mere Cabinet. Barillon used four or five words, which contain, we think, the key of the whole mystery. Mr. Courtenay calls them pithy words; but he does not, if we are right, apprehend their whole force. “Ce sont,” said Barillon, “des États, non des conseils.”
In order clearly to understand what we imagine to have been Temple’s views, the reader must remember 68that the Government of England was at that moment, and had been during nearly eighty years, in a state of transition. A change, not the less real or the less extensive because disguised under ancient names and forms, was in constant progress. The theory of the Constitution, the fundamental laws which fix the powers of the three branches of the legislature, underwent no material change between the time of Elizabeth and the time of William the Third. The most celebrated laws of the seventeenth century on those subjects, the Petition of Right, the Declaration of Right, are purely declaratory. They purport to be merely recitals of the old polity of England. They do not establish free government as a salutary improvement, but claim it as an undoubted and immemorial inheritance. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that, during the period of which we speak, all the mutual relations of all the orders of the State did practically undergo an entire change. The letter of the law might be unaltered; but at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the power of the crown was, in fact, decidedly predominant in the State; and at the end of that century the power of Parliament, and especially of the Lower House, had become in fact, decidedly predominant. At the beginning of the century, the sovereign perpetually violated, with little or no opposition, the clear privileges of Parliament. At the close of the century, the Parliament had virtually drawn to itself just as much as it chose of the prerogative of the Crown. The sovereign retained the shadow of that authority of which the Tudors had held the substance. He had a legislative veto which he never ventured to exercise, a power of appointing Ministers, whom an address of the Commons could at any moment force him to discard, a power of declaring 69war which, without Parliamentary support, could not be carried on for a single day. The Houses of Parliament were now not merely legislative assemblies, not merely checking assemblies. They were great Councils of State, whose voice, when loudly and firmly raised, was decisive on all questions of foreign and domestic policy. There was no part of the whole system of Government with which they had not power to interfere by advice equivalent to command; and, if they abstained from intermeddling with some departments of the executive administration, they were withheld from doing so only by their own moderation, and by the confidence which they reposed in the Ministers of the Crown. There is perhaps no other instance in history of a change so complete in the real constitution of an empire, unaccompanied by any corresponding change in the theoretical constitution. The disguised transformation of the Roman commonwealth into a despotic monarchy, under the long administration of Augustus, is perhaps the nearest parallel.
This great alteration did not take place without strong and constant resistance on the part of the kings of the house of Stewart. Till 1642, that resistance was generally of an open, violent, and lawless nature. If the Commons refused supplies, the sovereign levied a benevolence. If the Commons impeached a favourite minister, the sovereign threw the chiefs of the Opposition into prison. Of these efforts to keep down the Parliament by despotic force, without the pretext of law, the last, the most celebrated, and the most wicked was the attempt to seize the five members. That attempt was the signal for civil war, and was followed by eighteen years of blood and confusion.
The days of trouble passed by; the exiles returned; 70the throne was again set up in its high place; the peerage and the hierarchy recovered their ancient splendour. The fundamental laws which had been recited in the Petition of Right were again solemnly recognised. The theory of the English constitution was the same on the day when the hand of Charles the Second was kissed by the kneeling Houses at Whitehall as on the day when his father set up the royal standard at Nottingham. There was a short period of doting fondness, a hysterica passio of loyal repentance and love. But emotions of this sort are transitory; and the interests on which depends the progress of great societies are permanent. The transport of reconciliation was soon over; and the old struggle recommenced.
The old struggle recommenced; but not precisely after the old fashion. The sovereign was not indeed a man whom any common warning would have restrained from the grossest violations of law. But it was no common warning that he had received. All around him were the recent signs of the vengeance of an oppressed nation, the fields on which the noblest blood of the island had been poured forth, the castles shattered by the cannon of the Parliamentary armies, the hall where sat the stern tribunal to whose bar had been led, through lowering ranks of pikemen, the captive heir of a hundred kings, the stately pilasters before which the great execution had been so fearlessly done in the face of heaven and earth. The restored Prince, admonished by the fate of his father, never ventured to attack his Parliaments with open and arbitrary violence. It was at one time by means of the Parliament itself, at another time by means of the courts of law, that he attempted to regain for the Crown its old predominance. He began with great advantages. The 71Parliament of 1661 was called while the nation was still full of joy and tenderness. The great majority of the House of Commons were zealous royalists. All the means of influence which the patronage of the Crown afforded were used without limit. Bribery was reduced to a system. The King, when he could spare money from his pleasures for nothing else, could spare it for purposes of corruption. While the defence of the coasts was neglected, while ships rotted, while arsenals lay empty, while turbulent crowds of unpaid seamen swarmed in the streets of the seaports, something could still be scraped together in the Treasury for the members of the House of Commons. The gold of France was largely employed for the same purpose. Yet it was found, as indeed might have been foreseen, that there is a natural limit to the effect which can be produced by means like these. There is one thing which the most corrupt senates are unwilling to sell; and that is the power which makes them worth buying. The same selfish motives which induced them to take a price for a particular vote induce them to oppose every measure of which the effect would be to lower the importance, and consequently the price, of their votes. About the income of their power, so to speak, they are quite ready to make bargains. But they are not easily persuaded to part with any fragment of the principal. It is curious to observe how, during the long continuance of this Parliament, the Pensionary Parliament, as it was nicknamed by contemporaries, though every circumstance seemed to be favourable to the Crown, the power of the Crown was constantly sinking, and that of the Commons constantly rising. The meetings of the Houses were more frequent than in former reigns; their interference was 72more harassing to the Government than in former reigns; they had begun to make peace, to make war, to pull down, if they did not set up, administrations. Already a new class of statesmen had appeared, unheard of before that time, but common ever since. Under the Tudors and the earlier Stuarts, it was generally by courtly arts, or by official skill and knowledge, that a politician raised himself to power. From the time of Charles the Second down to our own days a different species of talent, parliamentary talent, has been the most valuable of all the qualifications of an English statesman. It has stood in the place of all other acquirements. It has covered ignorance, weakness, rashness, the most fatal maladministration. A great negotiator is nothing when compared with a great debater; and a minister who can make a successful speech need trouble himself little about an unsuccessful expedition. This is the talent which has made judges without law, and diplomatists without French, which has sent to the Admiralty men who did not know the stern of a ship from her bowsprit, and to the India Board men who did not know the difference between a rupee and a pagoda, which made a foreign secretary of Mr. Pitt, who, as George the Second said, had never opened Yattel, and which was very near making a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Mr. Sheridan, who could not work a sum in long division. This was the sort of talent which raised Clifford from obscurity to the head of affairs. To this talent Osborne, by birth a simple country gentleman, owed his white staff, his garter, and his dukedom. The encroachment of the power of the Parliament on the power of the Crown resembled, a fatality, or the operation of some great law of nature. The will of the individual on the 73throne, or of the individuals in the two Houses, seemed to go for nothing. The King might be eager to encroach; yet something constantly drove him back. The Parliament might be loyal, even servile; yet something constantly urged them forward.
These things were done in the green tree. What then was likely to be done in the dry? The Popish Plot and the general election came together, and found a people predisposed to the most violent excitation. The composition of the House of Commons was changed. The Legislature was filled with men who leaned to Republicanism in politics, and to Presbyterianism in religion. They no sooner met than they commenced an attack on the Government which, if successful, must have made them supreme in the State.
Where was this to end? To us who have seen the solution the question presents few difficulties. But to a statesman of the age of Charles the Second, to a statesman who wished, without depriving the Parliament of its privileges, to maintain the monarch in his old supremacy, it must have appeared very perplexing.
Clarendon had, when Minister, struggled, honestly, perhaps, but, as was his wont, obstinately, proudly, and offensively, against the growing power of the Commons. He was for allowing them their old authority, and not one atom more. He would never have claimed for the Crown a right to levy taxes from the people without the consent of Parliament. But when the Parliament, in the first Dutch war, most properly insisted on knowing how it was that the money which they had voted had produced so little effect, and began to inquire through what hands it had passed, and on what services it had been expended, 74Clarendon considered this as a monstrous innovation. He told the King, as he himself says, “that he could not be too indulgent in the defence of the privileges of Parliament, and that he hoped he would never violate any of them; but he desired him to be equally solicitous to prevent the excesses in Parliament, and not to suffer them to extend their jurisdiction to cases they have nothing to do with; and that to restrain them within their proper bounds and limits is as necessary as it is to preserve them from being invaded; and that this was such a new encroachment as had no bottom.” This is a single instance. Others might easily be given.
The bigotry, the strong passions, the haughty and disdainful temper, which made Clarendon’s great abilities a source of utmost un mixed evil to himself and to the public, had no place in the character of Temple. To Temple, however, as well as to Clarendon, the rapid change which was taking place in the real working of the Constitution gave great disquiet; particularly as Temple had never sat in the English Parliament, and therefore regarded it with none of the predilection which men naturally feel for a body to which they belong, and for a theatre on which their own talents have been advantageously displayed.
To wrest by force from the House of Commons its newly acquired powers was impossible; nor was Temple a man to recommend such a stroke, even if it had been possible. But was it possible that the House of Commons might be induced to let those powers drop? Was it possible that, as a great revolution had been effected without any change in the outward form of the Government, so a great counter-revolution might be effected in the same manner? Was it possible that the 75Crown and the Parliament might be placed in nearly the same relative position in which they had stood in the reign of Elizabeth, and that this might be done without one sword drawn, without one execution, and with the general acquiescence of the nation?
The English people—it was probably thus that Temple argued—will not bear to be governed by the unchecked power of the sovereign, nor ought they to be so governed. At present there is no check but the Parliament. The limits which separate the power of checking those who govern from the power of governing are not easily to be defined. The Parliament, therefore, supported by the nation, is rapidly drawing to itself all the powers of Government. If it were possible to frame some other check on the power of the Crown, some check which might be less galling to the sovereign than that by which he is now constantly tormented, and yet which might appear to the people to be a tolerable security against maladministration, Parliaments would probably meddle less; and they would be less supported by public opinion in their meddling. That the King’s hands may not be rudely tied by others, he must consent to tie them lightly himself. That the executive administration may not be usurped by the checking body, something of the character of a checking body must be given to the body which conducts the executive administration. The Parliament is now arrogating to itself every day a larger share of the functions of the Privy Council. We must stop the evil by giving to the Privy Council something of the constitution of a Parliament. Let the nation see that all the King’s measures are directed by a Cabinet composed of representatives of every order in the State, by a Cabinet which contains, not placemen alone, but independent 76and popular noblemen and gentlemen who have large estates and no salaries, and who are not likely to sacrifice the public welfare in which they have a deep stake, and the credit which they have obtained with the country, to the pleasure of a Court from which they receive nothing. When the ordinary administration is in such hands as these, the people will be quite content to see the Parliament become, what it formerly was, an extraordinary check. They will be quite willing that the House of Commons should meet only once in three years for a short session, and should take as little part in matters of state as it did a hundred years ago.
Thus we believe that Temple reasoned: for on this hypothesis his scheme is intelligible; and on any other hypothesis his scheme appears to us, as it does to Mr. Courtenay, exceedingly absurd and unmeaning. This Council was strictly what Barillon called it, an Assembly of States. There are the representatives of all the great sections of the community, of the Church, of the law, of the Peerage, of the Commons. The exclusion of one half of the counsellors from office under the Crown, an exclusion which is quite absurd when we consider the Council merely as an executive board, becomes at once perfectly reasonable when we consider the Council as a body intended to restrain the Crown as well as to exercise the powers of the Crown, to perform some of the functions of a Parliament as well as the functions of a Cabinet. We see, too, why Temple dwelt so much on the private wealth of the members, why he instituted a comparison between their united incomes and the united incomes of the members of the House of Commons. Such a parallel would have been idle in the case of a mere Cabinet. It is extremely significant in the case of a body intended 77to supersede the House of Commons in some very important functions.
We can hardly help thinking that the notion of this Parliament on a small scale was suggested to Temple by what he had himself seen in the United Provinces. The original Assembly of the States-General consisted, as he tells us, of above eight hundred persons. But this great body was represented by a smaller Council of about thirty, which bore the name and exercised the powers of the States-General. At last the real States altogether ceased to meet; and their power, though still a part of the theory of the Constitution, became obsolete in practice. We do not, of course, imagine that Temple either expected or wished that Parliaments should be thus disused; but he did expect, we think, that something like what had happened in Holland would happen in England, and that a large portion of the functions lately assumed by Parliament would be quietly transferred to the miniature Parliament which he proposed to create.
Had this plan, with some modifications, been tried at an earlier period, in a more composed state of the public mind, and by a better sovereign, we are by no means certain that it might not have effected the purpose for which it was designed. The restraint imposed on the King by the Council of Thirty, whom he had himself chosen, would have been feeble indeed when compared with the restraint imposed by Parliament. But it would have been more constant. It would have acted every year, and all the year round; and before the Revolution the sessions of Parliament were short and the recesses long. The advice of the Council would probably have prevented any very monstrous and scandalous measures; and would consequently 78have prevented the discontents which follow such measures, and the salutary laws which are the fruit of such discontents. We believe, for example, that the second Dutch war would never have been approved by such a Council as that which Temple proposed. We are quite certain that the shutting up of the Exchequer would never even have been mentioned in such a Council. The people, pleased to think that Lord Russell, Lord Cavendish, and Mr. Powle, unplaced and unpensioned, were daily representing their grievances and defending their rights in the Royal presence, would not have pined quite so much for the meeting of Parliaments. The Parliament, when it met, would have found fewer and less glaring abuses to attack. There would have been less misgovernment and less reform. We should not have been cursed with the Cabal, or blessed with the Habeas Corpus Act. In the mean time the Council, considered as an executive Council, would, unless some at least of its powers had been delegated to a smaller body, have been feeble, dilatory, divided, unfit for every thing which requires secrecy and despatch, and peculiarly unfit for the administration of war.
The revolution put an end, in a very different way, to the long contest between the King and the Parliament. From that time, the House of Commons has been predominant in the State. The Cabinet has really been, from that time, a committee nominated by the Crown out of the prevailing party in Parliament. Though the minority in the Commons are constantly proposing to condemn executive measures, or to call for papers which may enable the House to sit in judgment on such measures, these propositions are scarcely ever carried; and, if a proposition of this kind is carried 79against the Government, a change of Ministry almost necessarily follows. Growing and struggling power always gives more annoyance and is more unmanageable than established power. The House of Commons gave infinitely more trouble to the Ministers of Charles the Second than to any Ministers of later times; for, in the time of Charles the Second, the House was checking Ministers in whom it did not confide. Now that its ascendency is fully established, it either confides in Ministers or turns them out. This is undoubtedly a far better state of tilings than that which Temple wished to introduce. The modern Cabinet is a far better executive Council than his. The worst House of Commons that has sate since the Revolution was a far more efficient check on misgovemment than his fifteen independent counsellors would have been. Yet, every thing considered, it seems to us that his plan was the work of an observant, ingenious, and fertile mind.
On this occasion, as on every occasion on which he came prominently forward, Temple had the rare good fortune to please the public as well as the Sovereign. The general exultation was great when it was known that the old Council, made up of the most odious tools of power, was dismissed, that small interior committees, rendered odious by the recent memory of the Cabal, were to be disused, and that the King would adopt no measure till it had been discussed and approved by a body, of which one half consisted of independent gentlemen and noblemen, and in which such persons as Russell, Cavendish, and Temple himself had seats. Town and country were in a ferment of joy. The bells were rung; bonfires were lighted; and the acclamations of England were echoed by the Dutch, who considered the influence obtained by Temple as a certain 80omen of good for Europe. It is, indeed, much to the honour of his sagacity that every one of his great measures should, in such times, have pleased every party which he had any interest in pleasing. This was the case with the Triple Alliance, with the treaty which concluded the second Dutch war, with the marriage of the Prince of Orange, and, finally, with the institution of this new Council.
The only people who grumbled were those popular, leaders of the House of Commons who were not among the Thirty; and, if our view of the measure be correct, they were precisely the people who had good reason to grumble. They were precisely the people whose activity and whose influence the new Council was intended to destroy.
But there was very soon an end of the bright hopes and loud applauses with which the publication of this scheme had been hailed. The perfidious levity of the King and the ambition of the chiefs of parties produced the instant, entire, and irremediable failure of a plan which nothing but firmness, public spirit, and self-denial, on the part of all concerned in it could conduct to a happy issue. Even before the project was divulged, its author had already found reason to apprehend that it would fail. Considerable difficulty was experienced in framing the list of counsellors. There were two men in particular about whom the King and Temple could not agree, two men deeply tainted with the vices common to the English statesmen of that age, but unrivalled in talents, address, and influence. These were the Earl of Shaftesbury, and George Savile Viscount Halifax.
It was a favourite exercise among the Greek sophists to write panegyrics on characters proverbial for depravity. 81One professor of rhetoric sent to Isocrates a panegyric on Busiris; and Isocrates himself wrote another, which has come down to us. It is, we presume, from an ambition of the same kind that some writers have lately shown a disposition to eulogize Shaftesbury. But the attempt is vain. The charges against him rest on evidence not to be invalidated by any arguments which human wit can devise, or by any information which may be found in old trunks and escrutoires.
It is certain that, just before the Restoration, he declared to the Regicides that he would be damned, body and soul, rather than suffer a hair of their heads to be hurt, and that, just after the Restoration he was one of the judges who sentenced them to death. It is certain that he was a principal member of the most profligate Administration ever known, and that he was afterwards a principal member of the most profligate Opposition ever known. It is certain that, in power, he did not scruple to violate the great fundamental principle of the Constitution, in order to exalt the Catholics, and that, out of power, he did not scruple to violate every principle of justice, in order to destroy them. There were in that age some honest men, such as William Penn, who valued toleration so highly that they would willingly have seen it established even by an illegal exertion of the prerogative. There were many honest men who dreaded arbitrary power so much that, on account of the alliance between Popery and arbitrary power, they were disposed to grant no toleration to Papists. On both these classes we look with indulgence, though we think both in the wrong. But Shaftesbury belonged to neither class. He united all that was worst in both. From the misguided 82friends of toleration he borrowed their contempt for the Constitution, and from the misguided friends of civil liberty their contempt for the rights of conscience. We never can admit that his conduct as a member of the Cabal was redeemed by his conduct as a leader of Opposition. On the contrary, his life was such that every part of it, as if by a skilful contrivance, reflects infamy on every other. We should never have known how abandoned a prostitute he was in place, if we had not known how desperate an incendiary he was out of it. To judge of him fairly, we must bear in mind that the Shaftesbury who, in office, was the chief author of the Declaration of Indulgence, was the same Shaftesbury who, out of office, excited and kept up the savage hatred of the rabble of London against the very class to whom that Declaration of Indulgence was intended to give illegal relief.
It is amusing to see the excuses that are made for him. We will give two specimens. It is acknowledged that he was one of the Ministry who made the alliance with France against Holland, and that this alliance was most pernicious. What, then, is the defence? Even this, that he betrayed his master’s counsels to the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, and tried to rouse all the Protestant powers of Germany to defend the States. Again, it is acknowledged that he was deeply concerned in the Declaration of Indulgence, and that his conduct on this occasion was not only unconstitutional, but quite inconsistent with the course which he afterwards took respecting the professors of the Catholic faith. What, then, is the defence? Even this, that he meant only-to allure concealed Papists to avow themselves, and thus to become open marks for the vengeance of the public. As often as he is charged 83with one treason, his advocates vindicate him by confessing two. They had better leave him where they find him. For him there is no escape upwards. Every outlet by which he can creep out of his present position, is one which lets him down into a still lower and fouler depth of infamy. To whitewash an Ethiopian is a proverbially hopeless attempt; but to whitewash an Ethiopian by giving him a new coat of blacking, is an enterprise more extraordinary still. That in the course of Shaftesbury’s dishonest and revengeful opposition to the Court, he rendered one or two most useful services to his country we admit. And he is, we think, fairly entitled, if that be any glory, to have his name eternally associated with the Habeas Corpus Act in the same way in which the name of Henry the Eighth is associated with the reformation of the Church, and that of Jack Wilkes with the most sacred rights of electors.
While Shaftesbury was still living, his character was elaborately drawn by
two of the greatest writers of the age, by Butler, with characteristic
brilliancy of wit, by Dryden, with even more than characteristic energy
and loftiness, by both with all the inspiration of hatred. The sparkling
illustrations of Butler have been thrown into the shade by the brighter
glory of that gorgeous satiric Muse, who comes sweeping by in sceptred
pall, borrowed from her more august sisters. But the descriptions well
deserve to be compared. The reader will at once perceive a considerable
difference between Butler’s
“politician,
With more heads than a heart in vision.”
and the Ahithophel of Dryden. Butler dwells on Shaftesbury’s unprincipled
versatility on his wonderful 84and almost instinctive skill in discerning
the approach of a change of fortune; and on the dexterity with which he
extricated himself from the snares in which he left his associates to
perish.
“Our state-artificer foresaw
Which way the world began to draw,
For as old sinners have all points
O’ th’ compass in their bones and joints,
Can by their pangs and aches find
All turns and changes of the wind,
And better than by Napier’s bones
Feel in their own the age of moons:
So guilty sinners in a state
Can
by their crimes prognosticate,
And in their
consciences feel pain
Some days before a
shower of rain.
He, therefore, wisely cast
about
All ways he could to ensure his throat.”
In Dryden’s great portrait, on the contrary, violent passion, implacable
revenge, boldness amounting to temerity, are the most striking features.
Ahithophel is one of the “great wits to madness near allied.” And again—
“A daring pilot in extremity,
Pleased with the danger when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.” (1)
(1) It has never, we believe, been remarked, that two of the
most striking lines in the description of Ahithophel are
borrowed from a most obscure quarter. In Knolles’s History
of the Turks, printed more than sixty years before the
appearance of Absalom and Ahithophel, are the following
verses, under a portrait of the Sultan Mustapha the First:=
“Greatnesse on goodnesse loves to slide, not stand,
And leaves for Fortune’s ice Vertue’s firme land.”
Dryden’s words are—=
“But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And
Fortune’s ice prefers to Virtue’s land.”
The circumstance is the more remarkable, because Drvden has
really no couplet which would seem to a good critic more
intensely Drydenian, both in thought and expression, than
this, of which the whole thought, and almost the whole
expression, are stolen.
As we are on this subject, we cannot refrain from observing
that Mr. Courtenay has done Drvden injustice, by
inadvertently attributing to him some feeble lines which are
in Tate’s part of Absalom and Ahithophel.
85The dates of the two poems will, we think, explain this discrepancy. The third part of Hudibras appeared in 1678, when the character of Shaftesbury had as yet but imperfectly developed itself. He had, indeed, been a traitor to every party in the State; but his treasons had hitherto prospered. Whether it were accident or sagacity, he had timed his desertions in such a manner that fortune seemed to go to and fro with him from side to side. The extent of his perfidy was known; but it was not till the Popish Plot furnished him with a machinery which seemed sufficiently powerful for all his purposes, that the audacity of his spirit, and the fierceness of his malevolent passions, became fully manifest. His subsequent conduct showed undoubtedly great ability, but not ability of the sort for which he had formerly been so eminent. He was now headstrong, sanguine, full of impetuous confidence in his own wisdom and his own good luck. He, whose fame as a political tactician had hitherto rested chiefly on his skilful retreats, now set himself to break down all the bridges behind him. His plans were castles in the air: his talk was rodomontade. He took no thought for the morrow: he treated the Court as if the King were already a prisoner in his hands: he built on the favour of the multitude, as if that favour were not proverbially inconstant. The signs of the coming reaction were discerned by men of far less sagacity than his, and scared from his side men more consistent than he had ever pretended to be. But on him they were 86lost. The counsel of Ahithopliel, that counsel which was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of God, was turned into foolishness. He who had become a byword, for the certainty with which he foresaw and the suppleness with which he evaded danger, now, when beset on every side with snares and death, seemed to be smitten with a blindness as strange as his former clear-sightedness, and, turning neither to the right nor to the left, strode straight on with desperate hardihood to his doom. Therefore, after having early acquired and long preserved the reputation of infallible wisdom and invariable success, he lived to see a mighty ruin wrought by his own ungovernable passions, to see the great party which he had led vanquished, and scattered, and trampled down, to see all his own devilish enginery of lying witnesses, partial sheriffs, packed juries, unjust judges, bloodthirsty mobs, ready to be employed against himself and his most devoted followers, to fly from that proud city whose favour had almost raised him to be Mayor of the Palace, to hide himself in squalid retreats, to cover his grey head with ignominious disguises; and he died in hopeless exile, sheltered, by the generosity of a State which he had cruelly injured and insulted, from the vengeance of a master whose favour he had purchased by one series of crimes, and forfeited by another.
Halifax had, in common with Shaftesbury, and with almost all the politicians of that age, a very loose morality where the public was concerned; but in Halifax the prevailing infection was modified by a very peculiar constitution both of heart and head, by a temper singularly free from gall, and by a refining and sceptical understanding. He changed his course as often as Shaftesbury; but he did not change it to the same 87extent, or in the same direction. Shaftesbury was the very reverse of a trimmer. His disposition led him generally to do his utmost to exalt the side which was up, and to depress the side which was down. His transitions were from extreme to extreme. While he stayed with a party he went all lengths for it: when he quitted it he went all lengths against it. Halifax was emphatically a trimmer; a trimmer both by intellect and by constitution. The name was fixed on him by his contemporaries; and he was so far from being ashamed of it that he assumed it as a badge of honour. He passed from faction to faction. But, instead of adopting and inflaming the passions of those whom he joined, he tried to diffuse among them something of the spirit of those whom he had just left. While he acted with the Opposition he was suspected of being a spy of the Court; and when he had joined the Court all the Tories were dismayed by his Republican doctrines.
He wanted neither arguments nor eloquence to exhibit what was commonly regarded as his wavering policy in the fairest light. He trimmed, he said, as the temperate zone trims between intolerable heat and intolerable cold, as a good government trims between despotism and anarchy, as a pure church trims between the errors of the Papist and those of the Anabaptist. Nor was this defence by any means without weight; for, though there is abundant proof that his integrity was not of strength to withstand the temptations by which his cupidity and vanity were sometimes assailed, yet his dislike of extremes, and a forgiving and compassionate temper which seems to have been natural to him, preserved him from all participation in the worst crimes of his time. If both parties accused him of deserting 88them, both were compelled to admit that they had great obligations to his humanity, and that, though an uncertain friend, he was a placable enemy. He voted in favour of Lord Stafford, the victim of the Whigs; he did his utmost to save Lord Russell, the victim of the Tories; and, on the whole, we are inclined to think that his public life, though far indeed from faultless, has as few great stains as that of any politician who took an active part in affairs during the troubled and disastrous period of ten years which elapsed between the fall of Lord Danby and the Revolution.
His mind was much less turned to particular observations, and much more to
general speculations, than that of Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury knew the King,
the Council, the Parliament, the city, better than Halifax; but Halifax
would have written a far better treatise on political science than
Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury shone more in consultation, and Halifax in
controversy: Shaftesbury was more fertile in expedients, and Halifax in
arguments. Nothing that remains from the pen of Shaftesbury will bear a
comparison with the political tracts of Halifax. Indeed, very little of
the prose of that age is so well worth reading as the Character of a
Trimmer and the Anatomy of an Equivalent. What particularly strikes us in
those works is the writer’s passion for generalisation. He was treating of
the most exciting subjects in the most agitated times: he was himself
placed in the very thick of the civil conflict; yet there is no acrimony,
nothing inflammatory, nothing personal. He preserves an air of cold
superiority, a certain philosophical serenity, which is perfectly
marvellous. He treats every question as an abstract question, begins with
the widest propositions, argues those propositions on general grounds, and
often, when he has 89brought out his theorem, leaves the reader to make tie
application, without adding an allusion to particular men or to passing
events. This speculative turn of mind rendered him a bad adviser in cases
which required celerity. He brought forward, with wonderful readiness and
copiousness, arguments, replies to those arguments, rejoinders to those
replies, general maxims of policy, and analogous cases from history. But
Shaftesbury was the man for a prompt decision. Of the parliamentary
eloquence of these celebrated rivals, we can judge only by report; and, so
judging, we should be inclined to think that, though Shaftesbury was a
distinguished speaker, the superiority belonged to Halifax. Indeed the
readiness of Halifax in debate, the extent of his knowledge, the ingenuity
of his reasoning, the liveliness of his expression, and the silver
clearness and sweetness of his voice, seem to have made the strongest
impression on his contemporaries. By Dryden he is described as
“of piercing wit and pregnant thought,
Endued by nature and by learning taught
To move assemblies.”
His oratory is utterly and irretrievably lost to us, like that of Somers, of Bolingbroke, of Charles Townshend, of many others who were accustomed to rise amidst the breathless expectation of senates, and to sit down amidst reiterated bursts of applause. But old men who lived to admire the eloquence of Pulteney in its meridian, and that of Pitt in its splendid dawn, still murmured that they had heard nothing like the great speeches of Lord Halifax on the Exclusion Bill. The power of Shaftesbury over large masses was unrivalled. Halifax was disqualified by his whole character, moral and intellectual, for the part of a demagogue. It was in small 90circles, and, above all, in the House of Lords, that his ascendency was felt.
Shaftesbury seems to have troubled himself very little about theories of government. Halifax was, in speculation, a strong republican, and did not conceal it. He often made hereditary monarchy and aristocracy the subjects of his keen pleasantry, while he was fighting the battles of the Court, and obtaining for himself step after step in the peerage. In this way, he tried to gratify at once his intellectual vanity and his more vulgar ambition. He shaped his life according to the opinion of the multitude, and indemnified himself by talking according to his own. His colloquial powers were great; his perception of the ridiculous exquisitely fine; and he seems to have had the rare art of preserving the reputation of good breeding and good nature, while habitually indulging a strong propensity to mockery.
Temple wished to put Halifax into the new council, and to leave out Shaftesbury. The King objected strongly to Halifax, to whom he had taken a great dislike, which is not accounted for, and which did not last long. Temple replied that Halifax was a man eminent both by his station and by his abilities, and would, if excluded, do every thing against the new arrangement that could be done by eloquence, sarcasm, and intrigue. All who were consulted were of the same mind; and the King yielded, but not till Temple had almost gone on his knees. This point was no sooner settled than his Majesty declared that he would have Shaftesbury too. Temple again had recourse to entreaties and expostulations. Charles told him that the enmity of Shaftesbury would be at least as formidable as that of Halifax; and this was true; but 91Temple might have replied that by giving power to Halifax they gained a friend, and that by giving power to Shaftesbury, they only strengthened an enemy. It was vain to argue and protest. The King only laughed and jested at Temple’s anger; and Shaftesbury was not only sworn of the Council, but appointed Lord President.
Temple was so bitterly mortified by this step that he had at one time resolved to have nothing to do with the new Administration, and seriously thought of disqualifying himself from sitting in council by omitting to take the Sacrament. But the urgency of Lady Temple and Lady Giffard induced him to abandon that intention.
The Council was organized on the twenty-first of April, 1679; and, within a few hours, one of the fundamental principles on which it had been constructed was violated. A secret committee, or, in the modern phrase, a cabinet of nine members, was formed. But, as this committee included Shaftesbury and Monmouth, it contained within itself the elements of as much faction as would have sufficed to impede all business. Accordingly there soon arose a small interior cabinet, consisting of Essex, Sunderland, Halifax, and Temple. For a time perfect harmony and confidence subsisted between the four. But the meetings of the thirty were stormy. Sharp retorts passed between Shaftesbury and Halifax, who led the opposite parties. In the Council Halifax generally had the advantage. But it soon became apparent that Shaftesbury still had at his back the majority of the House of Commons. The discontents which the change of Ministry had for a moment quieted broke forth again with redoubled violence; and the only effect which the late measures 92appeared to have produced was that the Lord President, with all the dignity and authority belonging to his high place, stood at the head of the Opposition. The impeachment of Lord Danby was eagerly prosecuted. The Commons were determined to exclude the Duke of York from the throne. All offers of compromise were rejected. It must not be forgotten, however, that, in the midst of the confusion, one inestimable law, the only benefit which England has derived from the troubles of that period, but a benefit which may well be set off against a great mass of evil, the Habeas Corpus Act, was pushed through the Houses and received the royal assent.
The King, finding the Parliament as troublesome as ever, determined to prorogue it; and he did so without even mentioning his intention to the Council by whose advice he had pledged himself, only a month before, to conduct the Government. The counsellors were generally dissatisfied; and Shaftesbury swore with great vehemence, that, if he could find out who the secret advisers were, he would have their heads.
The Parliament rose; London was deserted; and Temple retired to his villa, whence, on council days, he went to Hampton Court. The post of Secretary was again and again pressed on him by his master and by his three colleagues of the inner Cabinet. Halifax, in particular, threatened laughingly to burn down the house at Sheen. But Temple was immovable. His short experience of English politics had disgusted him; and he felt himself so much oppressed by the responsibility under which he at present lay that he had no inclination to add to the load.
When the term fixed for the prorogation had nearly expired, it became necessary to consider what course 93should be taken. The King and his four confidential advisers thought that a new Parliament might possibly be more manageable, and could not possibly be more refractory, than that which they now had, and they therefore determined on a dissolution. But when the question was proposed at council, the majority, jealous, it should seem, of the small directing knot, and unwilling to bear the unpopularity of the measures of Government, while excluded from all power, joined Shaftesbury, and the members of the Cabinet were left; alone in the minority. The King, however, had made up his mind, and ordered the Parliament to be instantly dissolved. Temple’s council was now nothing more than an ordinary privy council, if indeed it were not something less; and, though Temple threw the blame of this on the King, on Lord Shaftesbury, on everybody but himself, it is evident that the failure of his plan is to be chiefly ascribed to its own inherent defects. His council was too large to transact business which required expedition, secrecy, and cordial co-operation. A Cabinet was therefore formed within the Council. The Cabinet and the majority of the Council differed; and, as was to be expected, the Cabinet carried their point. Four votes outweighed six-and-twenty. This being the case, the meetings of the thirty were not only useless, but positively noxious.
At the ensuing election, Temple was chosen for the university of Cambridge. The only objection that was made to him by the members of that learned body was that, in his little work on Holland, he had expressed great approbation of the tolerant policy of the States; and this blemish, however serious, was overlooked, in consideration of his high reputation, and of the strong recommendations with which he was furnished by the Court. 94During the summer he remained at Sheen, and amused himself with rearing melons, leaving to the three other members of the inner Cabinet the whole direction of public affairs. Some unexplained cause began, about this time, to alienate them from him. They do not appear to have been made angry by any part of his conduct, or to have disliked him personally. But they had, we suspect, taken the measure of his mind, and satisfied themselves that he was not a man for that troubled time, and that he would be a mere incumbrance to them. Living themselves for ambition, they despised his love of ease. Accustomed to deep stakes in the game of political hazard, they despised his piddling play. They looked on his cautious measures with the sort of scorn with which the gamblers at the ordinary, in Sir Walter Scott’s novel, regarded Nigel’s practice of never touching a card but when he was certain to win. He soon found that he was left out of their secrets. The King had, about this time, a dangerous attack of illness. The Duke of York, on receiving the news, returned from Holland. The sudden appearance of the detested Popish successor excited anxiety throughout the country. Temple was greatly amazed and disturbed. He hastened up to London and visited Essex, who professed to be astonished and mortified, but could not disguise a sneering smile. Temple then saw Halifax, who talked to him much about the pleasures of the country, the anxieties of office, and the vanity of all human things, but carefully avoided politics, and when the Duke’s return was mentioned, only sighed, shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and lifted up his eyes and hands. In a short time Temple found that his two friends had been laughing at him, and that they had 95themselves sent for the Duke, in order that his Royal Highness might, if the King should die, be on the spot to frustrate the designs of Monmouth.
He was soon convinced, by a still stronger proof, that, though he had not exactly offended his master or his colleagues in the Cabinet, he had ceased to enjoy their confidence. The result of the general election had been decidedly unfavourable to the Government; and Shaftesbury impatiently expected the day when the Houses were to meet. The King, guided by the advice of the inner Cabinet, determined on a step of the highest importance. He told the Council that he had resolved to prorogue the new Parliament for a year, and requested them not to object; for he had, he said, considered the subject fully, and had made up his mind. All who were not in the secret were thunderstruck, Temple as much as any. Several members rose, and entreated to be heard against the prorogation. But the King silenced them, and declared that his resolution was unalterable. Temple, much hurt at the manner in which both himself and the Council had been treated, spoke with great spirit. He would not, he said, disobey the King by objecting to a measure on which his Majesty was determined to hear no argument; but he would most earnestly entreat his Majesty, if the present Council was incompetent to give advice, to dissolve it and select another; for it was absurd to have counsellors who did not counsel, and who were summoned only to be silent witnesses of the acts, of others. The King listened courteously. But the members of the Cabinet resented this reproof highly; and from that day Temple was almost as much estranged from them as from Shaftesbury.
He wished to retire altogether from business. But 96just at this time Lord Russell, Lord Cavendish, and some other counsellors of the popular party, waited on the King in a body, declared their strong disapprobation of his measures, and requested to be excused from attending any more at council. Temple feared that if, at this moment, he also were to withdraw, he might be supposed to act in concert with those decided opponents of the Court, and to have determined on taking a course hostile to the Government. He, therefore, continued to go occasionally to the board; but he had no longer any real share in the direction of public affairs.
At length the long term of the prorogation expired. In October, 1680, the Houses met; and the great question of the Exclusion was revived. Few parliamentary contests in our history appear to have called forth a greater display of talent; none certainly ever called forth more violent passions. The whole nation was convulsed by party spirit. The gentlemen of every county, the traders of every town, the boys of every public school, were divided into exclusionists and abhorrers. The book-stalls were covered with tracts on the sacredness of hereditary right, on the omnipotence of Parliament, on the dangers of a disputed succession, on the dangers of a Popish reign. It was in the midst of this ferment that Temple took his seat, for the first time, in the House of Commons.
The occasion was a very great one. His talents, his long experience of affairs, his unspotted public character, the high posts which he had filled, seemed to mark him out as a man on whom much would depend. He acted like himself. He saw that, if he supported the Exclusion, he made the King and the heir presumptive his enemies, and that, if he opposed 97it, he made himself an object of hatred to the unscrupulous and turbulent Shaftesbury. He neither supported nor opposed it. He quietly absented himself from the House. Nay, he took care, he tells us, never to discuss the question in any society whatever. Lawrence Hyde, afterwards Earl of Rochester, asked him why he did not attend in his place. Temple replied that he acted according to Solomon’s advice, neither to oppose the mighty, nor to go about to stop the current of a river. Hyde answered, “You are a wise and a quiet man.” And this might be true. But surely such wise and quiet men have no call to be members of Parliament in critical times.
A single session was quite enough for Temple. When the Parliament was dissolved, and another summoned at Oxford, he obtained an audience of the King, and begged to know whether his Majesty wished him to continue in Parliament. Charles, who had a singularly quick eye for the weaknesses of all who came near him, had no doubt seen through Temple, and rated the parliamentary support of so cool and guarded a friend at its proper value. He answered good-naturedly, but we suspect a little contemptuously, “I doubt, as things stand, your coming into the House will not do much good. I think you may as well let it alone.” Sir William accordingly informed his constituents that he should not again apply for their suffrages, and set off for Sheen, resolving never again to meddle with public affairs. He soon found that the King was displeased with him. Charles, indeed, in his usual easy way, protested that he was not angry, not at all. But in a few days he struck Temple’s name out of the list of Privy Counsellors. Why this was done Temple declares himself 98unable to comprehend. But surely it hardly required his long and extensive converse with the world to teach him that there are conjunctures when men think that all who are not with them are against them, that there are conjunctures when a lukewarm friend, who will not put himself the least out of his way, who will make no exertion, who will run no risk, is more distasteful than an enemy. Charles had hoped that the fair character of Temple would add credit to an unpopular and suspected Government. But his Majesty soon found that this fair character resembled pieces of furniture which we have seen in the drawing-rooms of very precise old ladies, and which are a great deal too white to be used. This exceeding niceness was altogether out of season. Neither party wanted a man who was afraid of taking a part, of incurring abuse, of making enemies. There were probably many good and moderate men who would have hailed the appearance of a respectable mediator. But Temple was not a mediator. He was merely a neutral.
At last, however, he had escaped from public life, and found himself at liberty to follow his favourite pursuits. His fortune was easy. He had about fifteen hundred a year, besides the Mastership of the Rolls in Ireland, an office in which he had succeeded his father, and which was then a mere sinecure for life, requiring no residence. His reputation both as a negotiator and a writer stood high. He resolved to be safe, to enjoy himself, and to let the world take its course; and he kept his resolution.
Darker times followed. The Oxford Parliament was dissolved. The Tories were triumphant. A terrible vengeance was inflicted on the chiefs of the Opposition. Temple learned in his retreat the disastrous fate of several 99of his old colleagues in council. Shaftesbury fled to Holland. Russell died on the scaffold. Essex added a yet sadder and more fearful story to the bloody chronicles of the Tower. Monmouth clung in agonies of supplication round the knees of the stern uncle whom he had wronged, and tasted a bitterness worse than that of death, the bitterness of knowing that he had humbled himself in vain. A tyrant trampled on the liberties and religion of the realm. The national spirit swelled high under the oppression. Disaffection spread even to the strongholds of loyalty, to the cloisters of Westminster, to the schools of Oxford, to the guardroom of the household troops, to the very hearth and bed-chamber of the Sovereign. But the troubles which agitated the whole country did not reach the quiet Orangery in which Temple loitered away several years without once seeing the smoke of London. He now and then appeared in the circle at Richmond or Windsor. But the only expressions which he is recorded to have used during these perilous times were, that he would be a good subject, but that he had done with politics.
The Revolution came: he remained strictly neutral during the short struggle; and he then transferred to the new settlement the same languid sort of loyalty which he had felt for his former masters. He paid court to William at Windsor, and William dined with him at Sheen. But, in spite of the most pressing solicitations, Temple refused to become Secretary of State. The refusal evidently proceeded only from his dislike of trouble and danger; and not, as some of his admirers would have us believe, from any scruple of conscience or honour. For he consented that his son should take the office of Secretary at War under the new Sovereign. 100This unfortunate young man destroyed himself within a week after his appointment, from vexation at finding that his advice had led the King into some improper steps with regard to Ireland. He seems to have inherited his father’s extreme sensibility to failure, without that singular prudence which kept his father out of all situations in which any serious failure was to be apprehended. The blow fell heavily on the family. They retired in deep dejection to Moor Park, which they now preferred to Sheen, on account of the greater distance from London. In that spot, (1) then very secluded, Temple passed the remainder of his life. The air agreed with him. The soil was fruitful, and well suited to an experimental farmer and gardener. The grounds were laid out with the angular regularity which Sir William had admired in the flower-beds of Haarlem and the Hague. A beautiful rivulet, flowing from the hills of Surrey, bounded the domain. But a straight canal which, bordered by a terrace, intersected the gar-. den, was probably more admired by the lovers of the picturesque in that age. The house was small, but neat and well furnished; the neighbourhood very thinly peopled. Temple had no visitors, except a few friends who were willing to travel twenty or thirty miles in order to see him, and now and then a foreigner whom curiosity brought to have a look at the author of the Triple Alliance.
Here, in May, 1694, died Lady Temple. From the time of her marriage we know little of her, except that her letters were always greatly admired, and that she had the honour to correspond constantly with Queen
(1) Mr. Courtenay (vol ii p. 160.) confounds Moor Park in
Surrey, where Temple resided, with the Moor Park in
Hertfordshire, which is praised in the Essay on Gardening.
101Mary. Lady Giffard, who, as far as appears, had always been on the best terms with her sister-in-law, still continued to live with Sir William.
But there were other inmates of Moor Park to whom a far higher interest belongs. An eccentric, uncouth, disagreeable young Irishman, who had narrowly escaped plucking at Dublin, attended Sir William as an amanuensis, for board and twenty pounds a year, dined at the second table, wrote bad verses in praise of his employer, and made love to a very pretty, dark-eyed young girl, who waited on Lady Giffard. Little did Temple imagine that the coarse exterior of his dependent concealed a genius equally suited to politics and to letters, a genius destined to shake great kingdoms, to stir the laughter and the rage of millions, and to leave to posterity memorials which can perish only with the English language. Little did he think that the flirtation in his servants’ hall, which he perhaps scarcely deigned to make the subject of a jest, was the beginning of a long unprosperous love, which was to be as widely famed as the passion of Petrarch or of Abelard. Sir William’s secretary was Jonathan Swift. Lady Gif-fard’s waiting maid was poor Stella.
Swift retained no pleasing recollection of Moor Park. And we may easily
suppose a situation like his to have been intolerably painful to a mind
haughty, irascible, and conscious of preeminent ability. Long after, when
he stood in the Court of Requests with a circle of gartered peers round
him, or punned and rhymed with Cabinet Ministers over Secretary St. John’s
Monte-Pulciano, he remembered, with deep and sore feeling, how miserable
he used to be for days together when he suspected that Sir William had
taken something ill. He could hardly believe that he, the Swift who chid
the Lord 102Treasurer,
rallied the Captain General, and confronted the pride of the Duke of
Buckinghamshire with pride still more inflexible, could be the same being
who had passed nights of sleepless anxiety, in musing over a cross look or
a testy word of a patron. “Faith,” he wrote to Stella, with bitter levity,
“Sir William spoiled a fine gentleman.” Yet, in justice to Temple, we must
say that there is no reason to think that Swift was more unhappy at Moor
Park than he would have been in a similar situation under any roof in
England. We think also that the obligations which the mind of Swift owed
to that of Temple were not inconsiderable. Every judicious reader must be
struck by the peculiarities which distinguish Swift’s political tracts
from all similar works produced by mere men of letters. Let any person
compare, for example, the Conduct of the Allies, or the Letter to the
October Club, with Johnson’s False Alarm, or Taxation no Tyranny, and he
will be at once struck by the difference of which we speak. He may
possibly think Johnson a greater man than Swift. He may possibly prefer
Johnson’s style to Swift’s. But he will at once acknowledge that Johnson
writes like a man who has never been out of his study. Swift writes like a
man who has passed his whole life in the midst of public business, and to
whom the most important affairs of state are as familiar as his weekly
bills.
“Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter.”
The difference, in short, between a political pamphlet by Johnson, and a political pamphlet by Swift, is as great as the difference between an account of a battle by Mr. Southey and the account of the same battle by 103Colonel Napier. It is impossible to doubt that the superiority of Swift is to be, in a great measure, attributed to his long and close connection with Temple.
Indeed, remote as were the alleys and flower-pots of Moor Park from the haunts of the busy and the ambitious, Swift had ample opportunities of becoming acquainted with the hidden causes of many great events. William was in the habit of consulting Temple, and occasionally visited him. Of what passed between them very little is known. It is certain, however, that when the Triennial Bill had been carried through the two Houses, his Majesty, who was exceedingly unwilling to pass it, sent the Earl of Portland to learn Temple’s opinion. Whether Temple thought the bill in itself a good one does not appear; but he clearly saw how imprudent it must be in a prince, situated as William was, to engage in an altercation with his Parliament, and directed Swift to draw up a paper on the subject, which, however, did not convince the King.
The chief amusement of Temple’s declining years was literature. After his final retreat from business he wrote his very agreeable Memoirs, corrected and transcribed many of his letters, and published several miscellaneous treatises, the best of which, we think, is that on Gardening. The style of his essays is, on the whole, excellent, almost always pleasing, and now and then stately and splendid. The matter is generally of much less value; as our readers will readily believe when we inform them that Mr. Courtenay, a biographer, that is to say, a literary vassal, bound by the immemorial law of his tenure to render homage, aids, reliefs, and all other customary services to his lord, avows that he cannot give an opinion about the essay on Heroic Virtue, because he cannot read it without 104skipping; a circumstance which strikes us as peculiarly strange, when we consider how long Mr. Courtenay was at the India Board, and how many thousand paragraphs of the copious official eloquence of the East he must have perused.
One of Sir William’s pieces, however, deserves notice, not, indeed, on account of its intrinsic merit, but on account of the light which it throws on some curious weaknesses of his character, and on account of the extraordinary effects which it produced in the republic of letters. A most idle and contemptible controversy had arisen in France touching the comparative merit of the ancient and modern writers. It was certainly not to be expected that, in that age, the question would be tried according to those large and philosophical principles of criticism which guided the judgments of Lessing and of Herder. But it might have been expected that those who undertook to decide the point would at least take the trouble to read and understand the authors on whose merits they were to pronounce. Now it is no exaggeration to say that, among the disputants who clamoured, some for the ancients and some for the moderns, very few were decently acquainted with either ancient or modern literature, and hardly one was well acquainted with both. In Racine’s amusing preface to the Iphigénie the reader may find noticed a most ridiculous mistake into which one cf the champions of the moderns fell about a passage in the Alcestis of Euripides. Another writer is so inconceivably ignorant as to blame Homer for mixing the four Greek dialects, Doric, Ionic, Æolic, and Attic, just, says he, as if a French poet were to put Gascon phrases and Picard phrases into the midst of his pure Parisian writing. On the other hand, it is no 105exaggeration to say that the defenders of the ancients were entirely unacquainted with the greatest productions of later times; nor, indeed, were the defenders of the moderns better informed. The parallels which were instituted in the course of this dispute are inexpressibly ridiculous. Balzac was selected as the rival of Cicero. Corneille was said to unite the merits of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. We should like to see a Prometheus after Corneille’s fashion. The Provincial Letters, masterpieces undoubtedly of reasoning, wit, and eloquence, were pronounced to be superior to all the writings of Plato, Cicero, and Lucian together, particularly in the art of dialogue, an art in which, as it happens, Plato far excelled all men, and in which Pascal, great and admirable in other respects, is notoriously very deficient.
This childish controversy spread to England; and some mischievous dæmon suggested to Temple the thought of undertaking the defence of the ancients. As to his qualifications for the task, it is sufficient to say, that he knew not a word of Greek. But his vanity which, when he was engaged in the conflicts of active life and surrounded by rivals, had been kept in tolerable order by his discretion, now, when he had long lived in seclusion, and had become accustomed to regard himself as by far the first man of his circle, rendered him blind to his own deficiencies. In an evil hour he published an Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning. The style of this treatise is very good, the matter ludicrous and contemptible to the last degree. There we read how Lycurgus travelled into India, and brought the Spartan laws from that country; how Orpheus made voyages in search of knowledge, and attained to a depth of learning which has made him 106renowned in all succeeding ages; how Pythagoras passed twenty-two years in Egypt, and, after graduating there, spent twelve years more at Babylon, where the Magi admitted him ad eundem; how the ancient Brahmins lived two hundred years; how the earliest Greek philosophers foretold earthquakes and plagues, and put down riots by magic; and how much Ninus surpassed in abilities any of his successors on the throne of Assyria. The moderns, Sir William owns, have found out the circulation of the blood; but, on the other hand, they have quite lost the art of conjuring; nor can any modern fiddler enchant fishes, fowls, and serpents, by his performance. He tells us that “Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus made greater progresses in the several empires of science than any of their successors have since been able to reach;” which is just as absurd as if he had said that the greatest names in British science are Merlin, Michael Scott, Dr. Sydenham, and Lord Bacon. Indeed, the manner in which Temple mixes the historical and the fabulous reminds us of those classical dictionaries, intended for the use of schools, in which Narcissus the lover of himself and Narcissus the freedman of Claudius, Pollux the son of Jupiter and Leda and Pollux the author of the Onomasticon, are ranged under the same headings, and treated as personages equally real. The effect of this arrangement resembles that which would be produced by a dictionary of modern names, consisting of such articles as the following:—“Jones, William, an eminent Orientalist, and one of the Judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal—Davy, a fiend, who destroys ships—Thomas, a foundling, brought up by Mr. Allworthy.” It is from such sources as these that Temple 107seems to have learned all that he knew about the ancients. He puts the story of Orpheus between the Olympic games and the battle of Arbela; as if we had exactly the same reasons for believing that Orpheus led beasts with his lyre, which we have for believing that there were races at Pisa, or that Alexander conquered Darius.
He manages little better when he comes to the moderns. He gives us a catalogue of those whom he regards as the greatest writers of later times. It is sufficient to say that, in his list of Italians, he has omitted Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso; in his list of Spaniards, Lope and Calderon; in his list of French, Pascal, Bossuet, Molière, Corneille, Racine, and Boileau; and in his list of English, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton.
In the midst of all this vast mass of absurdity one paragraph stands out preeminent. The doctrine of Temple, not a very comfortable doctrine, is that the human race is constantly degenerating, and that the oldest books in every kind are the best. In confirmation of this notion, he remarks that the Fables of Æsop are the best Fables, and the letters of Phalaris the best Letters in the world. On the merit of the Letters of Phalaris he dwells with great warmth and with extraordinary felicity of language. Indeed we could hardly select a more favourable specimen of the graceful and easy majesty to which his style sometimes rises than this unlucky passage. He knows, he says, that some learned men, or men who pass for learned, such as Politian, have doubted the genuineness of these letters: but of such doubts he speaks with the greatest contempt. Now it is perfectly certain, first, that the letters are very bad; secondly, that they are spurious; 108and thirdly, that, whether they be bad or good, spurious or genuine, Temple could know nothing of the matter; inasmuch as he was no more able to construe a line of them than to decipher an Egyptian obelisk.
This Essay, silly as it is, was exceedingly well received, both in England and on the Continent. And the reason is evident. The classical scholars who saw its absurdity were generally on the side of the ancients, and were inclined rather to veil than to expose the blunders of an ally; the champions of the moderns were generally as ignorant as Temple himself; and the multitude was charmed by his flowing and melodious diction. He was doomed, however, to smart, as he well deserved, for his vanity and folly.
Christchurch at Oxford was then widely and justly celebrated as a place where the lighter parts of classical learning were cultivated with success. With the deeper mysteries of philology neither the instructors nor the pupils had the smallest acquaintance. They fancied themselves Scaligers, as Bentley scornfully said, if they could write a copy of Latin verses with only two or three small faults. From this College proceeded a new edition of the Letters of Phalaris, which were rare, and had been in request since the appearance of Temple’s Essay. The nominal editor was Charles Boyle, a young man of noble family and promising parts; but some older members of the society lent their assistance. While this work was in preparation, an idle quarrel, occasioned, it should seem, by the negligence and misrepresentations of a bookseller, arose between Boyle and the King’s Librarian, Richard Bentley. Boyle, in the preface to his edition, inserted a bitter reflection on Bentley. Bentley revenged himself 109by proving that the Epistles of Phalaris were forgeries, and in his remarks on this subject treated Temple, not indecently, but with no great reverence.
Temple, who was quite unaccustomed to any but the most respectful usage, who, even while engaged in politics, had always shrunk from all rude collision and had generally succeeded in avoiding it, and whose sensitiveness had been increased by many years of seclusion and flattery, was moved to most violent resentment, complained, very unjustly, of Bentley’s foul-mouthed raillery, and declared that he had commenced an answer, but had laid it aside, “having no mind to enter the lists with such a mean, dull, unmannerly pedant.” Whatever may be thought of the temper which Sir William showed on this occasion, we cannot too highly applaud his discretion in not finishing and publishing his answer, which would certainly have been a most extraordinary performance.
He was not, however, without defenders. Like Hector, when struck down prostrate by Ajax, he was in an instant covered by a thick crowd of shields.
Christchurch was up in arms; and though that College seems then to have been almost destitute of severe and accurate learning, no academical society could show a greater array of orators, wits, politicians, bustling adventurers who united the superficial accomplishments of the scholar with the manners and arts of the man of the world; and this formidable body resolved to try how far smart repartees, well-turned sentences, 110confidence, puffing, and intrigue could, on the question whether a Greek hook were or were not genuine, supply the place of a little knowledge of Greek.
Out came the Reply to Bentley, bearing the name of Boyle, but in truth written by Atterbury with the assistance of Smallridge and others. A most remarkable book it is, and often reminds us of Goldsmith’s observation, that the French would be the best cooks in the world if they had any butcher’s meat; for that they can make ten dishes out of a nettle-top. It really deserves the praise, whatever that praise may be worth, of being the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he was profoundly ignorant. The learning of the confederacy is that of a schoolboy, and not of an extraordinary schoolboy; but it is used with the skill and address of most able, artful, and experienced men; it is beaten out to the very thinnest leaf, and is disposed in such a way as to seem ten times larger than it is. The dexterity with which the confederates avoid grappling with those parts of the subject with which they know themselves to be incompetent to deal is quite wonderful. Now and then, indeed, they commit disgraceful blunders, for which old Busby, under whom they had studied, would have whipped them all round. But this circumstance only raises our opinion of the talents which made such a fight with such scanty means. Let readers who are not acquainted with the controversy imagine a Frenchman, who has acquired just English enough to read the Spectator with a dictionary, coming forward to defend the genuineness of Ireland’s Vortigern against Malone; and they will have some notion of the feat which Atterbury had the audacity to undertake, and which, 111for a time, it was really thought that he had performed.
The illusion was soon dispelled. Bentley’s answer for ever settled the question, and established his claim to the first place amongst classical scholars. Nor do those do him justice who represent the controversy as a battle between wit and learning. For though there is a lamentable deficiency of learning on the side of Boyle, there is no want of wit on the side of Bentley. Other qualities, too, as valuable as either wit or learning, appear conspicuously in Bentley’s book, a rare sagacity, an unrivalled power of combination, a perfect mastery of all the weapons of logic. He was greatly indebted to the furious outcry which the misrepresentations, sarcasms, and intrigues of his opponents had raised against him, an outcry in which fashionable and political circles joined, and which was echoed by thousands who did not know whether Phalaris ruled in Sicily or in Siam. His spirit, daring even to rashness, self-confident even to negligence, and proud even to insolent ferocity, was awed for the first and for the last time, awed, not into meanness or cowardice, but into wariness and sobriety. For once he ran no risks; he left no crevice unguarded; he wantoned in no paradoxes; above all, he returned no railing for the railing of his enemies. In almost every thing that he has written we can discover proofs of genius and learning. But it is only here that his genius and learning appear to have been constantly under the guidance of good sense and good temper. Here, we find none of that besotted reliance on his own powers and on his own luck, which he showed when he undertook to édité Milton; none of that perverted ingenuity which deforms so many of his notes on Horace; none of that disdainful carelessness by which he laid himself open to the 112keen and dexterous thrust of Middleton; none of that extravagant vaunting and savage scurrility by which he afterwards dishonoured his studies and his profession, and degraded himself almost to the level of De Pauw.
Temple did not live to witness the utter and irreparable defeat of his
champions. He died, indeed, at a fortunate moment, just after the
appearance of Boyle’s book, and while all England was laughing at the way
in which the Christchurch men had handled the pedant. In Boyle’s book,
Temple was praised in the highest terms, and compared to Memmius: not a
very happy comparison; for almost the only particular information which we
have about Memmius is that, in agitated times, he thought it his duty to
attend exclusively to politics, and that his friends could not venture,
except when the Republic was quiet and prosperous, to intrude on him with
their philosophical and poetical productions. It is on this account that
Lucretius puts up the exquisitely beautiful prayer for peace with which
his poem opens:
“Nam neque nos agere hoc
patrial tempore iniquo
Possumus aequo animo,
nee Memmî clara propago
Talibus in rebus
communi deesse saluti.”
This description is surely by no means applicable to a statesman who had, through the whole course of his life, carefully avoided exposing himself in seasons of trouble; who had repeatedly refused, in most critical conjunctures, to be Secretary of State; and who now, in the midst of revolutions, plots, foreign and domestic wars, was quietly writing nonsense about the visits of Lycurgus to the Brahmins and the tunes which Arion played to the Dolphin.
We must not omit to mention that, while the controversy about Phalaris was raging, Swift, in order 113to show his zeal and attachment, wrote the Battle of the Books, the earliest piece in which his peculiar talents are discernible. We may observe that the bitter dislike of Bentley, bequeathed by Temple to Swift, seems to have been communicated by Swift to Pope, to Arbuthnot, and to others, who continued to tease the great critic, long after he had shaken hands very cordially both with Boyle and with Atterbury.
Sir William Temple died at Moor Park in January, 1699. He appears to have suffered no intellectual decay. His heart was buried under a sun-dial which still stands in his favourite garden. His body was laid in Westminster Abbey by the side of his wife; and a place hard by was set apart for Lady Giffard, who long survived him. Swift was his literary executor, superintended the publication of his Letters and Memoirs, and, in the performance of this office, had some acrimonious contests with the family.
Of Temple’s character little more remains to be said. Burnet accuses him of holding irreligious opinions, and corrupting everybody who came near him. But the vague assertion of so rash and partial a writer as Bumet, about a man with whom, as far as we know, he never exchanged a word, is of little weight. It is, indeed, by no means improbable that Temple may have been a freethinker. The Osbornes thought him so when he was a very young man. And it is certain that a large proportion of the gentlemen of rank and fashion who made their entrance into society while the Puritan party was at the height of power, and while the memory of the reign of that party was still recent, conceived a strong disgust for all religion. The imputation was common between Temple and all the most distinguished courtiers of the age. Rochester 114and Buckingham were open scoffers, and Mulgrave very little better. Shaftesbury, though more guarded, was supposed to agree with them in opinion. All the three noblemen who were Temple’s colleagues during the short time of his sitting in the Cabinet were of very indifferent repute as to orthodoxy. Halifax, indeed, was generally considered as an atheist; but he solemnly denied the charge; and, indeed, the truth seems to be that he was more religiously disposed than most of the statesmen of that age, though two impulses which were unusually strong in him, a passion for ludicrous images, and a passion for subtle speculations, sometimes prompted him to talk on serious subjects in a manner which gave great and just offence. It is not unlikely that Temple, who seldom went below the surface of any question, may have been infected with the prevailing scepticism. All that we can say on the subject is, that there is no trace of impiety in his works, and that the ease with which he carried his election for an university, where the majority of the voters were clergymen, though it proves nothing as to his opinions, must, we think, be considered as proving that he was not, as Burnet seems to insinuate, in the habit of talking atheism to all who came near him.
Temple, however, will scarcely carry with him any great accession of authority to the side either of religion or of infidelity. He was no profound thinker. He was merely a man of lively parts and quick observation, a man of the world among men of letters, a man of letters among men of the world. Mere scholars were dazzled by the Ambassador and Cabinet counsellor; mere politicians by the Essayist and Historian. But neither as a writer nor as a-statesman, can we allot to him any very high place. As a man, he seems to 115as to have been excessively selfish, but very sober, wary, and far-sighted in his selfishness; to have known better than most people what he really wanted in life; and to have pursued what he wanted with much more than ordinary steadiness and sagacity, never suffering himself to be drawn aside either by bad or by good feelings. It was his constitution to dread failure more than he desired success, to prefer security, comfort, repose, leisure, to the turmoil and anxiety which are inseparable from greatness; and this natural languor of mind, when contrasted with the malignant energy of the keen and restless spirits among whom his lot was cast, sometimes appears to resemble the moderation of virtue. But we must own that he seems to us to sink into littleness and meanness when we compare him, we do not say with any high ideal standard of morality, but with many of those frail men who, aiming at noble ends, but often drawn from the right path by strong passions and strong temptations, have left to posterity a doubtful and checkered fame.
The 116author of this volume is a young man of unblemished character, and of distinguished parliamentary talents, the rising, hope of those stern and unbending Tories who follow, reluctantly and mutinously, a leader whose experience and eloquence are indispensable to them, but, whose cautious temper and moderate opinions they abhor. It would not be at all strange if Mr. Gladstone were one of the most unpopular men in England. But we believe that we do him no more than justice when we say: that his abilities and his demeanour have obtained for him the respect and good will of all parties. His first appearance in the character of an author is therefore an interesting event; and it is natural that the gentle wishes of the public should go with him to his trial.
We are much pleased, without any reference to the soundness or unsoundness of Mr. Gladstone’s theories, to see a grave and elaborate treatise on an important part of the Philosophy of Government proceed from the pen of a young man who is rising to eminence in the House of Commons. There is little danger that people engaged in the conflicts of active life will be too much
(1) The State in its Relations with the Church. By W. E.
Gladstone, Esq., Student of Christ Church, and M. P. for
Newark. 8vo. Second Edition. London: 1839.
117addicted to general speculation. The opposite vice is that which most easily besets them. The times and tides of business and debate tarry for no man. A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill informed respecting a question; all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must; and if he is a man of ability, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully. He finds that there is a great difference between the effect of written words, which are perused and reperused in the stillness of the closet, and the effect of spoken words which, set off by the graces of utterance and gesture, vibrate for a single moment on the ear. He finds that he may blunder without much chance of being detected, that he may reason sophistically, and escape unrefuted. He finds that, even on knotty questions of trade and legislation, he can, without reading ten pages, or thinking ten minutes, draw forth loud plaudits, and sit down with the credit of having made an excellent speech. Lysias, says Plutarch, wrote a defence for a man who was to be tried before one of the Athenian tribunals. Long before the defendant had learned the speech by heart, he became so much dissatisfied with it that he went in great distress to the author. “I was delighted with your speech the first time I read it; but I liked it less the second time, and still less the third time; and now it seems to me to be no defence at all.”
“My good friend,” said Lysias, “you quite forget that the judges are to hear it only once.” The case is the same in the English parliament. It would be as idle in an orator to waste deep meditation and long research on his speeches, as it would be in the manager of a theatre to 118adorn all the crowd of courtiers and ladies who cross over the stage in a procession with real pearls and diamonds. It is not by accuracy or profundity that men become the masters of great assemblies. And why be at the charge of providing logic of the best quality, when a very inferior article will be equally acceptable? Why go as deep into a question as Burke, only in order to be, like Burke, coughed down, or left speaking to green benches and red boxes? This has long appeared to us to be the most serious of the evils which are to be set off against the many blessings of popular government. It is a fine and true saying of Bacon, that reading makes a full man, talking a ready man, and writing an exact man. The tendency of institutions like those of England is to encourage readiness in public men, at the expense both of fulness and of exactness. The keenest and most vigorous minds of every generation, minds often admirably fitted for the investigation of truth, are habitually employed in producing arguments such as no man of sense would ever put into a treatise intended for publication, arguments which are just good enough to be used once, when aided by fluent delivery and pointed language. The habit of discussing questions in this way necessarily reacts on the intellects of our ablest men, particularly of those who are introduced into parliament at a very early age, before their minds have expanded to full maturity. The talent for debate is developed in such men to a degree which, to the multitude, seems as marvellous as the performance of an Italian Improvisatore. But they are fortunate indeed if they retain unimpaired, the faculties which are required for close reasoning or for enlarged speculation. Indeed we should sooner expect a great original work on political science, such a work, for example, 119as the Wealth of Nations, from an apothecary in a country town, or from a minister in the Hebrides, than from a statesman who, ever since he was one-and-twenty, had been a distinguished debater in the House of Commons.
We therefore hail with pleasure, though assuredly not with unmixed pleasure, the appearance of this work. That a young politician should, in the intervals afforded by his parliamentary avocations, have constructed and propounded, with much study and mental toil, an original theory on a great problem in politics, is a circumstance which, abstracted from all consideration of the soundness or unsoundness of his opinions, must be considered as highly creditable to him. We certainly cannot wish that Mr. Gladstone’s doctrines may become fashionable among public men. But we heartily wish that his laudable desire to penetrate beneath the surface of questions, and to arrive, by long and intent meditation, at the knowledge of great general laws, were much more fashionable than we at all expect it to become.
Mr. Gladstone seems to us to be, in many respects, exceedingly well qualified for philosophical investigation. His mind is of large grasp; nor is he deficient in dialectical skill. But he does not give his intellect fair play. There is no want of light, but a great want of what Bacon would have called dry light. Whatever Mr. Gladstone sees is refracted and distorted by a false medium of passions and prejudices. His style bears a remarkable analogy to his mode of Blinking, and indeed exercises great influence on his mode of thinking. His rhetoric, though often good of its kind, darkens and perplexes the logic which it should illustrate. Half his acuteness and diligence, with a barren imagination 120and a scanty vocabulary, would have saved him from almost all his mistakes. He has one gift most dangerous to a speculator, a vast command of a kind of language, grave and majestic, but of vague and uncertain import; of a kind of language which affects us much in the same way in which the lofty diction of the Chorus of Clouds affected the simple-hearted Athenian.
When propositions have been established, and nothing remains but to amplify and decorate them, this dim magnificence may be in place. But if it is admitted into a demonstration, it is very much worse than absolute nonsense; just as that transparent haze, through which the sailor sees capes and mountains of false sizes and in false bearings, is more dangerous than utter darkness. Now, Mr. Gladstone is fond of employing the phraseology of which we speak in those parts of his works which require the utmost perspicuity and precision of which human language is capable; and in this way he deludes first himself, and then his readers. The foundations of his theory, which ought to be buttresses of adamant, are made out of the flimsy materials which are fit only for perorations. This fault is one which no subsequent care or industry can correct. The more strictly Mr. Gladstone reasons on his premises, the more absurd are the conclusions which he brings out; and, when at last his good sense and good nature recoil from the horrible practical inferences to which his theory leads, he is reduced sometimes to take refuge in arguments inconsistent with his fundamental doctrines, and sometimes to escape from the legitimate consequences of his false principles, under cover of equally false history. 121It would be unjust not to say that this book, though not a good book, shows more talent than many good books. It abounds with eloquent and ingenious passages. It bears the signs of much patient thought. It is written throughout with excellent taste and excellent temper; nor does it, so far as we have observed, contain one expression unworthy of a gentleman, a scholar, or a Christian. But the doctrines which are put forth in it appear to us, after full and calm consideration, to be false, to be in the highest degree pernicious, and to be such as, if followed out in practice to their legitimate consequences, would inevitably produce the dissolution of society; and for this opinion we shall proceed to give our reasons with that freedom which the importance of the subject requires, and which Mr. Gladstone, both by precept and by example, invites us to use, but, we hope, without rudeness, and, we are sure, without malevolence.
Before we enter on an examination of this theory, we wish to guard ourselves against one misconception. It is possible that some persons who have read Mr. Gladstone’s book carelessly, and others who have merely heard in conversation, or seen in a newspaper, that the member for Newark has written in defence of the Church of England against the supporters of the voluntary system, may imagine that we are writing in defence of the voluntary system, and that we desire the abolition of the Established Church. This is not the case. It would be as unjust to accuse us of attacking the Church, because we attack Mr. Gladstone’s doctrines, as it would be to accuse Locke of wishing for anarchy, because he refuted Filmer’s patriarchal theory of government, or to accuse Blackstone of recommending the confiscation of ecclesiastical property, because 122he denied that the right of the rector to tithe was derived from the Levitical law. It is to be observed, that Mr. Gladstone rests his case on entirely new grounds, and does not differ more widely from us than from some of those who have hitherto been considered as the most illustrious champions of the Church. He is not content with the Ecclesiastical Polity, and rejoices that the latter part of that celebrated work “does not carry with it the weight of Hooker’s plenary authority.” He is not content with Bishop Warburton’s Alliance of Church and State. “The propositions of that work generally,” he says, “are to be received with qualification,” and he agrees with Bolingbroke in thinking that Warburton’s whole theory rests on a fiction. He is still less satisfied with Paley’s defence of the Church, which he pronounces to be “tainted by the original vice of false ethical principles,” and “full of the seeds of evil.” He conceives that Dr. Chalmers has taken a partial view of the subject, and “put forth much questionable matter.” In truth, on almost every point on which we are opposed to Mr. Gladstone, we have on our side the authority of some divine, eminent as a defender of existing establishments.
Mr. Gladstone’s whole theory rests on this great fundamental proposition, that the propagation of religious truth is one of the principal ends of government, as government. If Mr. Gladstone has not proved this proposition, his system vanishes at once.
We are desirous, before we enter on the discussion of this important question, to point out clearly a distinction which, though very obvious, seems to be overlooked by many excellent people. In their opinion, to say that the ends of government are temporal and not spiritual is tantamount to saying that the temporal 123welfare of man is of more importance than his spiritual welfare. But this is an entire mistake. The question is not whether spiritual interests be or be not superior in importance to temporal interests; but whether the machinery which happens at any moment to be employed for the purpose of protecting certain temporal interests of a society be necessarily such a machinery as is fitted to promote the spiritual interests of that society. Without a division of labour the world could not go on. It is of very much more importance that men should have food than that they should have pianofortes. Yet it by no means follows that every pianoforte-maker ought to add the business of a baker to his own; for, if he did so, we should have both much worse music and much worse bread. It is of much more importance that the knowledge of religious truth should be wisely diffused than that the art of sculpture should flourish among us. Yet it by no means follows that the Royal Academy ought to unite with its present functions those of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, to distribute theological tracts, to send forth missionaries, to turn out Nollekens for being a Catholic, Bacon for being a methodist, and Flaxman for being a Swedenborgian. For the effect of such folly would be that we should have the worst possible Academy of Arts, and the worst possible Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. The community, it is plain, would be thrown into universal confusion, if it were supposed to be the duty of every association which is formed for one good object to promote every other good object.
As to some of the ends of civil government, all people are agreed. That it is designed to protect our persons and our property; that it is designed to compel 124as to satisfy our wants, not by rapine, but by industry; that it is designed to compel us to decide our differences, not by the strong hand, but by arbitration; that it is designed to direct our whole force, as that of one man, against any other society which may offer us injury; these are propositions which will hardly be disputed.
Now these are matters in which man, without any reference to any higher being, or to any future state, is very deeply interested. Every human being, be he idolater, Mahometan, Jew, Papist, Socinian, Deist, or Atheist, naturally loves life, shrinks from pain, desires comforts which can be enjoyed only in communities where property is secure. To be murdered, to be tortured, to be robbed, to be sold into slavery, these are evils from which men of every religion, and men of no religion, wish to be protected; and therefore it will hardly be disputed that men of every religion, and of no religion, have thus far a common interest in being well governed.
But the hopes and fears of man are not limited to this short life, and to this visible world. He finds himself surrounded by the signs of a power and wisdom higher than his own; and, in all ages and nations, men of all orders of intellect, from Bacon and Newton down to the rudest tribes of cannibals, have believed in the existence of some superior mind. Thus far the voice of mankind is almost unanimous. But whether there be one God or many, what may be God’s natural and what His moral attributes, in what relation His creatures stand to Him, whether He have ever disclosed Himself to us by any other revelation than that which is written in all the parts of the glorious and well-ordered world which He has made, whether His revelation be 125contained in any permanent record, how that record should be interpreted, and whether it have pleased Him to appoint any unerring interpreter on earth, these are questions respecting which there exists the widest diversity of opinion, and respecting some of which a large part of our race has, ever since the dawn of regular history, been deplorably in error.
Now here are two great objects: one is the protection of the persons and estates of citizens from injury; the other is the propagation of religious truth. No two objects more entirely distinct can well be imagined. The former belongs wholly to the visible and tangible world in which we live; the latter belongs to that higher world which is beyond the reach of our senses. The former belongs to this life; the latter to that which is to come. Men who are perfectly agreed as to the importance of the former object, and as to the way of obtaining it, differ as widely as possible respecting the latter object. We must, therefore, pause before we admit that the persons, be they who they may, who are intrusted with power for the promotion of the former object, ought always to use that power for the promotion of the latter object.
Mr. Gladstone conceives that the duties of governments are paternal; a doctrine which we shall not believe till he can show us some government which loves its subjects as a father loves a child, and which is as superior in intelligence to its subjects as a father is to a child. He tells us in lofty, though somewhat indistinct language, that “Government occupies in moral the place of [Greek] in physical science.” If government be indeed [Greek] in moral science, we do not understand why rulers should not assume all the functions which Plato assigned to them. Why should they 126not take away the child from the mother, select the nurse, regulate the school, overlook the playground, fix the hours of labour and of recreation, prescribe what ballads shall be sung, what tunes shall be played, what books shall be read, what physic shall be swallowed? Why should not they choose our wives, limit our expenses, and stint us to a certain number of dishes of meat, of glasses of wine, and of cups of tea? Plato, whose hardihood in speculation was perhaps more wonderful than any other peculiarity of his extraordinary mind, and who shrank from nothing to which his principles led, went this whole length. Mr. Gladstone is not so intrepid. He contents himself with laying down this proposition, that, whatever be the body which in any community is employed to protect the persons and property of men, that body ought also, in its corporate capacity, to profess a religion, to employ its power for the propagation of that religion, and to require conformity to that religion, as an indispensable qualification for all civil office. He distinctly declares that he does not in this proposition confine his view to orthodox governments or even to Christian governments. The circumstance that a religion is false does not, he tells us, diminish the obligation of governors, as such, to uphold it. If they neglect to do so, “we cannot,” he says, “but regard the fact as aggravating the case of the holders of such creed.”
“I do not scruple to affirm,” he adds, “that, if a Mahometan conscientiously believes his religion to come from God, and to teach divine truth, he must believe that truth to be beneficial, and beneficial beyond all other things to the soul of man; and he must therefore, and ought to desire its extension, and to use for its extension all proper and legitimate means; and that, if such Mahometan 127be a prince, he ought to count among those means the application of whatever influence or funds he may lawfully have at his disposal for such purposes.”
Surely this is a hard saying. Before we admit that the Emperor Julian, in employing the influence and the funds at his disposal for the extinction of Christianity, was doing no more than his duty, before we admit that the Arian Theodoric would have committed a crime if he had suffered a single believer in the divinity of Christ to hold any civil employment in Italy, before we admit that the Dutch Government is bound to exclude from office all members of the Church of England, the King of Bavaria to exclude from office all Protestants, the Great Turk to exclude from office all Christians, the King of Ava to exclude from office all who hold the unity of God, we think ourselves entitled to demand very full and accurate demonstration. When the consequences of a doctrine are so startling, we may well require that its foundations shall be very solid.
The following paragraph is a specimen of the arguments by which Mr. Gladstone has, as he conceives, established his great fundamental proposition:—
“We may state the same proposition in a more general form, in which it surely must command universal assent. Wherever there is power in the universe, that power is the property of God, the King of that universe—his property of right, however for a time withholden or abused. Now this property is, as it were, realised, is used according to the will of the owner, when it is used for the purposes he has ordained, and in the temper of mercy, justice, truth, and faith which he has taught us; But those principles never can be truly, never can be permanently, entertained in the human breast, except by a continual reference to their source, and the supply of the Divine grace. The powers, therefore, that dwell in individuals acting as a government, as well as those that 128dwell in individuals acting for themselves, can only be secured for right uses by applying to them a religion.”
Here are propositions of vast and indefinite extent, conveyed in language which has a certain obscure dignity and sanctity, attractive, we doubt not, to many minds. But the moment that we examine these propositions closely, the moment that we bring them to the test by running over but a very few of the particulars which are included in them, we find them to be false and extravagant. The doctrine which “must surely command universal assent” is this, that every association of human beings which exercises any power whatever, that is to say, every association of human beings, is bound, as such association, to profess a religion. Imagine the effect which would follow if this principle were really in force during four-and-twenty hours. Take one instance out of a million. A stagecoach company has power over its horses. This power is the property of God. It is used according to the will of God when it is used with mercy. But the principle of mercy can never be truly or permanently entertained in the human breast without continual reference to God. The powers, therefore, that dwell in individuals, acting as a stage-coach company, can only be secured for right uses by applying to them a religion. Every stage-coach company ought, therefore, in its collective capacity, to profess some one faith, to have its articles, and its public, worship, and its tests. That this conclusion, and an infinite number of other conclusions equally strange, follow of necessity from Mr. Gladstone’s principle, is as certain as it is that two and two make four. And, if the legitimate conclusions be so absurd, there must be something unsound in the principle. 129We will quote another passage of the same sort:—
“Why, then, we now come to ask, should the governing body in a state profess a religion? First, because it is composed of individual men; and they, being appointed to act in a definite moral capacity, must sanctify their acts done in that capacity by the offices of religion; inasmuch as the acts cannot otherwise be acceptable to God, or any thing but sinful and punishable in themselves. And whenever we turn our face away from God in our conduct, we are living atheistically.... In fulfilment, then, of his obligations as an individual, the statesman must be a worshipping man. But his acts are public—the powers and instruments with which he works are public—acting under and by the authority of the law, he moves at his word ten thousand subject arms; and because such energies are thus essentially public, and wholly out of the range of mere individual agency, they must be sanctified not only by the private personal prayers and piety of those who fill public situations, but also by public acts of the men composing the public body. They must offer prayer and praise in their public and collective character—in that character wherein they constitute the organ of the nation, and wield its collective force. Wherever there is a reasoning agency, there is a moral duty and responsibility involved in it. The governors are reasoning agents for the nation, in their conjoint acts as such. And therefore there must be attached to this agency, as that without which none of our responsibilities can be met, a religion. And this religion must be that of the conscience of the governor, or none.”
Here again we find propositions of vast sweep, and of sound so orthodox and solemn that many good people, we doubt not, have been greatly edified by it. But let us examine the words closely; and it will immediately become plain that, if these principles be once admitted, there is an end of all society. No combination can be formed for any purpose of mutual help, for trade, for public works, for the relief of the sick or the poor, for the promotion of art or science, unless the members of the combination agree in their theological 130opinions. Take any such combination at random, the London and Birmingham Railway Company for example, and observe to what consequences Mr. Gladstone’s arguments inevitably lead. “Why should the Directors of the Railway Company, in their collective capacity, profess a religion? First, because the direction is composed of individual men appointed to act in a definite moral capacity, bound to look carefully to the property, the limbs, and the lives of their fellow-creatures, bound to act diligently for their constituents, bound to govern their servants with humanity and justice, bound to fulfil with fidelity many important contracts. They must, therefore, sanctify their acts by the offices of religion, or these acts will be sinful and punishable in themselves. In fulfilment, then, of his obligations as an individual, the Director of the London and Birmingham Railway Company must be a worshipping man. But his acts are public. He acts for a body. He moves at his word ten thousand subject arms. And because these energies are out of the range of his mere individual agency, they must be sanctified by public acts of devotion. The Railway Directors must offer prayer and praise in their public and collective character, in that character wherewith they constitute the organ of the Company, and wield its collected power. Wherever there is reasoning agency, there is moral responsibility. The Directors are reasoning agents for the Company. And therefore there must be attached to this agency, as that without which none of our responsibilities can be met, a religion. And this religion must be that of the conscience of the Director himself, or none. There must be public worship and a test. No Jew, no Socinian, no Presbyterian, no Catholic, no Quaker, must be permitted to be the organ of 131the Company, and to wield its collected force.” Would Mr. Gladstone really defend this proposition? We are sure that he would not: but we are sure that to this proposition, and to innumerable similar propositions, his reasoning inevitably leads.
Again,—
“National will and agency are indisputably one, binding either a dissentient minority or the subject body, in a manner that nothing but the recognition of the doctrine of national personality can justify. National honour and good faith are words in every one’s mouth. How do they less imply a personality in nations than the duty towards God, for which we now contend? They are strictly and essentially distinct from the honour and good faith of the individuals composing the nation. France is a person to us, and we to her. A wilful injury done to her is a moral act, and a moral act quite distinct from the acts of all the individuals composing the nation. Upon broad facts like these we may rest, without resorting to the more technical proof which the laws afford in their manner of dealing with corporations. If, then, a nation have unity of will, have pervading sympathies, have capability of reward and suffering contingent upon its acts, shall we deny its responsibility; its need of a religion to meet that responsibility?.... A nation, then, having a personality, lies under the obligation, like the individuals composing its governing body, of sanctifying the acts of that personality by the offices of religion, and thus we have a new and imperative ground for the existence of a state religion.”
A new ground we have here, certainly, but whether very imperative may be doubted. Is it not perfectly clear, that this argument applies with exactly as much force to every combination of human beings for a common purpose, as to governments? Is there any such combination in the world, whether technically a corporation or not, which has not this collective personality, from which Mr. Gladstone deduces such extraordinary consequences? Look at banks, insurance offices, dock companies, canal companies, gas companies, hospitals, 132dispensaries, associations for the relief of the poor, associations for apprehending malefactors, associations of medical pupils for procuring subjects, associations of country gentlemen for keeping fox-hounds, book societies, benefit societies, clubs of all ranks, from those which have lined Pall-Mall and St. James’s Street with their palaces, down to the Free-and-easy which meets in the shabby parlour of a village inn. Is there a single one of these combinations to which Mr. Gladstone’s argument will not apply as well as to the State? In all these combinations, in the Bank of England, for example, or in the Athenæum club, the will and agency of the society are one, and bind the dissentient minority. The Bank and the Athenaeum have a good faith and a justice different from the good faith and justice of the individual members. The Bank is a person to those who deposit bullion with it. The Athenaeum is a person to the butcher and the wine-merchant. If the Athenaeum keeps money at the Bank, the two societies are as much persons to each other as England and France. Either society may pay its debts honestly; either may try to defraud its creditors; either may increase in prosperity; either may fall into difficulties. If, then, they have this unity of will; if they are capable of doing and suffering good and evil, can we, to use Mr. Gladstone’s words, “deny their responsibility, or their need of a religion to meet that responsibility?” Joint-stock banks, therefore, and clubs, “having a personality, lie under the necessity of sanctifying that personality by the offices of religion;” and thus we have “a new and imperative ground” for requiring all the directors and clerks of joint-stock banks, and all the members of clubs, to qualify by taking the sacrament.
The truth is, that Mr. Gladstone has fallen into an 133error very common among men of less talents than his own. It is not unusual for a person who is eager to prove a particular proposition to assume a major of huge extent, which includes that particular proposition, without ever reflecting that it includes a great deal more. The fatal facility with which Mr. Gladstone multiplies expressions stately and sonorous, but of indeterminate meaning, eminently qualifies him to practise this sleight on himself and on his readers. He lays down broad general doctrines about power, when the only power of which he is thinking is the power of governments, and about conjoint action when the only conjoint action of which he is thinking is the conjoint action of citizens in a state. He first resolves on his conclusion. He then makes a major of most comprehensive dimensions, and having satisfied himself that it contains his conclusion, never troubles himself about what else it may contain: and as soon as we examine it we find that it contains an infinite number of conclusions, every one of which is a monstrous absurdity.
It is perfectly true that it would be a very good thing if all the members of all the associations in the world were men of sound religious views. We have no doubt that a good Christian will be under the guidance of Christian principles, in his conduct as director of a canal company or steward of a charity dinner. If he were, to recur to a case which we have before put, a member of a stage-coach company, he would, in that capacity, remember that “a righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.” But it does not follow that every association of men must, therefore, as such association, profess a religion. It is evident that many great and useful objects can be attained in this 134world only by co-operation. It is equally evident that there cannot be efficient co-operation, if men proceed on the principle that they must not co-operate for one object unless they agree about other objects. Nothing seems to us more beautiful or admirable in our social system than the facility with which thousands of people, who perhaps agree only on a single point, can combine their energies for the purpose of carrying that single point. We see daily instances of this. Two men, one of them obstinately prejudiced against missions, the other president of a missionary society, sit together at the board of a hospital, and heartily concur in measures for the health and comfort of the patients. Two men, one of whom is a zealous supporter and the other a zealous opponent of the system pursued in Lancaster’s schools, meet at the Mendicity Society, and act together with the utmost cordiality. The general rule we take to be undoubtedly this, that it is lawful and expedient for men to unite in an association for the promotion of a good object, though they may differ with respect to other objects of still higher importance.
It will hardly be denied that the security of the persons and property of men is a good object, and that the best way, indeed the only way of promoting that object, is to combine men together in certain great corporations which are called States. These corporations are very variously, and, for the most part, very imperfectly organized. Many of them abound with frightful abuses. But it seems reasonable to believe that the worst that ever existed was, on the whole, preferable to complete anarchy.
Now, reasoning from analogy, we should say that these great corporations would, like all other associations, 135be likely to attain their end most perfectly if that end were kept singly in view; and that to refuse the services of those who are admirably qualified to promote that end, because they are not also qualified to promote some other end, however excellent, seems at first sight as unreasonable as it would be to provide that nobody who was not a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries should be a governor of the Eye Infirmary; or that nobody who was not a member of the Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews should be a trustee of the Literary Fund.
It is impossible to name any collection of human beings to which Mr. Gladstone’s reasonings would apply more strongly than to an army? Where shall we find more complete unity of action than in an army? Where else do so many human beings implicitly obey one ruling mind? What other mass is there which moves so much like one man? Where is such tremendous power intrusted to those who command? Where is so awful a responsibility laid upon them? If Mr. Gladstone has made out, as he conceives, an imperative necessity for a State Religion, much more has he made it out to be imperatively necessary that every army should, in its collective capacity, profess a religion. Is he prepared to adopt this consequence?
On the morning of the thirteenth of August, in the year 1704, two great captains, equal in authority, united by close private and public ties, but of different creeds, prepared for a battle, on the event of which were staked the liberties of Europe. Marlborough had passed a part of the night in prayer, and before daybreak received the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. He then hastened to join Eugene, 136who had probably just confessed himself to a Popish priest. The generals consulted together, formed their plan in concert, and repaired each to his own post. Marlborough gave orders for public prayers. The English chaplains read the service at the head of the English regiments. The Calvinistic chaplains of the Dutch army, with heads on which hand of Bishop had never been laid, poured forth their supplications in front of their countrymen. In the mean time, the Danes might listen to their Lutheran ministers; and Capuchins might encourage the Austrian squadrons, and pray to the Virgin for a blessing on the arms of the Holy Roman Empire. The battle commences. These men of various religions all act like members of one body. The Catholic and the Protestant general exert themselves to assist and to surpass each other. Before sunset the Empire is saved: France has lost in a day the fruits of eighty years of intrigue and of victory; and the allies, after conquering together, return thanks to God separately, each after his own form of worship. Now is this practical atheism? Would any man in his senses say, that, because the allied army had unity of action and a common interest, and because a heavy responsibility lay on its Chiefs, it was therefore imperatively necessary that the Army should, as an Army, have one established religion, that Eugene should be deprived of his command for being a Catholic, that all the Dutch and Austrian colonels should be broken for not subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles? Certainly not. The most ignorant grenadier on the field of battle would have seen the absurdity of such a proposition.
“I know,” he would have said, “that the Prince of Savoy goes to mass, and that our Corporal John cannot abide it; but what has the mass to do with the taking 137of the village of Blenheim? The Prince wants to beat the French, and so does Corporal John. If we stand by each other we shall most likely beat them. If we send all the Papists and Dutch away, Tallard will have every man of us.” Mr. Gladstone himself, we imagine, would admit that our honest grenadier would have the best of the argument; and if so, what follows? Even this; that all Mr. Gladstone’s general principles about power, and responsibility, and personality, and conjoint action, must be given up, and that, if his theory is to stand at all, it must stand on some other foundation.
We have now, we conceive, shown that it may be proper to form men into combinations for important purposes, which combinations shall have unity and common interests, and shall be under the direction of rulers intrusted with great power and lying under solemn responsibility, and yet that it may be highly improper that these combinations should, as such, profess any one system of religious belief, or perform any joint act of religious worship. How, then, is it proved that this may not be the case with some of those great combinations which we call States? We firmly believe that it is the case with some States. We firmly believe that there are communities in which it would be as absurd to mix up theology with government, as it would have been in the right wing of the allied army at Blenheim to commence a controversy with the left wing, in the middle of the battle, about purgatory and the worship of images.
It is the duty, Mr. Gladstone tells us, of the persons, be they who they may, who hold supreme power in the state, to employ that power in order to promote whatever they may deem to be theological truth. Now, surely, before he can call on us to admit this proposition, 138he is bound to prove that these persons are likely to do more good than harm by so employing their power. The first question is, whether a government, proposing to itself the propagation of religious truth as one of its principal ends, is more likely to lead the people right than to lead them wrong? Mr. Gladstone evades this question; and perhaps it was his wisest course to do so.
“If,” says he, “the government be good, let it have its natural duties and powers at its command; but, if not good, let it be made so.... We follow, therefore, the true course in looking first for the true [Greek] or abstract conception of a government, of course with allowance for the evil and frailty that are in man, and then in examining whether there be comprised in that [Greek] a capacity and consequent duty on the part of a government to lay down any laws, or devote any means for the purposes of religion,—in short, to exercise a choice upon religion.”
Of course, Mr. Gladstone has a perfect right to argue any abstract question, provided that he will constantly bear in mind that it is only an abstract question that he is arguing. Whether a perfect government would or would not be a good machinery for the propagation of religious truth is certainly a harmless, and may, for aught we know, be an edifying subject of inquiry. But it is very important that we should remember that there is not, and never has been, any such government in the world. There is no harm at all in inquiring what course a stone thrown into the air would take, if the law of gravitation did not operate. But the consequences would be unpleasant, if the inquirer, as soon as he had finished his calculation, were to begin to throw stones about in all directions, without considering that his conclusion rests on a false hypothesis, and that his projectiles, instead of flying away through infinite 139space, will speedily return in parabolas, and break the windows and heads of his neighbours.
It is very easy to say that governments are good, or if not good, ought to be made so. But what is meant by good government? And how are all the bad governments in the world to be made good? And of what value is a theory which is true only on a supposition in the highest degree extravagant?
We do not, however, admit that, if a government were, for all its temporal ends, as perfect as human frailty allows, such a government would, therefore, be necessarily qualified to propagate true religion. For we see that the fitness of governments to propagate true religion is by no means proportioned to their fitness for the temporal end of their institution. Looking at individuals, we see that the princes under whose rule nations have been most ably protected from foreign and domestic disturbance, and have made the most rapid advances in civilisation, have been by no means good teachers of divinity. Take, for example, the best French sovereign, Henry the Fourth, a king who restored order, terminated a terrible civil war, brought the finances into an excellent condition, made his country respected throughout Europe, and endeared himself to the great body of the people whom he ruled. Yet this man was twice a Huguenot, and twice a Papist. He was, as Davila hints, strongly suspected of having no religion at all in theory, and was certainly not much under religious restraints in his practice. Take the Czar Peter, the Empress Catharine, Frederic the Great. It will surely not be disputed that these sovereigns, with all their faults, were, if we consider them with reference merely to the temporal ends of government, above the average of merit. Considered as theological guides, 140Mr. Gladstone would probably put them below the most abject drivellers of the Spanish branch of the house of Bourbon. Again, when we pass from individuals to systems, we by no means find that the aptitude of governments for propagating religious truth is proportioned to their aptitude for secular functions. Without being blind admirers either of the French or of the American institutions, we think it clear that the persons and property of citizens are better protected in France and in New England than in almost any society that now exists, or that has ever existed; very much better, certainly, than in the Roman empire under the orthodox rule of Constantine and Theodosius. But neither the government of France, nor that of New England, is so organized as to be fit for the propagation of theological doctrines. Nor do we think it improbable that the most serious religious errors might prevail in a state which, considered merely with reference to temporal objects, might approach far nearer than any that has ever been known, to the idea of what a state should be.
But we shall leave this abstract question, and look at the world as we find it. Does, then, the way in which governments generally obtain their power make it at all probable that they will be more favourable to orthodoxy than to heterodoxy? A nation of barbarians pours down on a rich and un warlike empire, enslaves the people, portions out the land, and blends the institutions which it finds in the cities with those which it has brought from the woods. A handful of daring adventurers from a civilised nation wander to some savage country, and reduce the aboriginal race to bondage. A successful general turns his arms against the state which he serves. A society, made brutal by oppression, rises madly on its masters, sweeps away all 141old laws and usages, and, when its first paroxysm of rage is over, sinks down passively under any form of polity which may spring out of the chaos. A chief of a party, as at Florence, becomes imperceptibly a sovereign, and the founder of a dynasty. A captain of mercenaries, as at Milan, seizes on a city, and by the sword makes himself its ruler. An elective senate, as at Venice, usurps permanent and hereditary power.
It is in events such as these that governments have generally originated; and we can see nothing in such events to warrant us in believing that the governments thus called into existence will be peculiarly well fitted to distinguish between religious truth and heresy.
When, again, we look at the constitutions of governments which have become settled, we find no great security for the orthodoxy of rulers. One magistrate holds power because his name was drawn out of a purse; another, because his father held it before him. There are representative systems of all sorts, large constituent bodies, small constituent bodies, universal suffrage, high pecuniary qualifications. We see that, for the temporal ends of government, some of these constitutions are very skilfully constructed, and that the very worst of them is preferable to anarchy. We see some sort of connection between the very worst of them and the temporal well-being of society. But it passes our understanding to comprehend what connection any one of them has with theological truth.
And how stands the fact? Have not almost all the governments in the world always been in the wrong on religious subjects? Mr. Gladstone, we imagine, would say that, except in the time of Constantine, of Jovian, and of a very few of their successors, and occasionally in England since the Reformation, no government 142has ever been sincerely friendly to the pure and apostolical Church of Christ. If, therefore, it be true that every ruler is bound in conscience to use his power for the propagation of his own religion, it will follow that, for one ruler who has been bound in conscience to use his power for the propagation of truth, a thousand have been bound in conscience to use their power for the propagation of falsehood. Surely this is a conclusion from which common sense recoils. Surely, if experience shows that a certain machine, when used to produce a certain effect, does not produce that effect once in a thousand times, but produces, in the vast majority of cases, an effect directly contrary, we cannot be wrong in saying that it is not a machine of which the principal end is to be so used.
If, indeed, the magistrate would content himself with laying his opinions and reasons before the people, and would leave the people, uncorrupted by hope or fear, to judge for themselves, we should see little reason to apprehend that his interference in favour of error would be seriously prejudicial to the interests of truth. Nor do we, as will hereafter be seen, object to his taking this course, when it is compatible with the efficient discharge of his more especial duties. But this will not satisfy Mr. Gladstone. He would have the magistrate resort to means which have a great tendency to make malcontents, to make hypocrites, to make careless nominal conformists, but no tendency whatever to produce honest and rational conviction. It seems to us quite clear that an inquirer who has no wish except to know the truth is more likely to arrive at the truth than an inquirer who knows that, if he decides one way, he shall be rewarded, and that, if he decides the other way, he shall be punished. Now, 143Mr. Gladstone would have governments propagate their opinions by excluding all dissenters from all civil offices. That is to say, he would have governments propagate their opinions by a process which has no reference whatever to the truth or falsehood of those opinions, by arbitrarily uniting certain worldly advantages with one set of doctrines, and certain worldly inconveniences with another set. It is of the very nature of argument to serve the interests of truth; but if rewards and punishments serve the interests of truth, it is by mere accident. It is very much easier to find arguments for the divine authority of the Gospel than for the divine authority of the Koran. But it is just as easy to bribe or rack a Jew into Mahometanism as into Christianity.
From racks, indeed, and from all penalties directed against the persons, the property, and the liberty of heretics, the humane spirit of Mr. Gladstone shrinks with horror. He only maintains that conformity to the religion of the state ought to be an indispensable qualification for office; and he would, unless we have greatly misunderstood him, think it his duty, if he had the power, to revive the Test Act, to enforce it rigourously, and to extend it to important classes who were formerly exempt from its operation.
This is indeed a legitimate consequence of his principles. But why stop here? Why not roast dissenters at slow fires? All the general reasonings on which this theory rests evidently lead to sanguinary persecution. If the propagation of religious truth be a principal end of government, as government; if it be the duty of a government to employ for that end its constitutional power; if the constitutional power of governments extends, as it most unquestionably does, to the making of laws for the burning of heretics; if burning 144be, as it most assuredly is, in many cases, a most effectual mode of suppressing opinions; why should we not burn? If the relation in which government ought to stand to the people be, as Mr. Gladstone tells us, a paternal relation, we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that persecution is justifiable. For the right of propagating opinions by punishment is one which belongs to parents as clearly as the right to give instruction. A boy is compelled to attend family worship: he is forbidden to read irreligious books: if he will not learn his catechism, he is sent to bed without his supper: if he plays truant at church-time a task is set him. If he should display the precocity of his talents by expressing impious opinions before his brothers and sisters, we should not much blame his father for cutting short the controversy with a horse-whip. All the reasons which lead us to think that parents are peculiarly fitted to conduct the education of their children, and that education is a principal end of the parental relation, lead us also to think that parents ought to be allowed to use punishment, if necessary, for the purpose of forcing children, who are incapable of judging for themselves, to receive religious instruction and to attend religious worship. Why, then, is this prerogative of punishment, so eminently paternal, to be withheld from a paternal government? It seems to us, also, to be the height of absurdity to employ civil disabilities for the propagation of an opinion, and then to shrink from employing other punishments for the same purpose. For nothing can be clearer than that, if you punish at all, you ought to punish enough. The pain caused by punishment is pure unmixed evil, and never ought to be inflicted, except for the sake of some good. It is mere foolish cruelty to provide penalties which torment 145the criminal without preventing the crime. Now it is possible, by sanguinary persecution unrelentingly inflicted, to suppress opinions. In this way the Albigenses were put down. In this way the Lollards were put down. In this way the fair promise of the Reformation was blighted in Italy and Spain. But we may safely defy Mr. Gladstone to point out a single instance in which the system which he recommends has succeeded.
And why should he be so tender-hearted? What reason can he give for hanging a murderer, and suffering an heresiarch to escape without even a pecuniary mulct? Is the heresiarch a less pernicious member of society than the murderer? Is not the loss of one soul a greater evil than the extinction of many lives? And the number of murders committed by the most profligate bravo that ever let out his poniard to hire in Italy, or by the most savage buccaneer that ever prowled on the Windward Station, is small indeed, when compared with the number of souls which have been caught in the snares of one dexterous heresiarch. If, then, the heresiarch causes infinitely greater evils than the murderer, why is he not as proper an object of penal legislation as the murderer? We can give a reason, a reason, short, simple, decisive, and consistent. We do not extenuate the evil which the heresiarch produces; but we say that it is not evil of that sort against which it is the end of government to guard. But how Mr. Gladstone, who considers the evil which the heresiarch produces as evil of the sort against which it is the end of government to guard, can escape from the obvious consequence of his doctrine, we do not understand. The world is full of parallel cases. An orange-woman stops up the pavement with her wheelbarrow; and a policeman takes her into custody. A miser who has 146amassed a million suffers an old friend and benefactor to die in a workhouse, and cannot be questioned before any tribunal for his baseness and ingratitude. Is this because legislators think the orange-woman’s conduct worse than the miser’s? Not at all. It is because the stopping up of the pathway is one of the evils against which it is the business of the public authorities to protect society, and heartlessness is not one of those evils. It would be the height of folly to say that the miser ought, indeed, to be punished, but that he ought to be punished less severely than the orange-woman.
The heretical Constantius persecutes Athanasius; and why not? Shall Caesar punish the robber who has taken one purse, and spare the wretch who has taught millions to rob the Creator of His honour, and to bestow it on the creature? The orthodox Theodosius persecutes the Arians, and with equal reason. Shall an insult offered to the Caesarean majesty be expiated by death; and shall there be no penalty for him who degrades to the rank of a creature the almighty, the infinite Creator? We have a short Answer for both: “To Caesar the things which are Caesar’s. Caesar is appointed for the punishment of robbers and rebels. He is not appointed for the purpose of either propagating or exterminating the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son.”
“Not so,” says Mr. Gladstone. “Caesar is bound in conscience to propagate whatever he thinks to be the truth as to this question. Constantius is bound to establish the Arian worship throughout the empire, and to displace the bravest captains of his legions, and the ablest ministers of his treasury, if they hold the Nicene faith. Theodosius is equally bound to turn out every public servant whom his Arian predecessors have put in. But if 147Constantius lays on Athanasius a fine of a single aureus, if Theodosius imprisons an Arian presbyter for a week, this is most unjustifiable oppression.” Our readers will be curious to know how this distinction is made out.
The reasons which Mr. Gladstone gives against persecution affecting life, limb, and property, may be divided into two classes; first, reasons, which can be called reasons only by extreme courtesy, and which nothing but the most deplorable necessity would ever have induced a man of his abilities to use; and, secondly, reasons which are really reasons, and which have so much force that they not only completely prove his exception, but completely upset his general rule. His artillery on this occasion is composed of two sorts of pieces, pieces which will not go off at all, and pieces which go off with a vengeance, and recoil with most crushing effect upon himself.
“We, as fallible creatures,” says Mr. Gladstone, “have no right, from any bare speculations of our own, to administer pains and penalties to our fellow-creatures, whether on social or religious grounds. We have the right to enforce the laws of the land by such pains and penalties, because it is expressly given by Him who has declared that the civil rulers are to bear the sword for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the encouragement of them that do well. And so, in things spiritual, had it pleased God to give to the Church or the State this power, to be permanently exercised over their members, or mankind at large, we should have the right to use it; but it does not appear to have been so received, and consequently, it should not be exercised.”
We should be sorry to think that the security of our lives and property from persecution rested on no better ground than this. Is not a teacher of heresy an evildoer? Has not heresy been condemned in many countries, and in our own among them, by the laws of the land, 148which, as Mr. Gladstone says, it is justifiable to enforce by penal sanctions? If a heretic is not specially mentioned in the text to which Mr. Gladstone refers, neither is an assassin, a kidnapper, or a highwayman: and if the silence of the New Testament as to all interference of governments to stop the progress of heresy be a reason for not fining or imprisoning heretics, it is surely just as good a reason for not excluding them from office.
“God,” says Mr. Gladstone, “has seen fit to authorise the employment of force in the one case and not in the other; for it was with regard to chastisement inflicted by the sword for an insult offered to himself that the Redeemer declared his kingdom not to be of this world;—meaning, apparently in an especial manner, that it should be otherwise than after this world’s fashion, in respect to the sanctions by which its laws should be maintained.”
Now here Mr. Gladstone, quoting from memory, has fallen into an error. The very remarkable words which he cites do not appear to have had any reference to the wound inflicted by Peter on Malchus. They were addressed to Pilate, in answer to the question, “Art thou the King of the Jews?” We cannot help saying that we are surprised that Mr. Gladstone should not have more accurately verified a quotation on which, according to him, principally depends the right of a hundred millions of his fellow-subjects, idolaters, Mussulmans, Catholics, and dissenters, to their property, their liberty, and their lives.
Mr. Gladstone’s humane interpretations of Scripture are lamentably destitute of one recommendation, which he considers as of the highest value: they are by no means in accordance with the general precepts or practice of the Church, from the time when the Christians became strong enough to persecute down to a very recent period. A dogma favourable to toleration is 149certainly not a dogma quod semper, quod ubique, quod omnibus. Bossuet was able to say, we fear with too much truth, that on one point all Christians had long been unanimous, the right of the civil magistrate to propagate truth by the sword; that even heretics had been orthodox as to this right, and that the Anabaptists and Socinians were the first who called it in question. We will not pretend to say what is the best explanation of the text under consideration; but we are sure that Mr. Gladstone’s is the worst. According to him, government ought to exclude dissenters from office, but not to fine them, because Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. We do not see why the line may not be drawn at a hundred other places as well as that which he has chosen. We do not see why Lord Clarendon, in recommending the act of 1664 against conventicles, might not have said, “It hath been thought by some that this classis of men might with advantage be not only imprisoned but pilloried. But methinks, my Lords, we are inhibited from the punishment of the pillory by that Scripture, ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’” Archbishop Laud, when he sate on Burton in the Star-Chamber, might have said, “I pronounce for the pillory; and, indeed, I could wish that all such wretches were delivered to the fire, but that our Lord hath said that his kingdom is not of this world.” And Gardiner might have written to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire; “See that execution be done without fail on Master Ridley and Master Latimer, as you will answer the same to the Queen’s grace at your peril. But if they shall desire to have some gunpowder for the shortening of their torment, I see not but you may grant it, as it is written, Regnum meam non est de hoc mundo; that is to say, My kingdom is not of this world.” 150But Mr. Gladstone has other arguments against persecution, arguments which are of so much weight, that they are decisive not only against persecution but against his whole theory. “The government,” he says, “is incompetent to exercise minute and constant supervision over religious opinion.” And hence he infers, that “a government exceeds its province when it comes to adapt a scale of punishments to variations in religious opinion, according to their respective degrees of variation from the established creed. To decline affording countenance to sects is a single and simple rule. To punish their professors, according to their several errors, even were there no other objection is one for which the state must assume functions wholly ecclesiastical, and for which it is not intrinsically fitted.”
This is, in our opinion, quite true. But how does it agree with Mr. Gladstone’s theory? What! the government incompetent to exercise even such a degree of supervision over religious opinion as is implied by the punishment of the most deadly heresy! The government incompetent to measure even the grossest deviations from the standard of truth! The government not intrinsically qualified to judge of the comparative enormity of any theological errors! The government so ignorant on these subjects, that it is compelled to leave, not merely subtle heresies, discernible only by the eye of a Cyril or a Bucer, but Socinianism, Deism, Mahometanism, Idolatry, Atheism, unpunished! To whom does Mr. Gladstone assign the office of selecting a religion for the state, from among hundreds of religions, every one of which lays claim to truth? Even to this same government, which is now pronounced to be so unfit for theological investigations 151that it cannot venture to punish a man for worshipping a lump of stone with a score of heads and hands. We do not remember ever to have fallen in with a more extraordinary instance of inconsistency. When Mr. Gladstone wishes to prove that the government ought to establish and endow a religion, and to fence it with a Test Act, government is [Greek] in the moral world. Those who would confine it to secular ends take a low view of its nature. A religion must be attached to its agency; and this religion must be that of the conscience of the governor, or none. It is for the Governor to decide between Papists and Protestants, Jansenists and Molinists, Arminians and Calvinists, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, Sabellians and Tritheists, Homoousians and Homoiousians, Nestorians and Eutychians, Monothelites and Monophysites, Pædobaptists and Anabaptists. It is for him to rejudge the Acts of Nice and Rimini, of Ephesus and Chalcedon, of Constantinople and St. John Lateran, of Trent and Dort. It is for him to arbitrate between the Greek and the Latin procession, and to determine whether that mysterious filioque shall or shall not have a place in the national creed. When he has made up his mind, he is to tax the whole community in order to pay people to teach his opinion, whatever it may be. He is to rely on his own judgment, though it may be opposed to that of nine-tenths of the society. He is to act on his own judgment, at the risk of exciting the most formidable discontents. He is to inflict, perhaps on a great majority of the population, what, whether we choose to call it persecution or not, will always be felt as persecution by those who suffer it. He is, on account of differences often too slight for vulgar comprehension, to 152deprive the state of the services of the ablest men. He is to debase and enfeeble the community which he governs, from a nation into a sect. In our own country, for example, millions of Catholics, millions of Protestant Dissenters, are to be excluded from all power and honours. A great hostile fleet is on the sea; but Nelson is not to command in the Channel if in the mystery of the Trinity he confounds the persons. An invading army has landed in Kent; but the Duke of Wellington is not to be at the head of our forces if he divides the substance. And after all this, Mr. Gladstone tells us, that it would be wrong to imprison a Jew, a Mussulman, or a Budhist, for a day; because really a government cannot understand these matters, and ought not to meddle with questions which belong to the Church. A singular theologian, indeed, this government! So learned that it is competent to exclude Grotius from office for being a Semi-Pelagian, so unlearned that it is incompetent to fine a Hindoo peasant a rupee for going on a pilgrimage to Juggernaut.
“To solicit and persuade one another,” says Mr. Gladstone, “are privileges which belong to us all; and the wiser and better man is bound to advise the less wise and good: but he is not only not bound, he is not allowed, speaking generally, to coerce him. It is untrue, then, that the same considerations which bind a government to submit a religion to the free choice of the people would therefore justify their enforcing its adoption.”
Granted. But it is true that all the same considerations which would justify a government in propagating a religion by means of civil disabilities would justify the propagating of that religion by penal laws. To solicit! Is it solicitation to tell a Catholic Duke, that he must abjure his religion or walk out of the 153House of Lords? To persuade! Is it persuasion to tell a banister of distinguished eloquence and learning that he shall grow old in the stuff gown, while his pupils are seated above him in ermine, because he cannot digest the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian creed? Would Mr. Gladstone think that a religious system which he considers as false, Socinian for example, was submitted to his free choice, if it were submitted in these terms?—“If you obstinately adhere to the faith of the Nicene fathers, you shall not be burned in Smithfield; you shall not be sent to Dorchester gaol; you shall not even pay double land-tax. But you shall be shut out from all situations in which you might exercise your talents with honour to yourself and advantage to the country. The House of Commons, the bench of magistracy, are not for such as you. You shall see younger men, your inferiors in station and talents, rise to the highest dignities and attract the gaze of nations, while you are doomed to neglect and obscurity. If you have a son of the highest promise, a son such as other fathers would contemplate with delight, the development of his fine talents and of his generous ambition shall be a torture to you. You shall look on him as a being doomed to lead, as you have led, the abject life of a Roman or a Neapolitan in the midst of the great English people. All those high honours, so much more precious than the most costly gifts of despots, with which a free country decorates its illustrious citizens, shall be to him, as they have been to you, objects not of hope and virtuous emulation, but of hopeless, envious pining. Educate him, if you wish him to feel his degradation. Educate him, if you wish to stimulate his craving for what he never must enjoy. Educate him, if you would imitate the barbarity of that Celtic tyrant, 154who fed his prisoners on salted food till they called eagerly for drink, and then let down an empty cup into the dungeon, and left them to die of thirst.” Is this to solicit, to persuade, to submit religion to the free choice of man? Would a fine of a thousand pounds, would imprisonment in Newgate for six months, under circumstances not disgraceful, give Mr. Gladstone the pain which he would feel, if he were to be told that he was to be dealt with in the way in which he would himself deal with more than one half of his countrymen?
We are not at all surprised to find such inconsistency even in a man of Mr. Gladstone’s talents. The truth is, that every man is, to a great extent, the creature of the age. It is to no purpose that he resists the influence which the vast mass, in which he is but an atom, must exercise on him. He may try to be a man of the tenth century: but he cannot. Whether he will or not, he must be a man of the nineteenth century. He shares in the motion of the moral as well as in that of the physical world. He can no more be as intolerant as he would have been in the days of the Tudors than he can stand in the evening exactly where he stood in the morning. The globe goes round from west to east; and he must go round with it. When he says that he is where he was, he means only that he has moved at the same rate with all around him. When he says that he has gone a good way to the westward, he means only that he has not gone to the eastward quite as rapidly as his neighbors. Mr. Gladstone’s book is, in this respect, a very gratifying performance. It is the measure of what a man can do to be left behind by the world. It is the strenuous effort of a very vigorous mind to keep as far in the rear of the general progress as possible. And yet, with the 155most intense exertion, Mr. Gladstone cannot help being, on some important points, greatly in advance of Locke himself; and with whatever admiration he may regard Laud, it is well for him, we can tell him, that he did not write in the days of that zealous primate, who would certainly have refuted the expositions of Scripture which we have quoted, by one of the keenest arguments that can be addressed to human ears.
This is not the only instance in which Mr. Gladstone has shrunk in a very remarkable manner from the consequences of his own theory. If there be in the whole world a state to which this theory is applicable, that state is the British Empire in India. Even we, who detest paternal governments in general, shall admit that the duties of the government of India, are, to a considerable extent, paternal. There, the superiority of the governors to the governed in moral science is unquestionable. The conversion of the whole people to the worst form that Christianity ever wore in the darkest ages would be a most happy event. It is not necessary that a man should be a Christian to wish for the propagation of Christianity in India. It is sufficient that he should be an European not much below the ordinary European level of good sense and humanity. Compared with the importance of the interests at stake, all those Scotch and Irish questions which occupy so large a portion of Mr. Gladstone’s book, sink into insignificance. In no part of the world since the days of Theodosius has so large a heathen population been subject to a Christian government. In no part of the world is heathenism more cruel, more licentious, more fruitful of absurd rites and pernicious laws. Surely, if it be the duty of government to use its power and its revenue in order to bring seven millions of Irish Catholics 156over to the Protestant Church, it is a fortiori the duty of the government to use its power and its revenue in order to make seventy millions of idolaters Christians. If it he a sin to suffer John Howard or William Penn to hold any office in England because they are not in communion with the Established Church, it must be a crying sin indeed to admit to high situations men who bow down, in temples covered with emblems of vice, to the hideous images of sensual or malevolent gods.
But no. Orthodoxy, it seems, is more shocked by the priests of Rome than by the priests of Kalee. The plain red brick building, the Cave of Adullam, or Ebenezer Chapel, where uneducated men hear a half-educated man talk of the Christian law of love and the Christian hope of glory, is unworthy of the indulgence which is reserved for the shrine where the Thug suspends a portion of the spoils of murdered travellers, and for the car which grinds its way through the bones of self-immolated pilgrims. “It would be,” says Mr. Gladstone, “an absurd exaggeration to maintain it as the part of such a government as that of the British in India to bring home to the door of every subject at once the ministrations of a new and totally unknown religion.” The government ought indeed to desire to propagate Christianity. But the extent to which they must do so must be “limited by the degree in which the people are found willing to receive it.” He proposes no such limitation in the case of Ireland. He would give the Irish a Protestant Church whether they like it or not. “We believe,” says he, “that that which we place before them is, whether they know it or not, calculated to be beneficial to them; and that, if they know it not now, they will, know it when it is presented to them fairly. Shall we, then, purchase their applause at the 157expense of their substantial, nay, their spiritual interests?”
And why does Mr. Gladstone allow to the Hindoo a privilege which he denies to the Irishman? Why does he reserve his greatest liberality for the most monstrous errors? Why does he pay most respect to the opinion of the least enlightened people? Why does he withhold the right to exercise paternal authority from that one government which is fitter to exercise paternal authority than any government that ever existed in the world? We will give the reason in his own words.
“In British India,” he says, “a small number of persons advanced to a higher grade of civilization, exercise the powers of government over an immensely greater number of less cultivated persons, not by coercion, but under free stipulation with the governed. Now, the rights of a government, in circumstances thus peculiar, obviously depend neither upon the unrestricted theory of paternal principles, nor upon any primordial or fictitious contract of indefinite powers, but upon an express and known treaty, matter of positive agreement, not of natural ordinance.”
Where Mr. Gladstone has seen this treaty we cannot guess; for, though he calls it a “known treaty,” we will stake our credit that it is quite unknown both at Calcutta and Madras, both in Leadenhall Street and Cannon Row, that it is not to be found in any of the enormous folios of papers relating to India which fill the book-cases of members of Parliament, that it has utterly escaped the researches of all the historians of our Eastern empire, that, in the long and interesting debates of 1813 on the admission of missionaries to India, debates of which the most valuable part has been excellently preserved by the care of the speakers, no allusion to this important instrument is to be found. 158The truth is that this treaty is a nonentity. It is by coercion, it is by the sword, and not by free stipulation with the governed, that England rules India; nor is England bound by any contract whatever not to deal with Bengal as she deals with Ireland. She may set up a Bishop of Patna, and a Dean of Hoogley; she may grant away the public revenue for the maintenance of prebendaries of Benares and canons of Moorshedabad; she may divide the country into parishes, and place a rector with a stipend in every one of them; and all this without infringing any positive agreement. If there be such a treaty, Mr. Gladstone can have no difficulty in making known its date, its terms, and, above all, the precise extent of the territory within which we have sinfully bound ourselves to be guilty of practical atheism. The last point is of great importance. For, as the provinces of our Indian empire were acquired at different times, and in very different ways, no single treaty, indeed no ten treaties, will justify the system pursued by our government there.
The plain state of the case is this. No man in his senses would dream of applying Mr. Gladstone’s theory to India; because, if so applied, it would inevitably destroy our empire; and, with our empire, the best chance of spreading Christianity among the natives. This Mr. Gladstone felt. In some way or other his theory was to be saved, and the monstrous consequences avoided. Of intentional misrepresentation we are quite sure that he is incapable. But we cannot acquit him of that unconscious disingenuousness from which the most upright man, when strongly attached to an opinion, is seldom wholly free. We believe that he recoiled from the ruinous consequences which his system would produce, if tried in India; but that he did not like to 159say so, lest he should lay himself open to the charge of sacrificing principle to expediency, a word which is held in the utmost abhorrence by all his school. Accordingly, he caught at the notion of a treaty, a notion which must, we think, have originated in some rhetorical expression which he has imperfectly understood. There is one excellent way of avoiding the drawing of a false conclusion from a false major; and that is by having a false minor. Inaccurate history is an admirable corrective of unreasonable theory. And thus it is in the present case. A bad general rule is laid down, and obstinately maintained, wherever the consequences are not too monstrous for human bigotry. But when they become so horrible that even Christ Church shrinks, that even Oriel stands aghast, the rule is evaded by means of a fictitious contract. One imaginary obligation is set up against another. Mr. Gladstone first preaches to governments the duty of undertaking an enterprise just as rational as the Crusades, and then dispenses them from it on the ground of a treaty which is just as authentic as the donation of Constantine to Pope Sylvester. His system resembles nothing so much as a forged bond with a forged release indorsed on the back of it.
With more show of reason he rests the claim of the Scotch Church on a contract. He considers that contract, however, as most unjustifiable, and speaks of the setting up of the Kirk as a disgraceful blot on the reign of William the Third. Surely it would be amusing, if it were not melancholy, to see a man of virtue and abilities unsatisfied with the calamities which one Church, constituted on false principles, has brought upon the empire, and repining that Scotland is not in the same state with Ireland, that no Scottish agitator is 160raising rent and putting county members in and out, that no Presbyterian association is dividing supreme power with the government, that no meetings of precursors and repealers are covering the side of the Calton Hill, that twenty-five thousand troops are not required to maintain order on the north of the Tweed, that the anniversary of the Battle of Bothwell Bridge is not regularly celebrated by insult, riot, and murder. We could hardly find a stronger argument against Mr. Gladstone’s system than that which Scotland furnishes. The policy which has been followed in that country has been directly opposed to the policy which he recommends. And the consequence is that Scotland, having been one of the rudest, one of the poorest, one of the most turbulent countries in Europe, has become one of the most highly civilised, one of the most flourishing, one of the most tranquil. The atrocities which were of common occurrence while an unpopular church was dominant are unknown. In spite of a mutual aversion as bitter as ever separated one people from another, the two kingdoms which compose our island have been indissolubly joined together. Of the ancient national feeling there remains just enough to be ornamental and useful; just enough to inspire the poet, and to kindle a generous and friendly emulation in the bosom of the soldier. But for all the ends of government the nations are one. And why are they so? The answer is simple. The nations are one for all the ends of government, because in their union the true ends of government alone were kept in sight. The nations are one because the Churches are two.
Such is the union of England with Scotland, an union which resembles the union of the limbs of one healthful and vigorous body, all moved by one will, 161all co-operating for common ends. The system of Mr. Gladstone would have produced an union which can be compared only to that which is the subject of a wild Persian fable. King Zohak—we tell the story as Mr. Southey tells it to us—gave the devil leave to kiss his shoulders. Instantly two serpents sprang out, who, in the fury of hunger, attacked his head, and attempted to get at his brain. Zohak pulled them away, and tore them with his nails. But he found that they were inseparable parts of himself, and that what he was lacerating was his own flesh. Perhaps we might be able to find, if we looked round the world, some political union like this, some hideous monster of a state, cursed with one principle of sensation and two principles of volition, self-loathing and self-torturing, made up of parts which are driven by a frantic impulse to inflict mutual pain, yet are doomed to feel whatever they inflict, which are divided by an irreconcilable hatred, yet are blended in an indissoluble identity. Mr. Gladstone, from his tender concern for Zohak, is unsatisfied because the devil has as yet kissed only one shoulder, because there is not a snake mangling and mangled on the left to keep in countenance his brother on the right.
But we must proceed in our examination of his theory. Having, as he conceives, proved that it is the duty of every government to profess some religion or other, right or wrong, and to establish that religion, he then comes to the question what religion a government ought to prefer; and he decides this question in favour of the form of Christianity established in England. The Church of England is, according to him, the pure Catholic Church of Christ, which possesses the apostolical succession of ministers, and within 162whose pale is to be found that unity which is essential to truth. For her decisions he claims a degree of reverence far beyond what she has ever, in any of her formularies, claimed for herself; far beyond what the moderate school of Bossuet demands for the Pope; and scarcely short of what that school would ascribe to Pope and General Council together. To separate from her communion is schism. To reject her traditions or interpretations of Scripture is sinful presumption.
Mr. Gladstone pronounces the right of private judgment, as it is generally understood throughout Protestant Europe, to be a monstrous abuse. He declares himself favourable, indeed, to the exercise of private judgment, after a fashion of his own. We have, according to him, a right to judge all the doctrines of the Church of England to be sound, but not to judge any of them to be unsound. He has no objection, he assures us, to active inquiries into religious questions. On the contrary, he thinks such inquiry highly desirable, as long as it does not lead to diversity of opinion; which is much the same thing as if he were to recommend the use of fire that will not burn down houses, or of brandy that will not make men drunk. He conceives it to be perfectly possible for mankind to exercise their intellects vigorously and freely on theological subjects, and yet to come to exactly the same conclusions with each other and with the Church of England. And for this opinion he gives, as far as we have been able to discover, no reason whatever, except that everybody who vigorously and freely exercises his understanding on Euclid’s Theorems assents to them. “The activity of private judgment,” he truly observes, “and the unity and strength of conviction in mathematics 163vary directly as each other.” On this unquestionable fact he constructs a somewhat questionable argument. Everybody who freely inquires agrees, he says, with Euclid. But the Church is as much in the right as Euclid. Why, then, should not every free inquirer agree with the Church? We could put many similar questions. Either the affirmative or the negative of the proposition that King Charles wrote the Icon Basilike is as true as that two sides of a triangle are greater than the third side. Why, then, do Dr. Wordsworth and Mr. Hallam agree in thinking two sides of a triangle greater than the third side, and yet differ about the genuineness of the Icon Basilike? The state of the exact sciences proves, says Mr. Gladstone, that, as respects religion “the association of these two ideas, activity of inquiry, and variety of conclusion, is a fallacious one.” We might just as well turn the argument the other way, and infer from the variety of religious opinions that there must necessarily be hostile mathematical sects, some affirming, and some denying, that the square of the hypothenuse is equal to the squares of the sides. But we do not think either the one analogy or the other of the smallest value. Our way of ascertaining the tendency of free inquiry is simply to open our eyes and look at the world in which we live; and there we see that free inquiry on mathematical subjects produces unity, and that free inquiry on moral subjects produces discrepancy. There would undoubtedly be less discrepancy if inquirers were more diligent and candid. But discrepancy there will be among the most diligent and candid, as long as the constitution of the human mind, and the nature of moral evidence, continue unchanged. That we have not freedom and unity together is a very sad thing; and so it is that we have 164not wings. But we are just as likely to see the one defect removed as the other. It is not only in religion that this discrepancy is found. It is the same with all matters which depend on moral evidence, with judicial questions, for example, and with political questions. All the judges will work a sum in the rule of three on the same principle, and bring out the same conclusion. But it does not follow that, however honest and laborious they may be, they will all be of one mind on the Douglas case. So it is vain to hope that there may be a free constitution under which every representative will be unanimously elected, and every law unanimously passed; and it would be ridiculous for a statesman to stand wondering and bemoaning himself because people who agree in thinking that two and two make four cannot agree about the new poor law, or the administration of Canada.
There are two intelligible and consistent courses which may be followed with respect to the exercise of private judgment; the course of the Romanist, who interdicts private judgment because of its inevitable inconveniences; and the course of the Protestant, who permits private judgment in spite of its inevitable inconveniences. Both are more reasonable than Mr. Gladstone, who would have private judgment without its inevitable inconveniences. The Romanist produces repose by means of stupefaction. The Protestant encourages activity, though he knows that where there is much activity there will be some aberration. Mr. Gladstone wishes for the unity of the fifteenth century with the active and searching spirit of the sixteenth. He might as well wish to be in two places at once.
When Mr. Gladstone says that we “actually require discrepancy of opinion—require and demand error, 165falsehood, blindness, and plume ourselves on such discrepancy as attesting a freedom which is only valuable when used for unity in the truth,” he expresses himself with more energy than precision. Nobody loves discrepancy for the sake of discrepancy. But a person who conscientiously believes that free inquiry is, on the whole, beneficial to the interests of truth, and that, from the imperfection of the human faculties, wherever there is much free inquiry there will be some discrepancy, may, without impropriety, consider such discrepancy, though in itself an evil, as a sign of good. That there are ten thousand thieves in London, is a very melancholy fact. But, looked at in one point of view, it is a reason for exultation. For what other city could maintain ten thousand thieves? What must be the mass of wealth, where the fragments gleaned by lawless pilfering rise to so large an amount? St. Kilda would not support a single pickpocket. The quantity of theft is, to a certain extent, an index of the quantity of useful industry and judicious speculation. And just as we may, from the great number of rogues in a town, infer that much honest gain is made there; so may we often, from the quantity of error in a community, draw a cheering inference as to the degree in which the public mind is turned to those inquiries which alone can lead to rational convictions of truth.
Mr. Gladstone seems to imagine that most Protestants think it possible for the same doctrine to be at once true and false; or that they think it immaterial whether, on a religious question, a man comes to a true or a false conclusion. If there be any Protestants who hold notions so absurd, we abandon them to his censure.
The Protestant doctrine touching the right of private 166judgment, that doctrine which is the common foundation of the Anglican, the Lutheran, and the Calvinistic Churches, that doctrine by which every sect of dissenters vindicates its separation, we conceive not to be this, that opposite doctrines may both be true; nor this, that truth and falsehood are both equally good; nor yet this, that all speculative error is necessarily innocent; but this, that there is on the face of the earth no visible body to whose decrees men are bound to submit their private judgment on points of faith.
Is there always such a visible body? Was there such a visible body in the year 1500? If not, why are we to believe that there is such a body in the year 1839? If there was such a body in the year 1500, what was it? Was it the Church of Rome? And how can the Church of England be orthodox now if the Church of Rome was orthodox then?
“In England,” says Mr. Gladstone, “the case was widely different from that of the Continent. Her reformation did not destroy, but successfully maintained the unity and succession of the Church in her apostolical ministry. We have, therefore, still among us the ordained hereditary witnesses of the truth, conveying it to us through an unbroken series from our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles. This is to us the ordinary voice of authority; of authority equally reasonable and equally true, whether we will hear, or whether we will forbear.”
Mr. Gladstone’s reasoning is not so clear as might be desired. We have among us, he says, ordained hereditary witnesses of the truth, and their voice is to us the voice of authority. Undoubtedly, if they are witnesses of the truth, their voice is the voice of authority. Rut this is little more than saying that the truth is the 167truth. Nor is truth more true because it comes in an unbroken series from the Apostles. The Nicene faith is not more true in the mouth of the Archbishop of Canterbury, than in that of a moderator of the General Assembly. If our respect for the authority of the Church is to be only consequent upon our conviction of the truth of her doctrines, we come at once to that monstrous abuse, the Protestant exercise of private judgment. But if Mr. Gladstone means that we ought to believe that the Church of England speaks the truth because she has the apostolical succession, we greatly doubt whether such a doctrine can be maintained. In the first place, what proof have we of the fact? We have, indeed, heard it said that Providence would certainly have interfered to preserve the apostolical succession in the true Church. But this is an argument fitted for understandings of a different kind from Mr. Gladstone’s. He will hardly tell us that the Church of England is the true Church because she has the succession; and that she has the succession because she is the true Church.
What evidence, then, have we for the fact of the apostolical succession? And here we may easily defend the truth against Oxford with the same arguments with which, in old times, the truth was defended by Oxford against Rome. In this stage of our combat with Mr. Gladstone, we need few weapons except those which we find in the well-furnished and well-ordered armoury of Chillingworth.
The transmission of orders from the Apostles to an English clergyman of the present day must have been through a very great number of intermediate persons. Now, it is probable that no clergyman in the Church of England can trace up his spiritual genealogy from 168bishop to bishop so far back as the time of the Conquest. There remain many centuries during which the history of the transmission of his orders is buried in utter darkness. And whether he be a priest by succession from the Apostles depends on the question, whether during that long period, some thousands of events took place, any one of which may, without any gross improbability, be supposed not to have taken place. We have not a tittle of evidence for any one of these events. We do not even know the names or countries of the men to whom it is taken for granted that these events happened. We do not know whether the spiritual ancestors of any one of our contemporaries were Spanish or Armenian, Arian or Orthodox. In the utter absence of all particular evidence, we are surely entitled to require that there should be very strong evidence indeed that the strictest regularity was observed in every generation, and that episcopal functions were exercised by none who were not bishops by succession from the Apostles. But we have no such evidence. In the first place, we have not full and accurate information touching the polity of the Church during the century which followed the persecution of Nero. That, during this period, the overseers of all the little Christian societies scattered through the Roman empire, held their spiritual authority by virtue of holy orders derived from the Apostles, cannot be proved by contemporary testimony, or by any testimony which can be regarded as decisive. The question, whether the primitive ecclesiastical constitution bore a greater resemblance to the Anglican or to the Calvinistic model has been fiercely disputed. It is a question on which men of eminent parts, learning, and piety have differed, and do to this day differ 160very widely. It is a question on which at least a full half of the ability and erudition of Protestant Europe has, ever since the Reformation, been opposed to the Anglican pretensions. Mr. Gladstone himself, we are persuaded, would have the candour to allow that, if no evidence were admitted but that which is furnished by the genuine Christian literature of the first two centuries, judgment would not go in favour of prelacy. And if he looked at the subject as calmly as he would look at a controversy respecting the Roman Comitia or the Anglo-Saxon Wittenagemote, he would probably think that the absence of contemporary evidence during so long a period was a defect which later attestations, however numerous, could but very imperfectly supply. It is surely impolitic to rest the doctrines of the English Church on a historical theory which, to ninety-nine Protestants out of a hundred, would seem much more questionable than any of those doctrines. Nor is this all. Extreme obscurity overhangs the history of the middle ages; and the facts which are discernible through that obscurity prove that the Church was exceedingly ill-regulated. We read of sees of the highest dignity openly sold, transferred backwards and forwards by popular tumult, bestowed sometimes by a profligate woman on her paramour, sometimes by a warlike baron on a kinsman still a stripling. We read of bishops of ten years old, of bishops of five years old, of many popes who were mere boys, and who rivalled the frantic dissoluteness of Caligula, nay, of a female pope. And though this last story, once believed throughout all Europe, has been disproved by the strict researches of modern criticism, the most discerning of those who reject it have admitted that it is not intrinsically improbable. In 170our own island, it was the complaint of Alfred that not a single priest south of the Thames, and very few on the north, could read either Latin or English. And this illiterate clergy exercised their ministry amidst a rude and half-heathen population, in which Danish pirates, unchristened, or christened by the hundred on a field of battle, were mingled with a Saxon peasantry scarcely better instructed in religion. The state of Ireland was still worse. “Tota ilia per universam Hiberniam dissolutio ecclesiasticæ disciplinas, illa ubique pro consuetudine Christiana sæva subintroducta barbaries,” are the expressions of St. Bernard. We are, therefore, at a loss to conceive how any clergyman can feel confident that his orders have come down correctly. Whether he be really a successor of the Apostles depends on an immense number of such contingencies as these; whether, under King Ethelwolf, a stupid priest might not, while baptizing several scores of Danish prisoners who had just made their option between the font and the gallows, inadvertently omit to perform the rite on one of these graceless proselytes; whether, in the seventh century, an impostor, who had never received consecration, might not have passed himself off as a bishop on a rude tribe of Scots; whether a lad of twelve did really, by a ceremony huddled over when he was too drunk to know what he was about, convey the episcopal character to a lad of ten.
Since the first century, not less, in all probability, than a hundred
thousand persons have exercised the functions of bishops. That many of
these have not been bishops by apostolical succession is quite certain.
Hooker admits that deviations from the general rule have been frequent,
and with a boldness worthy of 171his high and statesmanlike intellect,
pronounces them to have been often justifiable. “There may be,” says he,
“sometimes very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination made
without a bishop. Where the Church must needs have some ordained, and
neither hath nor can have possibly a bishop to ordain, in case of such
necessity the ordinary institution of God hath given oftentimes,
and may give place. And therefore we are not simply without exception to
urge a lineal descent of power from the Apostles by continued succession
of bishops in every effectual ordination.” There can be little doubt, we
think, that the succession, if it ever existed, has often been interrupted
in ways much less respectable. For example, let us suppose, and we are
sure that no well-informed person will think the supposition by any means
improbable, that, in the third century, a man of no principle and some
parts, who has, in the course of a roving and discreditable life, been a
catechumen at Antioch, and has there become familiar with Christian usages
and doctrines, afterwards rambles to Marseilles, where he finds a
Christian society, rich, liberal, and simple-hearted. He pretends to be a
Christian, attracts notice by his abilities and affected zeal, and is
raised to the episcopal dignity without having ever, been baptized. That
such an event might happen, nay, was very likely to happen, cannot well be
disputed by any one who has read the Life of Peregrinus. The very virtues,
indeed, which distinguished the early Christians, seem to have laid them
open to those arts which deceived
“Uriel,
though Regent of the Sun, and held
The
sharpest-sighted spirit of all in Heaven.”
Now this unbaptized impostor is evidently no successor 172of the Apostles. He is not even a Christian and all orders derived through such a pretended bishop are altogether invalid. Do we know enough of the state of the world and of the Church in the third century to be able to say with confidence that there were not at that time twenty such pretended bishops? Every such case makes a break in the apostolical succession.
Now, suppose that a break, such as Hooker admits to have been both common and justifiable, or such as we have supposed to be produced by hypocrisy and cupidity, were found in the chain which connected the Apostles with any of the missionaries who first spread Christianity in the wilder parts of Europe, who can say how extensive the effect of this single break may be? Suppose that St. Patrick, for example, if ever there was such a man, or Theodore of Tarsus, who is said to have consecrated in the seventh century the first bishops of many English sees, had not the true apostolical orders, is it not conceivable that such a circumstance may affect the orders of many clergymen now living? Even if it were possible, which it assuredly is not, to prove that the Church had the apostolical orders in the third century, it would be impossible to prove that those orders were not in the twelfth century so far lost that no ecclesiastic could be certain of the legitimate descent of his own spiritual character. And if this were so, no subsequent precautions could repair the evil.
Chillingworth states the conclusion at which he had arrived on this subject in these very remarkable words: “That of ten thousand probables no one should be false; that of ten thousand requisites, whereof any one may fail, not one should be wanting, this to me is extremely 173improbable, and even cousin-german to impossible. So that the assurance hereof is like a machine composed of an innumerable multitude of pieces, of which it is strangely unlikely but some will be out of order; and yet, if any one be so, the whole fabric falls of necessity to the ground: and he that shall put them together, and maturely consider all the possible ways of lapsing and nullifying a priesthood in the Church of Rome, will be very inclinable to think that it is a hundred to one, that among a hundred seeming priests, there is not one true one; nay, that it is not a thing very improbable that, amongst those many millions which make up the Romish hierarchy, there are not twenty true.” We do not pretend to know to what precise extent the canonists of Oxford agree with those of Rome as to the circumstances which nullify orders. We will not, therefore, go so far as Chillingworth. We only say that we see no satisfactory proof of the fact, that the Church of England possesses the apostolical succession. And, after all, if Mr. Gladstone could prove the apostolical succession, what would the apostolical succession prove? He says that “we have among us the ordained hereditary witnesses of the truth, conveying it to us through an unbroken series from our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles.” Is this the fact? Is there any doubt that the orders of the Church of England are generally derived from the Church of Rome? Does not the Church of England declare, does not Mr. Gladstone himself admit, that the Church of Rome teaches much error and condemns much truth? And is it not quite clear, that as far as the doctrines of the Church of England differ from those of the Church of Rome, so far the Church of England conveys the truth through a broken series? 174That the founders, lay and clerical, of the Church of England, corrected all that required correction in the doctrines of the Church of Rome, and nothing more, may be quite true. But we never can admit the circumstance that the Church of England possesses the apostolical succession as a proof that she is thus perfect. No stream can rise higher than its fountain. The succussion of ministers in the Church of England, derived as it is through the Church of Rome, can never prove more for the Church of England than it proves for the Church of Rome. But this is not all. The Arian Churches which once predominated in the kingdoms of the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Burgundians, the Vandals, and the Lombards, were all episcopal churches, and all had a fairer claim than that of England to the apostolical succession, as being much nearer to the apostolical times. In the East, the Greek Church, which is at variance on points of faith with all the Western Churches, has an equal claim to this succession. The Nestorian, the Eutychian, the Jacobite Churches, all heretical, all condemned by councils, of which even Protestant divines have generally spoken with respect, had an equal claim to the apostolical succession. Now if, of teachers having apostolical orders, a vast majority have taught much error, if a large proportion have taught deadly heresy, if, on the other hand, as Mr. Gladstone himself admits, churches not having apostolical orders, that of Scotland for example, have been nearer to the standard of orthodoxy than the majority of teachers who have had apostolical orders, how can he possibly call upon us to submit our private judgment to the authority of a Church on the ground that she has these orders?
Mr. Gladstone dwells much on the importance of unity 175in doctrine. Unity, he tells us, is essential to truth. And this is most unquestionable. But when he goes on to tell us that this unity is the characteristic of the Church of England, that she is one in body and in spirit, we are compelled to differ from him widely. The apostolical succession she may or may not have. But unity she most certainly has not, and never has had. It is matter of perfect notoriety-, that her formularies are framed in such a manner as to admit to her highest offices men who differ from each other more widely than a very high Churchman differs from a Catholic, or a very low Churchman from a Presbyterian; and that the general leaning of the Church, with respect to some important questions, has been sometimes one way and sometimes another. Take, for example, the questions agitated between the Calvinists and the Arminians. Do we find in the Church of England, with respect to those questions, that unity which is essential to truth? Was it ever found in the Church? Is it not certain that, at the end of the sixteenth century, the rulers of the Church held doctrines as Calvinistic as ever were held by any Cameronian, and not only held them, but persecuted everybody who did not hold them? And is it not equally certain, that the rulers of the Church have, in very recent times, considered Calvinism as a disqualification for high preferment, if not for holy orders? Look at the questions which Archbishop Whitgift propounded to Barret, questions framed in the very spirit of William Huntington, S. S. (1) And then look at the eighty-seven questions which Bishop
(1) One question was, whether God had from eternity
reprobated certain persons; and why? The answer which
contented the Archbishop was “Affirmative, et quia voluit.”
176Marsh, within our own memory, propounded to candidates for ordination. We should be loth to say that either of these celebrated prelates had intruded himself into a Church whose doctrines he abhorred, and that he deserved to be stripped of his gown. Yet it is quite certain that one or other of them must have been very greatly in error. John Wesley again, and Cowper’s friend, John Newton, were both Presbyters of this Church. Both were men of ability. Both we believe to have been men of rigid integrity, men who would not have subscribed a Confession of Faith which they disbelieved for the richest bishopric in the empire. Yet, on the subject of predestination, Newton was strongly attached to doctrines which Wesley designated as “blasphemy, which might make the ears of a Christian to tingle.” Indeed, it will not be disputed that the clergy of the Established Church are divided as to these questions, and that her formularies are not found practically to exclude even scrupulously honest men of both sides from her altars. It is notorious that some of her most distinguished rulers think this latitude a good thing, and would be sorry to see it restricted in favour of either opinion. And herein we most cordially agree with them. But what becomes of the unity of the Church, and of that truth to which unity is essential? Mr. Gladstone tells us that the Règium Donum was given originally to orthodox Presbyterian ministers, but that part of it is now received by their heterodox successors. “This,” he says, “serves to illustrate the difficulty in which governments entangle themselves, when they covenant with arbitrary systems of opinion, and not with the Church alone. The opinion passes away, but the gift remains.” But is it not clear, that if a strong Supralapsarian had, under 177Whitgift’s primacy, left a large estate at the disposal of the bishops for ecclesiastical purposes, in the hope that the rulers of the Church would abide by Whitgift’s theology, he would really have been giving his substance for the support of doctrines which he detested? The opinion would have passed away, and the gift would have remained.
This is only a single instance. What wide differences of opinion respecting the operation of the sacraments are held by bishops, doctors, presbyters of the Church of England, all men who have conscientiously declared their assent to her articles, all men who are, according to Mr. Gladstone, ordained hereditary witnesses of the truth, all men whose voices make up what, he tells us, is the voice of true and reasonable authority! Here, again, the Church has not unity; and as unity is the essential condition of truth, the Church has not the truth.
Nay, take the very question which we are discussing with Mr. Gladstone. To what extent does the Church of England allow of the right of private judgment? What degree of authority does she claim for herself in virtue of the apostolical succession of her ministers? Mr. Gladstone, a very able and a very honest man, takes a view of this matter widely differing from the view taken by others whom he will admit to be as able and as honest as himself. People who altogether dissent from him on this subject eat the bread of the Church, preach in her pulpits, dispense her sacraments, confer her orders, and carry on that apostolical succession, the nature and importance of which, according to him, they do not comprehend. Is this unity? Is this truth?
It will be observed that we are not putting cases of 178dishonest men who, for the sake of lucre, falsely pretend to believe in the doctrines of an establishment. We are putting cases of men as upright as ever lived, who, differing on theological questions of the highest importance, and avowing that difference, are yet priests and prelates of the same Church. We therefore say, that on some points which Mr. Gladstone himself thinks of vital importance, the Church has either not spoken at all, or, what is for all practical purposes the same thing, has not spoken in language to be understood even by honest and sagacious divines. The religion of the Church of England is so far from exhibiting that unity of doctrine which Mr. Gladstone represents as her distinguishing glory, that it is, in fact, a bundle of religious systems without number. It comprises the religious system of Bishop Tomline, and the religious system of John Newton, and all the religious systems which lie between them. It comprises the religious system of Mr. Newman, and the religious system of the Archbishop of Dublin, and all the religious systems which lie between them. All these different opinions are held, avowed, preached, printed, within the pale of the Church, by men of unquestioned integrity and understanding.
Do we make this diversity a topic of reproach to the Church of England? Far from it. We would oppose with all our power every attempt to narrow her basis! Would to God that, a hundred and fifty years ago, a good king and a good primate had possessed the power as well as the will to widen it! It was a noble enterprise, worthy of William and of Tillotson. But what becomes of all Mr. Gladstone’s eloquent exhortations to unity? Is it not mere mockery to attach so much importance to unity in form and name, where there is 179so little in substance, to shudder at the thought of two churches in alliance with one state, and to endure with patience the spectacle of a hundred sects battling within one church? And is it not clear that Mr. Gladstone is bound, on all his own principles, to abandon the defence of a church in which unity is not found? Is it not clear that he is bound to divide the House of Commons against every grant of money which may be proposed for the clergy of the Established Church in the colonies? He objects to the vote for Maynooth, because it is monstrous to pay one man to teach truth, and another to denounce that truth as falsehood. But it is a mere chance whether any sum which he votes for the English Church in any colony will go to the maintenance of an Arminian or a Calvinist, of a man like Mr. Froude, or of a man like Dr. Arnold. It is a mere chance, therefore, whether it will go to support a teacher of truth, or one who will denounce that truth as falsehood.
This argument seems to us at once to dispose of all that part of Mr. Gladstone’s book which respects grants of public money to dissenting bodies. All such grants he condemns. But surely, if it be wrong to give the money of the public for the support of those who teach false doctrine, it is wrong to give that money for the support of the ministers of the Established Church. For it is quite certain that, whether Calvin or Arminius be in the right, whether Laud or Burnet be in the right, a great deal of false doctrine is taught by the ministers of the Established Church. If it be said that the points on which the clergy of the Church of England differ ought to be passed over, for the sake of the many important points on which they agree, why may not the same argument be maintained with respect to other 180sects which hold in common with the Church of England the fundamental doctrines of Christianity? The principle that a ruler is bound in conscience to propagate religious truth, and to propagate no religious doctrine which is untrue, is abandoned as soon as it is admitted that a gentleman of Mr. Gladstone’s opinions may lawfully vote the public money to a chaplain whose opinions are those of Paley or Simeon. The whole question then becomes one of degree. Of course no individual and no government can justifiably propagate error for the sake of propagating error. But both individuals and governments must work with such machinery as they have; and no human machinery is to be found which will impart truth without some alloy of error. We have shown irrefragably, as we think, that the Church of England does not afford such a machinery. The question then is this; with what degree of imperfection in our machinery must we put up? And to this question we do not see how any general answer can be given. We must be guided by circumstances. It would, for example, be very criminal in a Protestant to contribute to the sending of Jesuit missionaries among a Protestant population. But we do not conceive that a Protestant would be to blame for giving assistance to Jesuit missionaries who might be engaged in converting the Siamese to Christianity. That tares are mixed with the wheat is matter of regret; but it is better that wheat and tares should grow together than that the promise of the year should be blighted.
Mr. Gladstone, we see, with deep regret, censures the British government in India for distributing a small sum among the Catholic priests who minister to the spiritual wants of our Irish soldiers. Now, let us put a 181case to him. A Protestant gentleman is attended by a Catholic servant, in a part of the country where there is no Catholic congregation within many miles. The servant is taken ill, and is given over. He desires, in great trouble of mind, to receive the last sacraments of his Church. His master sends off a messenger in a chaise and four, with orders to bring a confessor from a town at a considerable distance. Here a Protestant lays out money for the purpose of causing religious instruction and consolation to be given by a Catholic priest. Has he committed a sin? Has he not acted like a good master and a good Christian? Would Mr. Gladstone accuse him of “laxity of religious principle,” of “confounding truth with falsehood,” of “considering the support of religion as a boon to an individual, not as a homage to truth?” But how if this servant had, for the sake of his master, undertaken a journey which removed him from the place where he might easily have obtained religious attendance? How if his death were occasioned by a wound received in defending his master? Should we not then say that the master had only fulfilled a sacred obligation of duty? Now, Mr. Gladstone himself owns that “nobody can think that the personality of the state is more stringent, or entails stronger obligations, than that of the individual.” How then stands the case of the Indian government? Here is a poor fellow, enlisted in Clare or Kerry, sent over fifteen thousand miles of sea, quartered in a depressing and pestilential climate. He fights for the government; he conquers for it; he is wounded; he is laid on his pallet, withering away with fever, under that terrible sun, without a friend near him. He pines for the consolations of that religion which, neglected perhaps in the season of health and vigour, 182now comes back to his mind, associated with all the overpowering recollections of his earlier days, and of the home which he is never to see again. And because the state for which he dies sends a priest of his own faith to stand at his bedside, and to tell him, in language which at once commands his love and confidence, of the common Father, of the common Redeemer, of the common hope of immortality, because the state for which he dies does not abandon him in his last moments to the care of heathen attendants, or employ a chaplain of a different creed to vex his departing spirit with a controversy about the Council of Trent, Mr. Gladstone finds that India presents “a melancholy picture,” and that there is “a large allowance of false principle” in the system pursued there. Most earnestly do we hope that our remarks may induce Mr. Gladstone to reconsider this part of his work, and may prevent him from expressing in that high assembly, in which he must always be heard with attention, opinions so unworthy of his character.
We have now said almost all that we think it necessary to say respecting Mr. Gladstone’s theory. And perhaps it would be safest for us to stop here. It is much easier to pull down than to build up. Yet, that we may give Mr. Gladstone his revenge, we will state precisely our own views respecting the alliance of Church and State.
We set out in company with Warburton, and remain with him pretty sociably till we come to his contract; a contract which Mr. Gladstone very properly designates as a fiction. We consider the primary end of government as a purely temporal end, the protection of the persons and property of men.
We think that government, like every other contrivance 183of human wisdom, from the highest to the lowest, is likely to answer its main end best when it is constructed with a single view to that end. Mr. Gladstone, who loves Plato, will not quarrel with us for illustrating our proposition, after Plato’s fashion, from the most familiar objects. Take cutlery, for example A blade which is designed both to shave and to carve, will certainly not shave so well as a razor, or carve so well as a carving-knife. An academy of painting, which should also be a bank, would, in all probability, exhibit very bad pictures and discount very bad bills. A gas company, which should also be an infant school society, would, we apprehend, light the streets ill, and teach the children ill. On this principle, we think that government should be organized solely with a view to its main end; and that no part of its efficiency for that end should be sacrificed, in order to promote any other end however excellent.
But does it follow from thence that governments ought never to pursue any end, other than their main end? In no wise. Though it is desirable that every institution should have a main end, and should be so formed as to be in the highest degree efficient for that main end; yet if, without any sacrifice of its efficiency for that end, it can pursue any other good end, it ought to do so. Thus, the end for which a hospital is built is the relief of the sick, not the beautifying of the street. To sacrifice the health of the sick to splendour of architectural effect, to place the building in a bad air only that it may present a more commanding front to a great public place, to make the wards hotter or cooler than they ought to be, in order that the columns and windows of the exterior may please the passers-by, would be monstrous. But if, without any sacrifice of 184the chief object, the hospital can be made an ornament to the metropolis, it would be absurd not to make it so.
In the same manner, if a government can, without any sacrifice of its main end, promote any other good work, it ought to do so. The encouragement of the fine arts, for example, is by no means the main end of government; and it would be absurd, in constituting a government, to bestow a thought on the question, whether it would be a government likely to train Raphaels and Domenichinos. But it by no means follows that it is improper for a government to form a national gallery of pictures. The same may be said of patronage bestowed on learned men, of the publication of archives, of the collecting of libraries, menageries, plants, fossils, antiques, of journeys and voyages for purposes of geographical discovery or astronomical observation. It is not for these ends that government is constituted. But it may well happen that a government may have at its command resources which will enable it, without any injury to its main end, to pursue these collateral ends far more effectually than any individual or any voluntary association could do. If so, government ought to pursue these collateral ends.
It is still more evidently the duty of government to promote, always in subordination to its main end, every thing which is useful as a means for the attaining of that main end. The improvement of steam navigation, for example, is by no means a primary object of government. But as steam vessels are useful for the purpose of national defence, and for the purpose of facilitating intercourse between distant provinces, and of thereby consolidating the force of the empire, it may be the bounden duty of government to encourage 185ingenious men to perfect an invention which so directly tends to make the state more efficient for its great primary end.
Now on both these grounds, the instruction of the people may with propriety engage the care of the government. That the people should be well educated, is in itself a good thing: and the state ought therefore to promote this object, if it can do so without any sacrifice of its primary object. The education of the people, conducted on those principles of morality which are common to all the forms of Christianity, is highly valuable as a means of promoting the main object for which government exists, and is on this ground well deserving the attention of rulers. We will not at present go into the general question of education; but will confine our remarks to the subject which is more immediately before us, namely, the religious instruction of the people.
We may illustrate our view of the policy which governments ought to pursue with respect to religious instruction, by recurring to the analogy of a hospital. Religious instruction is not the main end for which a hospital is built; and to introduce into a hospital any regulations prejudicial to the health of the patients, on the plea of promoting their spiritual improvement, to send a ranting preacher to a man who has just been ordered by the physician to be quiet and try to get a little sleep, to impose a strict observance of Lent on a convalescent who has been advised to eat heartily of nourishing food, to direct, as the bigoted Pius the Fifth actually did, that no medical assistance should be given to any person who declined spiritual attendance, would be the most extravagant folly. Yet it by no means follows that it would not be right to have a 186chaplain to attend the sick, and to pay such a chaplain out of the hospital funds. Whether it will be proper to have such a chaplain at all, and of what religious persuasion such a chaplain ought to be, must depend on circumstances. There may be a town in which it would be impossible to set up a good hospital without the help of people of different opinions: and religious parties may run so high that, though people of different opinions are willing to contribute for the relief of the sick, they will not concur in the choice of any one chaplain. The high Churchmen insist that, if there is a paid chaplain, he shall be a high Churchman. The Evangelicals stickle for an Evangelical. Here it would evidently be absurd and cruel to let an useful and humane design, about which all are agreed, fall to the ground, because all cannot agree about something else. The governors must either appoint two chaplains, and pay them both; or they must appoint none; and every one of them must, in his individual capacity, do what he can for the purpose of providing the sick with such religious instruction and consolation as will, in his opinion, be most useful to them.
We should say the same of government. Government is not an institution for the propagation of religion, any more than St. George’s Hospital is an institution for the propagation of religion: and the most absurd and pernicious consequences would follow, if Government should pursue, as its primary end, that which can never be more than its secondary end, though intrinsically more important than its primary end. But a government which considers the religious instruction of the people as a secondary end, and follows out that principle faithfully, will, we think, be likely to do much good and little harm. 187We will rapidly run over some of the consequences to which this principle leads, and point out how it solves some problems which, on Mr. Gladstone’s hypothesis, admit of no satisfactory solution.
All persecution directed against the persons or property of men is, on our principle, obviously indefensible. For, the protection of the persons and property of men being the primary end of government, and religious instruction only a secondary end, to secure the people from heresy by making their lives, their limbs, or their estates insecure, would be to sacrifice the primary end to the secondary end. It would be as absurd as it would be in the governors of a hospital to direct that the wounds of all Allan and Socinian patients should be dressed in such a way as to make them fester.
Again, on our principles, all civil disabilities on account of religious opinions are indefensible. For all such disabilities make government less efficient for its main end: they limit its choice of able men for the administration and defence of the state; they alienate from it the hearts of the sufferers; they deprive it of a part of its effective strength in all contests with foreign nations. Such a course is as absurd as it would be in the governors of a hospital to reject an able surgeon because he is an Universal Restitutionist, and to send a bungler to operate because he is perfectly orthodox.
Again, on our principles, no government ought to press on the people religious instruction, however sound, in such a manner as to excite among them discontents dangerous to public order. For here again government would sacrifice its primary end to an end intrinsically indeed of the highest importance, but still 188only a secondary end of government, as government. This rule at once disposes of the difficulty about India, a difficulty of which Mr. Gladstone can get rid only by putting in an imaginary discharge in order to set aside an imaginary obligation. There is assuredly no country where it is more desirable that Christianity should be propagated. But there is no country in which the government is so completely disqualified for the task. By using our power in order to make proselytes, we should produce the dissolution of society, and bring utter ruin on all those interests for the protection of which government exists. Here the secondary end is, at present, inconsistent with the primary end, and must therefore be abandoned. Christian instruction given by individuals and voluntary societies may do much good. Given by the government it would do unmixed harm. At the same time, we quite agree with Mr. Gladstone in thinking that the English authorities in India ought not to participate in any idolatrous rite; and indeed we are fully satisfied that all such participation is not only unchristian, but also unwise and most undignified.
Supposing the circumstances of a country to be such, that the government may with propriety, on our principles, give religious instruction to a people; we have next to inquire, what religion shall be taught. Bishop Warburton answers, the religion of the majority. And we so far agree with him, that we can scarcely conceive any circumstances in which it would be proper to establish, as the one exclusive religion of the state, the religion of the minority. Such a preference could hardly be given without exciting most serious discontent, and endangering those interests, the protection of which is the first object of government. 189But we never can admit that a ruler can be justified in helping to spread a system of opinions solely because that system is pleasing to the majority. On the other hand, we cannot agree with Mr. Gladstone, who would of course answer that the only religion which a ruler ought to propagate is the religion of his own conscience. In truth, this is an impossibility. And as we have shown, Mr. Gladstone himself, whenever he supports a grant of money to the Church of England, is really assisting to propagate, not the precise religion of his own conscience, but some one or more, he knows not how many or which, of the innumerable religions which lie between the confines of Pelagianism and those of Antinomianism, and between the confines of Popery and those of Presbyterianism. In our opinion, that religious instruction which the ruler ought, in his public capacity, to patronise, is the instruction from which he, in his conscience, believes that the people will learn most good with the smallest mixture of evil. And thus it is not necessarily his own religion that he will select. He will, of course, believe that his own religion is unmixedly good. But the question which he has to consider is, not how much good his religion contains, but how much good the people will learn, if instruction is given them in that religion. He may prefer the doctrines and government of the Church of England to those of the Church of Scotland. But if he knows that a Scotch congregation will listen with deep attention and respect while an Erskine or a Chalmers sets before them the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and that a glimpse of a surplice or a single line of a liturgy would be the signal for hooting and riot, and would probably bring stools and brick-bats about the ears of the minister, he acts wisely if he conveys religious 190knowledge to the Scotch rather by means of that imperfect Church, as he may think it, from which they will learn much, than by means of that perfect Church from which they will learn nothing. The only end of teaching is, that men may learn; and it is idle to talk of the duty of teaching truth in ways which only cause men to cling more firmly to falsehood.
On these principles we conceive that a statesman, who might be far indeed from regarding the Church of England with the reverence which Mr. Gladstone feels for her, might yet firmly oppose all attempts to destroy her. Such a statesman may be too well acquainted with her origin to look upon her with superstitious awe. He may know that she sprang from a compromise huddled up between the eager zeal of reformers and the selfishness of greedy, ambitious, and time-serving politicians. He may find in every page of her annals ample cause for censure. He may feel that he could not, with ease to his conscience, subscribe all her articles. He may regret that all the attempts which have been made to open her gates to large classes of non-comformists should have failed. Her episcopal polity he may consider as of purely human institution. He cannot defend her on the ground that she possesses the apostolical succession; for he does not know whether that succession may not be altogether a fable. He cannot defend her on the ground of her unity; for he knows that her frontier sects are much more remote from each other, than one frontier is from the Church of Rome, or the other from the Church of Geneva. But he may think that she teaches more truth with less alloy of error than would be taught by those who, if she were swept away, would occupy the vacant space. He may think that the effect produced by her beautiful services and by her 191pulpits on the national mind, is, on the whole, highly beneficial. He may think that her civilising influence is usefully felt in remote districts. He may think that, if she were destroyed, a large portion of those who now compose her congregations would neglect all religious duties, and that a still larger portion would fall under the influence of spiritual mountebanks, hungry for gain, or drunk with fanaticism. While he would with pleasure admit that all the qualities of Christian pastors are to be found in large measure within the existing body of Dissenting ministers, he would perhaps be inclined to think that the standard of intellectual and moral character among that exemplary class of men may have been raised to its present high point and maintained there by the indirect influence of the Establishment. And he may be by no means satisfied that, if the Church were at once swept away, the place of our Sumners and Whateleys would be supplied by Doddridges and Halls. He may think that the advantages which we have described are obtained, or might, if the existing system were slightly modified, be obtained, without any sacrifice of the paramount objects which all governments ought to have chiefly in view. Nay, he may be of opinion that an institution, so deeply fixed in the hearts and minds of millions, could not be subverted without loosening and shaking all the foundations of civil society. With at least equal ease he would find reasons for supporting the Church of Scotland. Nor would he be under the necessity of resorting to any contract to justify the connection of two religious establishments with one government. He would think scruples on that head frivolous in any person who is zealous for a Church, of which both Dr. Herbert Marsh and Dr. Daniel Wilson have been bishops. Indeed he 192would gladly follow out his principles much further. He would have been willing to vote in 1825 for Lord Francis Egerton’s resolution, that it is expedient to give a public maintenance to the Catholic clergy of Ireland: and he would deeply regret that no such measure was adopted in 1829.
In this way, we conceive, a statesman might on our principles satisfy himself that it would be in the highest degree inexpedient to abolish the Church, either of England or of Scotland.
But if there were, in any part of the world, a national church regarded as heretical by four-fifths of the nation committed to its care, a church established and maintained by the sword, a church producing twice as many riots as conversions, a church which, though possessing great wealth and power, and though long backed by persecuting laws, had, in the course of many generations, been found unable to propagate its doctrines, and barely able to maintain its ground, a church so odious, that fraud and violence, when used against its clear rights of property, were generally regarded as fair play, a church, whose ministers were preaching to desolate walls, and with difficulty obtaining their lawful subsistence by the help of bayonets, such a church, on our principles, could not, we must own, be defended. We should say that the state which allied itself with such a church postponed the primary end of government to the secondary: and that the consequences had been such as any sagacious observer would have predicted. Neither the primary nor the secondary end is attained. The temporal and spiritual interests of the people suffer alike. The minds of men, instead of being drawn to the church, are alienated from the state. The magistrate, after sacrificing order, 193peace, union, all the interests which it is his first duty to protect, for the purpose of promoting pure religion, is forced, after the experience of centuries, to admit that he has really been promoting error. The sounder the doctrines of such a church, the more absurd and noxious the superstition by which those doctrines are opposed, the stronger are the arguments against the policy which has deprived a good cause of its natural advantages. Those who preach to rulers the duty of employing power to propagate truth would do well to remember that falsehood, though no match for truth alone, has often been found more than a match for truth and power together.
A statesman, judging on our principles, would pronounce without hesitation that a church, such as we have last described, never ought to have been set up. Further than this we will not venture to speak for him. He would doubtless remember that the world is full of institutions which, though they never ought to have been set up, yet, having been set up, ought not to be rudely pulled down; and that it is often wise in practice to be content with the mitigation of an abuse which, looking at it in the abstract, we might feel impatient to destroy.
We have done; and nothing remains but that we part from Mr. Gladstone with the courtesy of antagonists who bear no malice. We dissent from his opinions, but we admire his talents; we respect his integrity and benevolence; and we hope that he will not suffer political avocations so entirely to engross him, as to leave him no leisure for literature and philosophy.
We 194have always thought it strange that, while the history of the Spanish empire in America is familiarly known to all the nations of Europe, the great actions of our countrymen in the East should, even among ourselves, excite little interest. Every schoolboy knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who strangled Atahualpa. But we doubt whether one in ten, even among English gentlemen of highly cultivated minds, can tell who won the battle of Buxar, who perpetrated the massacre of Patna, whether Sujah Dowlah ruled in Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a Hindoo or a Mussulman. Yet the victories of Cortes were gained over savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour, who wielded no better weapons than those which could be made out of sticks, flints, and fish-bones, who regarded a horse-soldier as a monster, half man and half beast, who took a harquebusier for a sorcerer, able to scatter the thunder and lightning of the skies. The people of India, when we subdued them, were ten times as numerous as the Americans whom the Spaniards vanquished,
(1) The Life of Robert Lord Clive; collected from the
Family Papers, communicated by the Earl of Powis. By Major-
General Sir John Malcolm, K. C. B. 3 vols. 8vo. London:
1836.
195and were at the same time quite as highly civilised as the victorious Spaniards. They had reared cities larger and fairer than Saragossa or Toledo, and buildings more beautiful and costly than the cathedral of Seville. They could show bankers richer than the richest firms of Barcelona or Cadiz, viceroys whose splendour far surpassed that of Ferdinand the Catholic, myriads of cavalry and long trains of artillery which would have astonished the Great Captain. It might have been expected, that every Englishman who takes, any interest in any part of history would be curious to know how a handful of his countrymen, separated from their home by an immense ocean, subjugated, in the course of a few years, one of the greatest empires in the world. Yet, unless we greatly err, this subject is, to most readers, not only insipid, but positively distasteful.
Perhaps the fault lies partly with the historians. Mr. Mill’s book, though it has undoubtedly great and rare merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to attract those who read for amusement. Orme, inferior to no English historian in style and power of painting, is minute even to tediousness. In one volume he allots, on an average, a closely printed quarto page to the events of every forty-eight hours. The consequence is, that his narrative, though one of the most authentic and one of the most finely written in our language, has never been very popular, and is now scarcely ever read.
We fear that the volumes before us will not much attract those readers whom Orme and Mill have repelled. The materials placed at the disposal of Sir John Malcolm by the late Lord Powis were indeed of great value. But we cannot say that they have been very 196skilfully worked up. It would, however, be unjust to criticise with severity a work which, if the author had lived to complete and revise it, would probably have been improved by condensation and by a better arrangement. We are the more disposed to perform the pleasing duty of expressing our gratitude to the noble family to which the public owes so much useful and curious information.
The effect of the book, even when we make the largest allowance for the partiality of those who have furnished and of those who have digested the materials, is, on the whole, greatly to raise the character of Lord Clive. We are far indeed from sympathizing with Sir John Malcolm, whose love passes the love of biographers, and who can see nothing but wisdom and justice in the actions of his idol. But we are at least equally far from concurring in the severe judgment of Mr. Mill, who seems to us to show less discrimination in his account of Clive than in any other part of his valuable work. Clive, like most men who are born with strong passions and tried by strong temptations, committed great faults. But every person who takes a fair and enlightened view of his whole career must admit that our island, so fertile in heroes and statesmen, has scarcely ever produced a man more truly great either in arms or in council.
The Clives had been settled, ever since the twelfth century, on an estate of no great value, near Market-Drayton, in Shropshire. In the reign of George the First this moderate but ancient inheritance was possessed by Mr. Richard Clive, who seems to have been a plain man of no great tact or capacity. He had been bred to the law, and divided his time between professional business and the avocations of a small proprietor. 197He married a lady from Manchester, of the name of Gaskill, and became the father of a very numerous family. His eldest son, Robert, the founder of the British empire in India, was born at the old seat of his ancestors on the twenty-ninth of September, 1725.
Some lineaments of the character of the man were early discerned in the child. There remain letters written by his relations when he was in his seventh year; and from these letters it appears that, even at that early age, his strong will and his fiery passions, sustained by a constitutional intrepidity which sometimes seemed hardly compatible with soundness of mind, had begun to cause great uneasiness to his family. “Fighting,” says one of his uncles, “to which he is out of measure addicted, gives his temper such a fierceness and imperiousness, that he flies out on every trifling occasion.” The old people of the neighbourhood still remember to have heard from their parents how Bob Clive climbed to the top of the lofty steeple of Market-Drayton, and with what terror the inhabitants saw him seated on a stone spout near the summit. They also relate how he formed all the idle lads of the town into a kind of predatory army, and compelled the shopkeepers to submit to a tribute of apples and halfpence, in consideration of which he guaranteed the security of their windows. He was sent from school to school, making very little progress in his learning, and gaining for himself everywhere the character of an exceedingly naughty boy. One of his masters, it is said, was sagacious enough to prophesy that the idle lad would make a great figure in the world. But the general opinion seems to have been that poor Robert was a dunce, if not a reprobate. His family expected nothing good from such slender parts 198and such a headstrong temper. It is not strange, therefore, that they gladly accepted for him, when he was in his eighteenth year, a writership in the service of the East India Company, and shipped him off to make a fortune or to die of a fever at Madras.
Far different were the prospects of Clive from those of the youths whom the East India College now annually sends to the Presidencies of our Asiatic empire. The Company was then purely a trading corporation. Its territory consisted of a few square miles, for which rent was paid to the native governments. Its troops were scarcely numerous enough to man the batteries of three or four ill-constructed forts, which had been erected for the protection of the warehouses. The natives, who composed a considerable part of these little garrisons, had not yet been trained in the discipline of Europe, and were armed, some with swords and shields, some with bows and arrows. The business of the servant of the Company was not, as now, to conduct the judicial, financial, and diplomatic business of a great country, but to take stock, to make advances to weavers, to ship cargoes, and above all, to keep an eye on private traders who dared to infringe the monopoly. The younger clerks were so miserably paid that they could scarcely subsist without incurring debt; the elder enriched themselves by trading on their own account; and those who lived to rise to the top of the service often accumulated considerable fortunes.
Madras, to which Clive had been appointed, was, at this time, perhaps, the first in importance of the Company’s settlements. In the preceding century Fort St. George had risen on a barren spot beaten by a raging surf; and in the neighbourhood a town, inhabited by many thousands of natives, had sprung up, as towns 199spring up in the East, with the rapidity of the prophet’s gourd. There were already in the suburbs many white villas, each surrounded by its garden, whither the wealthy agents of the Company retired, after the labours of the desk and the warehouse, to enjoy the cool, breeze which springs up at sunset from the Bay of Bengal. The habits of these mercantile grandees appear to have been more profuse, luxurious, and ostentatious, than those of the high judicial and political functionaries who have succeeded them. But comfort was far less understood. Many devices which now mitigate the heat of the climate, preserve health, and prolong life, were unknown. There was far less intercourse with Europe than at present. The voyage by the Cape, which in our time has often been performed within three months, was then very seldom accomplished in six, and was sometimes protracted to more than a year. Consequently, the Anglo-Indian was then much more estranged from his country, much more addicted to Oriental usages, and much less fitted to mix in society after his return to Europe, than the Anglo-Indian of the present day.
Within the fort and its precinct, the English exercised, by permission of the native government, an extensive authority, such as every great Indian land-owner exercised within his own domain. But they had never dreamed of claiming independent power. The surrounding country was ruled by the Nabob of the Carnatic, a deputy of the Viceroy of the Deccan, commonly called the Nizam, who was himself only a deputy of the mighty prince designated by our ancestors as the Great Mogul. Those names, once so august and formidable, still remain. There is still a Nabob of the Carnatic, who lives on a pension allowed to him by the 200English out of the revenues of the province which his ancestors ruled. There is still a Nizam, whose capital is overawed by a British cantonment, and to whom a British resident gives, under the name of advice, commands which are not to be disputed. There is still a Mogul, who is permitted to play at holding courts and receiving petitions, but who has less power to help or hurt than the youngest civil servant of the Company.
Clive’s voyage was unusually tedious even for that age. The ship remained some months at the Brazils, where the young adventurer picked up some knowledge of Portuguese, and spent all his pocket-money. He did not arrive in India till more than a year after he had left England. His situation at Madras was most painful. His funds were exhausted. His pay was small. He had contracted debts. He was wretchedly lodged, no small calamity in a climate which can be made tolerable to an European only by spacious and well placed apartments. He had been furnished with letters of recommendation to a gentleman who might have assisted him; but when he landed at. Fort St. George he found that this gentleman had sailed for England. The lad’s shy and haughty disposition withheld him from introducing himself to strangers. He was several months in India before he became acquainted with a single family. The climate affected his health and spirits. His duties were of a kind ill suited to his ardent and daring character. He pined for his home, and in his letters to his relations expressed his feelings in language softer and more pensive than we should have expected either from the waywardness of his boyhood, or from the inflexible sternness of his later years. “I have not enjoyed,” says he, “one happy day since I left my native country;” and again, “I must confess, at intervals, 201when I think of my dear native England, it affects me in a very particular manner.... If I should be so far blest as to revisit again my own country, but more especially Manchester, the centre of all my wishes, all that I could hope or desire for would be presented before me in one view.”
One solace he found of the most respectable kind. The Governor possessed a good library, and permitted Clive to have access to it. The young man devoted much of his leisure to reading, and acquired at this time almost all the knowledge of books that he ever possessed. As a boy he had been too idle, as a man he soon became too busy, for literary pursuits.
But neither climate nor poverty, neither study nor the sorrows of a home-sick exile, could tame the desperate audacity of his spirit. He behaved to his official superiors as he had behaved to his school-masters, and was several times in danger of losing his situation. Twice, while residing in the Writers’ Buildings, he attempted to destroy himself; and twice the pistol which he snapped at his own head failed to go off. This circumstance, it is said, affected him as a similar escape affected Wallenstein. After satisfying himself that the pistol was really well loaded, he burst forth into an exclamation that surely he was reserved for something great.
About this time an event which at first seemed likely to destroy all his hopes in life suddenly opened before him a new path to eminence. Europe had been, during some years, distracted by the war of the Austrian succession. George the Second was the steady ally of Maria Theresa. The house of Bourbon took the opposite side. Though England was even then the first of maritime powers, she was not, as she has since become, 202more than a match on the sea for all the nations of the world together; and she found it difficult to maintain a contest against the united navies of France and Spain. In the eastern seas France obtained the ascendency. Labourdonnais, governor of Mauritius, a man of eminent talents and virtues, conducted an expedition to the continent of India in spite of the opposition of the British fleet, landed, assembled an army, appeared before Madras, and compelled the town and fort to capitulate. The keys were delivered up; the French colours were displayed on Fort St. George; and the contents of the Company’s warehouses were seized as prize of war by the conquerors. It was stipulated by the capitulation that the English inhabitants should be prisoners of war on parole, and that the town should remain in the hands of the French till it should be ransomed. Labourdonnais pledged his honour that only a moderate ransom should be required.
But the success of Labourdonnais had awakened the jealousy of his countryman, Dupleix, governor of Pondicherry. Dupleix, moreover, had already begun to revolve gigantic schemes, with which the restoration of Madras to the English was by no means compatible. He declared that Labourdonnais had gone beyond his powers; that conquests made by the French arms on the continent of India were at the disposal of the governor of Pondicherry alone, and that Madras should be rased to the ground. Labourdonnais was compelled to yield. The anger which the breach of the capitulation excited among the English, was increased by the ungenerous manner in which Dupleix treated the principal servants of the Company. The Governor and several of the first gentlemen of Fort St. George were carried under a guard to Pondicherry, and conducted 203through the town in a triumphal procession, under the eyes of fifty thousand spectators. It was with reason thought that this gross violation of public faith absolved the inhabitants of Madras from the engagements into which they had entered with Labourdonnais. Clive fled from the town by night in the disguise of a mussulman, and took refuge at Fort St. David, one of the small English settlements subordinate to Madras.
The circumstances in which he was now placed naturally led him to adopt a profession better suited to his restless and intrepid spirit than the business of examining packages and casting accounts. He solicited and obtained an ensign’s commission in the service of the Company, and at twenty-one entered on his military career. His personal courage, of which he had, while still a writer, given signal proof by a desperate duel with a military bully, who was the terror of Fort St. David, speedily made him conspicuous even among hundreds of brave men. He soon began to show in his new calling other qualities which had not before been discerned in him, judgment, sagacity, deference to legitimate authority. He distinguished himself highly in several operations against the French, and was particularly noticed by Major Lawrence, who was then considered as the ablest British officer in India.
Clive had been only a few months in the army when intelligence arrived that peace had been concluded between Great Britain and France. Dupleix was in consequence compelled to restore Madras to the English Company; and the young ensign was at liberty to resume his former business. He did indeed return for a short time to his desk. He again quitted it in order to assist Major Lawrence in some petty hostilities with the natives, and then again returned to 204it. While he was thus wavering between a military and a commercial life, events took place which decided his choice. The politics of India assumed a new aspect. There was peace between the English and French Crowns; but there arose between the English and French Companies trading to the East a war most eventful and important, a war in which the prize was nothing less than the magnificent inheritance of the house of Tamerlane.
The empire which Baber and his Moguls reared in the sixteenth century was long one of the most extensive and splendid in the world. In no European kingdom was so large a population subject to a single prince, or so large a revenue poured into the treasury. The beauty and magnificence of the buildings erected by the sovereigns of Hindostan amazed even travellers who had seen St. Peters. The innumerable retinues and gorgeous decorations which surrounded the throne of Delhi dazzled even eyes which were accustomed to the pomp of Versailles. Some of the great viceroys who held their posts by virtue of commissions from the Mogul ruled as many subjects as the King of France or the Emperor of Germany. Even the deputies of these deputies might well rank, as to extent of territory and amount of revenue, with the Grand Duke of Tuscany or the Elector of Saxony.
There can be little doubt that this great empire, powerful and prosperous as it appears on a superficial view, was yet, even in its best days, far worse governed than the worst governed parts of Europe now are. The administration was tainted with all the vices of Oriental despotism, and with all the vices inseparable from the domination of race over race. The conflicting pretensions of the princes of the royal house produced 205a long series of crimes and public disasters. Ambitious lieutenants of the sovereign sometimes aspired to independence. Fierce tribes of Hindoos, impatient of a foreign yoke, frequently withheld tribute, repelled the armies of the government from the mountain fastnesses, and poured down in arms on the cultivated plains. In spite, however, of much constant maladministration, in spite of occasional convulsions which shook the whole frame of society, this great monarchy, on the whole, retained, during some generations, an outward appearance of unity, majesty, and energy. But, throughout the long reign of Aurungzebe, the state, notwithstanding all that the vigour and policy of the prince could effect, was hastening to dissolution. After his death, which took place in the year 1707, the ruin was fearfully rapid. Violent shocks from without co-operated with an incurable decay which was fast proceeding within; and in a few years the empire had undergone utter decomposition.
The history of the successors of Theodosius bears no small analogy to that of the successors of Aurungzebe. But perhaps the fall of the Carlovingians furnishes the nearest parallel to the fall of the Moguls. Charlemagne was scarcely interred when the imbecility and the disputes of his descendants began to bring contempt on themselves and destruction on their subjects. The wide dominion of the Franks was severed into a thousand pieces. Nothing more than a nominal dignity was left to the abject heirs of an illustrious name, Charles the Bald, and Charles the Fat, and Charles the Simple. Fierce invaders, differing from each other in race, language, and religion, flocked, as if by concert, from the farthest comers of the earth, to plunder 206provinces which the government could no longer defend. The pirates of the Northern Sea extended their ravages from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, and at length fixed their seat in the rich valley of the Seine. The Hungarian, in whom the trembling monks fancied that they recognized the Gog or Magog of prophecy, carried back the plunder of the cities of Lombardy to the depths of the Pannonian forests. The Saracen ruled in Sicily, desolated the fertile plains of Campania, and spread terror even to the walls of Rome. In the midst of these sufferings, a great internal change passed upon the empire. The corruption of death began to ferment into new forms of life. While the great body, as a whole, was torpid and passive, every separate member began to feel with a sense, and to move with an energy all its own. Just here, in the most barren and dreary tract of European history, all feudal privileges, all modern nobility, take their source. It is to this point that we trace the power of those princes who, nominally vassals, but really independent, long governed, with the titles of dukes, marquesses, and counts, almost every part of the dominions which had obeyed Charlemagne.
Such or nearly such was the change which passed on the Mogul empire during the forty years which followed the death of Aurungzebe. A succession of nominal sovereigns, sunk in indolence and debauchery, sauntered away life in secluded palaces, chewing bang, fondling concubines, and listening to buffoons. A succession of ferocious invaders descended through the western passes, to prey on the defenceless wealth of Hindostan. A Persian conqueror crossed the Indus, marched through the gates of Delhi, and bore away in triumph those treasures of which the magnificence had astounded Roe 207and Bernier, the Peacock Throne, on which the richest jewels of Golconda had been disposed by the most skilful hands of Europe, and the inestimable Mountain of Light, which, after many strange vicissitudes, lately shone in the bracelet of Runjeet Sing, and is now destined to adorn the hideous idol of Orissa. The Afghan soon followed to complete the work of devastation which the Persian had begun. The warlike tribes of Rajpootana threw off the Mussulman yoke. A band of mercenary soldiers occupied Rohilcund. The Seiks ruled on the Indus. The Jauts spread dismay along the Jumna. The highlands which border on the western sea-coast of India poured forth a yet more formidable race, a race which was long the terror of every native power, and which, after many desperate and doubtful struggles, yielded only to the fortune and genius of England. It was under the reign of Aurungzebe that this wild clan of plunderers first descended from their mountains; and soon after his death, every corner of his wide empire learned to tremble at the mighty name of the Malirattan. Many fertile viceroyalties were entirely subdued by them. Their dominions stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea. Mahratta captains reigned at Poonah, at Gualior, in Guzerat, in Berar, and in Tanjore.
Nor did they, though they had become great sovereigns, therefore cease to be freebooters. They still retained the predatory habits of their forefathers. Every region which was not subject to their rule was wasted by their incursions. Wherever their kettle-drams were heard, the peasant threw his bag of rice on his shoulder, hid his small savings in his girdle, and fled with his wife and children to the mountains or the jungles, to the milder neighbourhood of the hyæna and the tiger. Many provinces redeemed their harvests by the 208payment of an annual ransom. Even the wretched phantom who still bore the imperial title stooped to pay this ignominious black-mail. The camp-fires of one rapacious leader were seen from the walls of the palace of Delhi. Another, at the head of his innumerable cavalry, descended year after year on the rice-fields of Bengal. Even the European factors trembled for their magazines. Less than a hundred years ago, it was thought necessary to fortify Calcutta against the horsemen of Berar, and the name of the Mahratta ditch still preserves the memory of the danger.
Wherever the viceroys of the Mogul retained authority they became sovereigns. They might still acknowledge in words the superiority of the house of Tamerlane; as a Count of Flanders or a Duke of Burgundy might have acknowledged the superiority of the most helpless driveller among the later Carlovingians. They might occasionally send to their titular sovereign a complimentary present, or solicit from him a title of honour.
In truth, however, they were no longer lieutenants removable at pleasure, but independent hereditary princes. In this way originated those great Mussulman houses which formerly ruled Bengal and the Carnatic, and those which still, though in a state of vassalage, exercise some of the powers of royalty at Lucknow and Hyderabad.
In what was this confusion to end? Was the strife to continue during centuries? Was it to terminate in the rise of another great monarchy? Was the Mussulman or the Mahratta to be the Lord of India? Was another Baber to descend from the mountains, and to lead the hardy tribes of Cabul and Chorasan against a wealthier and less warlike race? None of these events seemed improbable. But scarcely any man, 209however sagacious, would have thought it possible that a trading company, separated from India by fifteen thousand miles of sea, and possessing in India only a few acres for purposes of commerce, would, in less than a hundred years, spread its empire from Cape Comorin to the eternal snow of the Himalayas; would compel Mahratta and Mahommedan to forget their mutual feuds in common subjection; would tame down even those wild races which had resisted the most powerful of the Moguls; and, having united under its laws a hundred millions of subjects, would carry its victorious arms far to the east of the Burrampooter, and far to the west of the Hydaspes, dictate terms of peace at the gates of Ava, and seat its vassal on the throne of Candahar.
The man who first saw that it was possible to found an European empire on the ruins of the Mogul monarchy was Dupleix. His restless, capricious, and inventive mind had formed this scheme, at a time when the ablest servants of the English Company were busied only about invoices and bills of lading. Nor had he only proposed to himself the end. He had also a just and distinct view of the means by which it was to be attained. He clearly saw that the greatest force which the princes of India could bring into the field would be no match for a small body of men trained in the discipline, and guided by the tactics, of the West. He saw also that the natives of India might, under European commanders, be formed into armies, such as Saxe or Frederic would be proud to command. He was perfectly aware that the most easy and convenient way in which an European adventurer could exercise sovereignty in India, was to govern the motions, and to speak through the mouth 210of some glittering puppet dignified by the title of Nabob or Nizam. The arts both of war and policy, which a few years later were employed with such signal success by the English, were first understood and practised by this ingenious and aspiring Frenchman.
The situation of India was such that scarcely any aggression could be without a pretext, either in old laws or in recent practice. All rights were in a state of utter uncertainty; and the Europeans who took part in the disputes of the natives confounded the confusion, by applying to Asiatic politics the public law of the West and analogies drawn from the feudal system. If it was convenient to treat a Nabob as an independent prince, there was an excellent plea for doing so. He was independent in fact. If it was convenient to treat him as a mere deputy of the Court of Delhi, there was no difficulty; for he was so in theory. If it was convenient to consider his office as an hereditary dignity, or as a dignity held during life only, or as a dignity held only during the good pleasure of the Mogul, arguments and precedents might be found for every one of those views. The party who had the heir of Baber in their hands represented him as the undoubted, the legitimate, the absolute sovereign, whom all subordinate authorities were bound to obey. The party against whom his name was used did not want plausible pretexts for maintaining that the empire was in fact dissolved, and that, though it might be decent to treat the Mogul with respect, as a venerable relic of an order of things which had passed away, it was absurd to regard him as the real master of Hindostan.
In the year 1748, died one of the most powerful of 211the new masters of India, the great Nizam al Mulk, Viceroy of the Deccan. His authority descended to his son, Nazir Jung. Of the provinces subject to this high functionary, the Carnatic was the wealthiest and the most extensive. It was governed by an ancient Nabob, whose name the English corrupted into Anaverdy Khan.
But there were pretenders to the government both of the viceroyalty and of the subordinate province. Mirzaplia Jung, a grandson of Nizam al Mulk, appeared as the competitor of Nazir Jung. Chunda Sahib, son-in-law of a former Nabob of the Carnatic, disputed the title of Anaverdy Khan. In the unsettled state of Indian law it was easy for both Mirzapha Jung and Chunda Sahib to make out something like a claim of right. In a society altogether disorganized, they had no difficulty in finding greedy adventurers to follow their standards. They united their interests, invaded the Carnatic, and applied for assistance to the French, whose fame had been raised by their success against the English in the recent war on the coast of Coromandel.
Nothing could have happened more pleasing to the subtile and ambitious Dupleix. To make a Nabob of the Carnatic, to make a Viceroy of the Deccan, to rule under their names the whole of southern India; this was indeed an attractive prospect. He allied himself with the pretenders, and sent four hundred French soldiers, and two thousand sepoys, disciplined after the European fashion, to the assistance of his confederates. A battle was fought. The French distinguished themselves greatly. Anaverdy Khan was defeated and slain. His son, Mahommed Ali, who was afterwards well known in England as the Nabob of Arcot, and 212who owes to the eloquence of Burke a most unenviable immortality, fled with a scanty remnant of his army to Trichinopoly; and the conquerors became at once masters of almost every part of the Carnatic.
This was but the beginning of the greatness of Dupleix.
After some months of fighting, negotiation, and intrigue, his ability and good fortune seemed to have prevailed everywhere. Nazir Jung perished by the hands of his own followers; Mirzapha Jung was master of the Deccan; and the triumph of French arms and French policy was complete. At Pondicherry all was exultation and festivity. Salutes were fired from the batteries, and Te Deum sung in the churches. The new Nizam came thither to visit his allies; and the ceremony of his installation was performed there with great pomp. Dupleix, dressed in the garb worn by Mahommedans of the highest rank, entered the town in the same palanquin with the Nizam, and, in the pageant which followed, took precedence of all the court. He was declared Governor of India from the river Kristna to Cape Comorin, a country about as large as France, with authority superior even to that of Chunda Sahib. He was intrusted with the command of seven thousand cavalry. It was announced that no mint would be suffered to exist in the Carnatic except that at Pondicherry. A large portion of the treasures which former Viceroys of the Deccan had accumulated found its way into the coffers of the French governor. It was rumoured that he had received two hundred thousand pounds sterling in money, besides many valuable jewels. In fact, there could scarcely be any limit to his gains. He now ruled thirty millions of people with almost absolute power. No honour or emolument could be obtained from the government but by his intervention 213No petition, unless signed by him, was perused by the Nizam.
Mirzapha Jung survived his elevation only a few months. But another prince of the same house was raised to the throne by French influence, and ratified all the promises of his predecessor. Dupleix was now the greatest potentate in India. His countrymen boasted that his name was mentioned with awe even in the chambers of the palace of Delhi. The native population looked with amazement on the progress which, in the short space of four years, an European adventurer had made towards dominion in Asia. Nor was the vain-glorious Frenchman content with the reality of power. He loved to display his greatness with arrogant ostentation before the eyes of his subjects and of his rivals. Near the spot where his policy had obtained its chief triumph, by the fall of Nazir Jung and the elevation of Mirzapha, he determined to erect a column, on the four sides of which four pompous inscriptions, in four languages, should proclaim his glory to all the nations of the East. Medals stamped with emblems of his successes were buried beneath the foundations of this stately pillar, and round it arose a town bearing the haughty name of Dupleix Fatihabad, which is, being interpreted, the City of the Victory of Dupleix.
The English had made some feeble and irresolute attempts to stop the rapid and brilliant career of the rival Company, and continued to recognize Mahommed Ali as Nabob of the Carnatic. But the dominions of Mahommed Ali consisted of Trichinopoly alone; and Trichinopoly was now invested by Chunda Sahib and his French auxiliaries. To raise the siege seemed impossible. The small force which was then at Madras had no commander. Major Lawrence had returned to 214England; and not a single officer of established character remained in the settlement. The natives had learned to look with contempt on the mighty nation which was soon to conquer and to rule them. They had seen the French colours flying on Fort St. George; they had seen the chiefs of the English factory led in triumph through the streets of Pondicherry; they had seen the arms and counsels of Dupleix everywhere successful, while the opposition which the authorities of Madras had made to his progress, had served only to expose their own weakness, and to heighten his glory. At this moment, the valour and genius of an obscure English youth suddenly turned the tide of fortune.
Clive was now twenty-five years old. After hesitating for some time between a military and a commercial life, he had at length been placed in a post which partook of both characters, that of commissary to the troops, with the rank of captain. The present emergency called forth all his powers. He represented to his superiors that unless some vigorous effort were made, Trichinopoly would fall, the house of Anaverdy Khan would perish, and the French would become the real masters of the whole peninsula of India. It was absolutely necessary to strike some daring blow. If an attack were made on Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic, and the favourite residence of the Nabobs, it was not impossible that the siege of Trichinopoly would be raised. The heads of the English settlement, now thoroughly alarmed by the success of Dupleix, and apprehensive that, in the event of a new war between France and Great Britain, Madras would be instantly taken and destroyed, approved of Clive’s plan, and intrusted the execution of it to himself. The young captain was put at the head of two hundred English soldiers, 215and three hundred sepoys, armed and disciplined after the European fashion. Of the eight officers who commanded this little force under him, only two had ever been in action, and four of the eight were factors of the company, whom Clive’s example had induced to offer their services. The weather was stormy; but Clive pushed on, through thunder, lightning, and rain, to the gates of Arcot. The garrison, in a panic, evacuated the fort, and the English entered it without a blow.
But Clive well knew that he should not be suffered to retain undisturbed possession of his conquest. He instantly began to collect provisions, to throw up works, and to make preparations for sustaining a siege. The garrison, which had fled at his approach, had now recovered from its dismay, and, having been swollen by large reinforcements from the neighbourhood to a force of three thousand men, encamped close to the town. At dead of night, Clive marched out of the fort, attacked the camp by surprise, slew great numbers, dispersed the rest, and returned to his quarters without having lost a single man.
The intelligence of these events was soon carried to Chunda Sahib, who, with his French allies, was besieging Trichinopoly. He immediately detached four thousand men from his camp, and sent them to Arcot. They were speedily joined by the remains of the force which Clive had lately scattered. They were further strengthened by two thousand men from Vellore, and by a still more important reinforcement of a hundred and fifty French soldiers whom Dupleix despatched from Pondicherry. The whole of this army, amounting to about ten thousand men, was under the command of Rajah Sahib, son of Chunda Sahib. 216Rajah Sahib proceeded to invest the fort of Arcot, which seemed quite incapable of sustaining a siege. The walls were ruinous, the ditches dry, the ramparts too narrow to admit the guns, the battlements too low to protect the soldiers. The little garrison had been greatly reduced by casualties. It now consisted of a hundred and twenty Europeans and two hundred sepoys. Only four officers were left; the stock of provisions was scanty; and the commander, who had to conduct the defence under circumstances so discouraging, was a young man of five and twenty, who had been bred a book-keeper.
During fifty days the siege went on. During fifty days the young captain maintained the defence, with a firmness, vigilance, and ability, which would have done honour to the oldest marshal in Europe. The breach, however, increased day by day. The garrison began to feel the pressure of hunger. Under such circumstances, any troops so scantily provided with officers might have been expected to show signs of insubordination; and the danger was peculiarly great in a force composed of men differing widely from each other in extraction, colour, language, manners, and religion. But the devotion of the little band to its chief surpassed any thing that is related of the Tenth Legion of Cæsar, or of the Old Guard of Napoleon. The sepoys came to Clive, not to complain of their scanty fare, but to propose that all the grain should be given to the Europeans, who required more nourishment than the natives of Asia. The thin gruel, they said, which was strained away from the rice, would suffice for themselves. History contains no more touching instance of military fidelity, or of the influence of a commanding mind. 217An attempt made by the government of Madras to relieve the place had failed. But there was hope from another quarter. A body of six thousand Mahrattas, half soldiers, half robbers, under the command of a chief named Morari Row, had been hired to assist Mahommed Ali; but thinking the French power irresistible, and the triumph of Chunda Sahib certain, they had hitherto remained inactive on the frontiers of the Carnatic. The fame of the defence of Arcot roused them from their torpor. Morari Row declared that he had never before believed that Englishmen could fight, but that he would willingly help them since he saw that they had spirit to help themselves. Rajah Sahib learned that the Mahrattas were in motion.
It was necessary for him to be expeditious. He first tried negotiation. He offered large bribes to Clive, which were rejected with scorn. He vowed that, if his proposals were not accepted, he would instantly storm the fort, and put every man in it to the sword. Clive told him in reply, with characteristic haughtiness, that his father was an usurper, that his army was a rabble, and that he would do well to think twice before he sent such poltroons into a breach defended by English soldiers.
Rajah Sahib determined to storm the fort. The day was well suited to a bold military enterprise. It was the great Mahommedan festival which is sacred to the memory of Hosein the son of Ali. The history of Islam contains nothing more touching than the event which gave rise to that solemnity. The mournful legend relates how the chief of the Fatimites, when all his brave followers had perished round him, drank his latest draught of water, and uttered his latest prayer, how the assassins carried his head in triumph, how the 218tyrant smote the lifeless lips with his staff, and how a few old men recollected with tears that they had seen those lips pressed to the lips of the Prophet of God. After the lapse of near twelve centuries, the recurrence of this solemn season excites the fiercest and saddest emotions in the bosoms of the devout Moslem of India. They work themselves up to such agonies of rage and lamentation that some, it is said, have given up the ghost from the mere effect of mental excitement. They believe that whoever, during this festival, falls in arms against the infidels, atones by his death for all the sins of his life, and passes at once to the garden of the Houris. It was at this time that Rajah Sahib determined to assault Arcot. Stimulating drugs were employed to aid the effect of religious zeal, and the besiegers, drunk with enthusiasm, drunk with bang, rushed furiously to the attack.
Clive had received secret intelligence of the design, had made his arrangements, and, exhausted by fatigue, had thrown himself on his bed. He was awakened by the alarm, and was instantly at his post. The enemy advanced, driving before them elephants whose foreheads were armed with iron plates. It was expected that the gates would yield to the shock of these living battering-rams. But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English musket balls than they turned round, and rushed furiously away, trampling on the multitude which had urged them forward. A raft was launched on the water which filled one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving that his gunners at that post did not understand their business, took the management of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared the raft in a few minutes. Where the moat was dry the assailants mounted with great boldness, but they were received with a fire so heavy 219and so well directed, that it soon quelled the courage even of fanaticism and of intoxication. The rear ranks of the English kept the front ranks supplied with a constant succession of loaded muskets, and every shot told on the living mass below. After three desperate onsets, the besiegers retired behind the ditch.
The struggle lasted about an hour. Four hundred of the assailants fell. The garrison lost only five or six men. The besieged passed an anxious night, looking for a renewal of the attack. But when day broke, the enemy were no more to be seen. They had retired, leaving to the English several guns and a large quantity of ammunition.
The news was received at Fort St. George with transports of joy and pride. Clive was justly regarded as a man equal to any command. Two hundred English soldiers and seven hundred sepoys were sent to him, and with this force he instantly commenced offensive operations. He took the fort of Timery, effected a junction with a division of Morari Row’s army, and hastened, by forced marches, to attack Rajah Sahib, who was at the head of about five thousand men, of whom three hundred were French. The action was sharp; but Clive gained a complete victory. The military chest of Rajah Sahib fell into the hands of the conquerors. Six hundred sepoys who had served in the enemy’s army, came over to Clive’s quarters and were taken into the British service. Conjeveram surrendered without a blow. The governor of Arnee deserted Chunda Sahib, and recognised the title of Mahommed Ali.
Had the entire direction of the war been intrusted to Clive, it would probably have been brought to a speedy close. But the timidity and incapacity which 220appeared in all the movements of the English, except where he was personally present, protracted the struggle. The Mahrattas muttered that his soldiers were of a different race from the British whom they found elsewhere. The effect of this languor was that in no long time Rajah Sahib, at the head of a considerable army, in which were four hundred French troops, appeared almost under the guns of Fort St. George, and laid waste the villas and gardens of the gentlemen of the English settlement. But he was again encountered and defeated by Clive. More than a hundred of the French were killed or taken, a loss more serious than that of thousands of natives. The victorious army inarched from the field of battle to Fort St. David. On the road lay the City of the Victory of Dupleix, and the stately monument which was designed to commemorate the triumphs of France in the East. Clive ordered both the city and the monument to be rased to the ground. He was induced, we believe, to take this step, not by personal or national malevolence, but by a just and profound policy. The town and its pompous name, the pillar and its vaunting inscriptions, were among the devices by which Dupleix had laid the public mind of India under a spell. This spell it was Clive’s business to break. The natives had been taught that France was confessedly the first power in Europe, and that the English did not presume to dispute her supremacy. No measure could be more effectual for the removing of this delusion than the public and solemn demolition of the French trophies.
The government of Madras, encouraged by these events, determined to send a strong detachment, under Clive, to reinforce the garrison of Trichinopoly. But 221just at this conjuncture, Major Lawrence arrived from England, and assumed the chief command. From the waywardness and impatience of control which had characterized Clive, both at school and in the counting-house, it might have been expected that he would not, after such achievements, act with zeal and good humour in a subordinate capacity. But Lawrence had early treated him with kindness; and it is bare justice to Clive to say that, proud and overbearing as he was, kindness was never thrown away upon him. He cheerfully placed himself under the orders of his old friend, and exerted himself as strenuously in the second post as he could have done in the first. Lawrence well knew the value of such assistance. Though himself gifted with no intellectual faculty higher than plain good sense, he fully appreciated the powers of his brilliant coadjutor. Though he had made a methodical study of military tactics, and, like all men regularly bred to a profession, was disposed to look with disdain on interlopers, he had yet liberality enough to acknowledge that Clive was an exception to common rules.
“Some people,” he wrote, “are pleased to term Captain Clive fortunate and lucky; but, in my opinion, from the knowledge I have of the gentleman, he deserved and might expect from his conduct every thing as it fell out;—a man of an undaunted resolution, of a cool temper, and of a presence of mind which never left him in the greatest danger—born a soldier; for, without a military education of any sort, or much conversing with any of the profession, from his judgment and good sense, he led on an army like an experienced officer and a brave soldier, with a prudence that certainly warranted success.”
The French had no commander to oppose to the two 222friends. Dupleix, not inferior in talents for negotiation and intrigue to any European who has borne a part in the revolutions of India, was ill qualified to direct in person military operations. He had not been bred a soldier, and had no inclination to become one. His enemies accused him of personal cowardice; and he defended himself in a strain worthy of Captain Bobadil.
He kept away from shot, he said, because silence and tranquillity were propitious to his genius, and he found it difficult to pursue his meditations amidst the noise of fire-arms. He was thus under the necessity of intrusting to others the execution of his great warlike designs; and he bitterly complained that he was ill served. He had indeed been assisted by one officer of eminent merit, the celebrated Bussy. But Bussy had marched northward with the Nizam, and was fully employed in looking after his own interests, and those of France, at the court of that prince. Among the officers who remained with Dupleix, there was not a single man of capacity; and many of them were boys, at whose ignorance and folly the common soldiers laughed.
The English triumphed everywhere. The besiegers of Trichinopoly were themselves besieged and compelled to capitulate. Chunda Sahib fell into the hands of the Mahrattas, and was put to death, at the instigation probably of his competitor, Mahommed Ali. The spirit of Dupleix, however, was unconquerable, and his resources inexhaustible. From his employers in Europe he no longer received help or countenance.
They condemned his policy. They gave him no pecuniary assistance. They sent him for troops only the sweepings of the galleys. Yet still he persisted, intrigued, bribed, promised, lavished his private fortune, 223strained his credit, procured new diplomas from Delhi, raised up new enemies to the government of Madras on every side, and found tools even among the allies of the English Company. But all was in vain. Slowly, but steadily, the power of Britain continued to increase, and that of France to decline.
The health of Clive had never been good during his residence in India; and his constitution was now so much impaired that he determined to return to England. Before his departure he undertook a service of considerable difficulty, and performed it with his usual vigour and dexterity. The forts of Covelong and Chingleput were occupied by French garrisons. It was determined to send a force against them. But the only force available for this purpose was of such a description that no officer but Clive would risk his reputation by commanding it. It consisted of five hundred newly levied sepoys, and two hundred recruits who had just landed from England, and who were the worst and lowest wretches that the Company’s crimps could pick up in the flash-houses of London. Clive, ill and exhausted as he was, undertook to make an army of this undisciplined rabble, and marched with them to Cove-long. A shot from the fort killed one of these extraordinary soldiers; on which all the rest faced about and ran away, and it was with the greatest difficulty that Clive rallied them. On another occasion, the noise of a gun terrified the sentinels so much that one of them was found, some hours later, at the bottom of a well. Clive gradually accustomed them to danger, and, by exposing himself constantly in the most perilous situations, shamed them into courage. He at length succeeded in forming a respectable force out of his unpromising materials. Covelong fell. Clive learned 224that a strong: detachment was marching: to relieve it from Chingleput. He took measures to prevent the enemy from learning that they were too late, laid an ambuscade for them on the road, killed a hundred of them with one fire, took three hundred prisoners, pursued the fugitives to the gates of Chingleput, laid siege instantly to that fastness, reputed one of the strongest in India, made a breach, and was on the point of storming, when the French commandant capitulated and retired with his men.
Clive returned to Madras victorious, but in a state of health which rendered it impossible for him to remain there long. He married at this time a young lady of the name of Maskelyne, sister of the eminent mathematician, who long held the post of Astronomer Royal. She is described as handsome and accomplished; and her husband’s letters, it is said, contain proofs that he was devotedly attached to her.
Almost immediately after the marriage, Clive embarked with his bride for England. He returned a very different person from the poor slighted boy who had been sent out ten years before to seek his fortune. He was only twenty-seven; yet his country already respected him as one of her first soldiers. There was then general peace in Europe. The Carnatic was the only part of the world where the English and French were in arms against each other. The vast schemes of Dupleix had excited no small uneasiness in the city of London; and the rapid turn of fortune, which was chiefly owing to the courage and talents of Clive, had been hailed with great delight. The young captain was known at the India House by the honourable nickname of General Clive, and was toasted by that appellation at the feasts of the Directors. On his arrival in 225England, he found himself an object of general interest and admiration. The East India Company thanked him for his services in the warmest terms, and bestowed on him a sword set with diamonds. With rare delicacy, he refused to receive this token of gratitude, unless a similar compliment were paid to his friend and commander, Lawrence.
It may easily be supposed that Clive was most cordially welcomed home by his family, who were delighted by his success, though they seem to have been hardly able to comprehend how their naughty idle Bobby had become so great a man. His father had been singularly hard of belief. Not until the news of the defence of Arcot arrived in England was the old gentleman heard to growl out that, after all, the booby had something in him. His expressions of approbation became stronger and stronger as news arrived of one brilliant exploit after another; and he was at length immoderately fond and proud of his son.
Clive’s relations had very substantial reasons for rejoicing at his return. Considerable sums of prize money had fallen to his share; and he had brought home a moderate fortune, part of which he expended in extricating his father from pecuniary difficulties, and in redeeming the family estate. The remainder he appears to have dissipated in the course of about two years. He lived splendidly, dressed gaily even for those times, kept a carriage and saddle horses, and, not content with these ways of getting rid of his money, resorted to the most speedy and effectual of all modes of evacuation, a contested election followed by a petition.
At the time of the general election of 1754, the government was in a very singular state. There was 226scarcely any formal opposition. The Jacobites had been cowed by the issue of the last rebellion. The Tory party had fallen into utter contempt. It had been deserted by all the men of talents who had belonged to it, and had scarcely given a symptom of life during some years. The small faction which had been held together by the influence and promises of Prince Frederic, had been dispersed by his death. Almost every public man of distinguished talents in the kingdom, whatever his early connections might have been, was in office, and called himself a Whig. But this extraordinary appearance of concord was quite delusive. The administration itself was distracted by bitter enmities and conflicting pretensions. The chief object of its members was to depress and supplant each other. The prime minister, Newcastle, weak, timid, jealous, and perfidious, was at once detested and despised by some of the most important members of his government, and by none more than by Henry Fox, the Secretary at War. This able, daring, and ambitious man seized every opportunity of crossing the First Lord of the Treasury, from whom he well knew that he had little to dread and little to hope; for Newcastle was through life equally afraid of breaking with men of parts and of promoting them.
Newcastle had set his heart on returning two members for St. Michael, one of those wretched Cornish boroughs which were swept away by the Reform Act in 1832. He was opposed by Lord Sandwich, whose influence had long been paramount there: and Fox exerted himself strenuously in Sandwich’s behalf. Clive, who had been introduced to Fox, and very kindly received by him, was brought forward on the Sandwich interest, and was returned. But a petition 227was presented against the return, and was backed by the whole influence of the Duke of Newcastle.
The case was heard, according to the usage of that time, before a committee of the whole House. Questions respecting elections were then considered merely as party questions. Judicial impartiality was not even affected. Sir Robert Walpole was in the habit of saying openly that, in election battles, there ought to be no quarter. On the present occasion the excitement was great. The matter really at issue was, not whether Clive had been properly or improperly returned, but whether Newcastle or Fox was to be master of the new House of Commons, and consequently first minister. The contest was long and obstinate, and success seemed to lean sometimes to one side and sometimes to the other. Fox put forth all his rare powers of debate, beat half the lawyers in the House at their own weapons, and earned division after division against the whole influence of the Treasury. The committee decided in Clive’s favour. But when the resolution was reported to the House, things took a different course. The remnant of the Tory Opposition, contemptible as it was, had yet sufficient weight to turn the scale between the nicely balanced parties of Newcastle and Fox. Newcastle the Tories could only despise. Fox they hated, as the boldest and most subtle politician and the ablest debater among the-Whigs, as the steady friend of Walpole, as the devoted adherent of the Duke of Cumberland. After wavering till the last moment, they determined to vote in a body with the Prime Minister’s friends. The consequence was that the House, by a small majority, rescinded the decision of the committee, and Clive was unseated. 228Ejected from Parliament, and straitened in his means, he naturally began to look again towards India. The Company and the Government were eager to avail themselves of his services. A treaty favourable to England had indeed been concluded in the Carnatic. Dupleix had been superseded, and had returned with the wreck of his immense fortune to Europe, where calumny and chicanery soon hunted him to his grave. But many signs indicated that a war between France and Great Britain was at hand; and it was therefore thought desirable to send an able commander to the Company’s settlements in India. The Directors appointed Clive governor of Fort St. David. The King gave him the commission of a lieutenant-colonel in the British army, and in 1755 he again sailed for Asia.
The first service on which he was employed after his return to the East was the reduction of the stronghold of Gheriah. This fortress, built on a craggy promontory, and almost surrounded by the ocean, was the den of a pirate named Angria, whose barks had long been the terror of the Arabian Gulf. Admiral Watson, who commanded the English squadron in the Eastern seas, burned Angria’s fleet, while Clive attacked the fastness by land. The place soon fell, and a booty of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling was divided among the conquerors.
After this exploit, Clive proceeded to his government of Fort St. David. Before he had been there two months, he received intelligence which called forth all the energy of his bold and active mind.
Of the provinces which had been subject to the house of Tamerlane, the wealthiest was Bengal. No part of India possessed such natural advantages both 229for agriculture and for commerce. The Ganges, rushing through a hundred channels to the sea, has formed a vast plain of rich mould which, even under the tropical sky, rivals the verdure of an English April. The rice fields yield an increase such as is elsewhere unknown. Spices, sugar, vegetable oils, are produced with marvellous exuberance. The rivers afford an inexhaustible supply of fish. The desolate islands along the sea-coast, overgrown by noxious vegetation, and swarming with deer and tigers, supply the cultivated districts with abundance of salt. The great stream which fertilises the soil is, at the same time, the chief highway of Eastern commerce. On its banks, and on those of its tributary waters, are the wealthiest marts, the most splendid capitals, and the most sacred shrines of India. The tyranny of man had for ages struggled in vain against the overflowing bounty of nature. In spite of the Mussulman despot and of the Mahratta freebooter, Bengal was known through the East as the garden of Eden, as the rich kingdom. Its population multiplied exceedingly. Distant provinces were nourished from the overflowing of its granaries; and the noble ladies of London and Paris were clothed in the delicate produce of its looms. The race by whom this rich tract was peopled, enervated by a soft climate and accustomed to peaceful employments, bore the same relation to other Asiatics which the Asiatics generally bear to the bold and energetic children of Europe. The Castilians have a proverb, that in Valencia the earth is water and the men women; and the description is at least equally applicable to the vast plain of the Lower Ganges. Whatever the Bengalee does he does languidly. His favourite pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from bodily exertion; 230and, though voluble in dispute, and singularly pertinacious in the war of chicane, he seldom engages in a personal conflict, and scarcely ever enlists as a soldier. We doubt whether there be a hundred genuine Bengalees in the whole army of the East India Company. There never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly fitted by nature and by habit for a foreign yoke.
The great commercial companies of Europe had long possessed factories in Bengal. The French were settled, as they still are, at Chandernagore on the Hoogley.
Higher up the stream the Dutch traders held Chinsurah. Nearer to the sea, the English had built Fort William. A church and ample warehouses rose in the vicinity. A row of spacious houses, belonging to the chief factors of the East India Company, lined the banks of the river; and in the neighbourhood had sprung up a large and busy native town, where some Hindoo merchants of great opulence had fixed their abode. But the tract now covered by the palaces of Chowringhee contained only a few miserable huts thatched with straw. A jungle, abandoned to waterfowl and alligators, covered the site of the present Citadel, and the Course, which is now daily crowded at sunset with the gayest equipages of Calcutta. For the ground on which the settlement stood, the English, like other great landholders, paid rent to the government; and they were, like other great landholders, permitted to exercise a certain jurisdiction within their domain.
The great province of Bengal, together with Orissa and Bahar, had long been governed by a viceroy, whom the English called Aliverdy Khan, and who, like the other viceroys of the Mogul, had become virtually independent. He died in 1756, and the 231sovereignty descended to his grandson, a youth under twenty years of age, who bore the name of Surajah Dowlah. Oriental despots are perhaps the worst class of human beings; and this unhappy boy was one of the worst specimens of his class. His understanding was naturally feeble, and his temper naturally unamiable. His education had been such as would have enervated even a vigorous intellect, and perverted even a generous disposition. He was unreasonable, because nobody ever dared to reason with him, and selfish, because he had never been made to feel himself dependent on the good will of others. Early debauchery had unnerved his body and his mind. He indulged immoderately in the use of ardent spirits, which inflamed his weak brain almost to madness. His chosen companions were flatterers sprung from the dregs of the people, and recommended by nothing but buffoonery and servility. It is said that he had arrived at that last stage of human depravity, when cruelty becomes pleasing for its own sake, when the sight of pain as pain, where no advantage is to be gained, no offence punished, no danger averted, is an agreeable excitement. It had early been his amusement to torture beasts and birds; and, when he grew up, he enjoyed with still keener relish the misery of his fellow-creatures.
From a child Surajah Dowlah had hated the English. It was his whim to do so; and his whims were never opposed. He had also formed a very exaggerated notion of the wealth which might be obtained by plundering them; and his feeble and uncultivated mind was incapable of perceiving that the riches of Calcutta, had they been even greater than he imagined, would not compensate him for what he must lose, if the European 232trade, of which Bengal was a chief seat, should be driven by his violence to some other quarter. Pretexts for a quarrel were readily found. The English, in expectation of a war with France, had begun to fortify their settlement without special permission from the Nabob. A rich native, whom he longed to plunder, had taken refuge at Calcutta, and had not been delivered up. On such grounds as these Surajah Dowlali marched with a great army against Fort William.
The servants of the Company at Madras had been forced by Dupleix to become statesmen and soldiers. Those in Bengal were still mere traders, and were terrified and bewildered by the approaching danger. The governor, who had heard much of Surajah Dowlah’s cruelty, was frightened out of his wits, jumped into a boat, and took refuge in the nearest ship. The military commandant thought that he could not do better than follow so good an example. The fort was taken after a feeble resistance; and great numbers of the English fell into the hands of the conquerors. The Nabob seated himself with regal pomp in the principal hall of the factory, and ordered Mr. Holwell, the first in rank among the prisoners, to be brought before him. His Highness talked about the insolence of the English, and grumbled at the smallness of the treasure which he had found; but promised to spare their lives, and retired to rest.
Then was committed that great crime, memorable for its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it was followed. The English captives were left at the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. Even for a single European 233malefactor, that dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too close and narrow. The space was only twenty feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to natives of England by lofty halls and by the constant waving of fans. The number of the prisoners was one hundred and forty-six. When they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined that the soldiers were joking; and, being in high spirits on account of the promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, they laughed and jested at the absurdity of the notion. They soon discovered their mistake. They expostulated; they entreated; but in vain. The guards threatened to cut down all who hesitated. The captives were driven into the cell at the point of the sword, and the door was instantly shut and locked upon them.
Nothing in history or fiction, not even the story which Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he had wiped his bloody lips on the scalp of his murderer, approaches the horrors which were recounted by the few survivors of that night. They cried for mercy. They strove to burst the door. Holwell who, even in that extremity, retained some presence of mind, offered large bribes to the gaolers. But the answer was that nothing could be done without the Nabob’s orders, that the Nabob was asleep, and that he would be angry if anybody woke him. Then the prisoners went mad with despair. They trampled each other down, fought for the places at the windows, fought for the pittance of water with which the cruel mercy of the murderers mocked their agonies, raved, prayed, blasphemed, implored the guards to fire among them. The gaolers in the mean time held lights to the bars, and shouted with 234laughter at the frantic struggles of their victims. At length the tumult died away in low gaspings and moanings.
The day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and permitted the door to be opened. But it was some time before the soldiers could make a lane for the survivors, by piling up on each side the heaps of corpses on which the burning climate had already begun to do its loathsome work. When at length a passage was made, twenty-three ghastly figures, such as their own mothers would not have known, staggered one by one out of the charnel-house. A pit was instantly dug. The dead bodies, a hundred and twenty-three in number, were flung into it promiscuously and covered up.
But these things which, after the lapse of more than eighty years, cannot be told or read without horror, awakened neither remorse nor pity in the bosom of the savage Nabob. He inflicted no punishment on the murderers. He showed no tenderness to the survivors. Some of them, indeed, from whom nothing was to be got, were suffered to depart; but those from whom it was thought that any thing could be extorted were treated with execrable cruelty. Holwell, unable to walk, was carried before the tyrant, who reproached him, threatened him, and sent him up the country in irons, together with some other gentlemen who were suspected of knowing more than they chose to tell about the treasures of the Company. These persons, still bowed down by the sufferings of that great agony, were lodged in miserable sheds, and fed only with grain and water, till at length the intercessions of the female relations of the Nabob procured their release. One Englishwoman had survived that night. She was placed in the harem of the Prince at Moorshedabad. 235Surajah Dowlah, in the mean time, sent letters to his nominal sovereign at Delhi, describing the late conquest in the most pompous language. He placed a garrison in Fort William, forbade Englishmen to dwell in the neighbourhood, and directed that, in memory of his great actions, Calcutta should thenceforward be called Alinagore, that is to say, the Port of God.
In August the news of the fall of Calcutta reached Madras, and excited the fiercest and bitterest resentment. The cry of the whole settlement was for vengeance. Within forty-eight hours after the arrival of the intelligence it was determined that an expedition should be sent to the Hoogley, and that Clive should be at the head of the land forces. The naval armament was under the command of Admiral Watson. Nine hundred English infantry, fine troops and full of spirit, and fifteen hundred sepoys, composed the army which sailed to punish a Prince who had more subjects than Lewis the Fifteenth or the Empress Maria Theresa. In October the expedition sailed; but it had to make its way against adverse winds, and did not reach Bengal till December.
The Nabob was revelling in fancied security at Moorshedabad.
He was so profoundly ignorant of the state of foreign countries that he often used to say that there were not ten thousand men in all Europe; and it had never occurred to him as possible, that the English would dare to invade his dominions. But, though undisturbed by any fear of their military power, he began to miss them greatly. His revenues fell off; and his ministers succeeded in making him understand that a ruler may sometimes find it more profitable to protect traders in the open enjoyment of their gains than to put them to the torture for the purpose of discovering 236hidden chests of gold and jewels. He was already disposed to permit the Company to resume its mercantile operations in his country, when he received the news that an English armament was in the Hoogley. He instantly ordered all his troops to assemble at Moorshedabad, and marched towards Calcutta.
Clive had commenced operations with his usual vigour. He took Budgebudge, routed the garrison of Fort William, recovered Calcutta, stormed and sacked Hoogley. The Nabob, already disposed to make some concessions to the English, was confirmed in his pacific disposition by these proofs of their power and spirit. He accordingly made overtures to the chiefs of the invading armament, and offered to restore the factory, and to give compensation to those whom he had despoiled.
Clive’s profession was war; and he felt that there was something discreditable in an accommodation with Surajah Dowlah. But his power was limited. A committee, chiefly composed of servants of the Company who had fled from Calcutta, had the principal direction of affairs; and these persons were eager to be restored to their posts and compensated for their losses. The government of Madras, apprised that war had commenced in Europe, and apprehensive of an attack from the French, became impatient for the return of the armament. The promises of the Nabob were large, the chances of a contest doubtful; and Clive consented to treat, though he expressed his regret that things should not be concluded in so glorious a manner as he could have wished.
With this negotiation commences a new chapter in the life of Clive. Hitherto he had been merely a 237soldier carrying into effect, with eminent ability and valour, the plans of others. Henceforth he is to be chiefly regarded as a statesman; and his military movements are to be considered as subordinate to his political designs. That in his new capacity he displayed great ability, and obtained great success, is unquestionable. But it is also unquestionable that the transactions in which he now began to take a part have left a stain on his moral character.
We can by no means agree with Sir John Malcolm, who is obstinately resolved to see nothing but honour and integrity in the conduct of his hero. But we can as little agree with Mr. Mill, who has gone so far as to say that Clive was a man “to whom deception, when it suited his purpose, never cost a pang.” Clive seems to us to have been constitutionally the very opposite of a knave, bold even to temerity, sincere even to indiscretion, hearty in friendship, open in enmity. Neither in his private life, nor in those parts of his public life; in which he had to do with his countrymen, do we find any signs of a propensity to cunning. On the contrary, in all the disputes in which he was engaged as an Englishman against Englishmen, from his boxing-matches at school to those stormy altercations at the India House and in Parliament amidst which his later years were passed, his very faults were those of a high and magnanimous spirit. The truth seems to have been that he considered Oriental politics as a game in which nothing was unfair. He knew that the standard of morality among the natives of India differed widely from that established in England. He knew that he had to deal with men destitute of what in Europe is called honour, with men who would give any promise without hesitation, and break any promise without 238shame, with men who would unscrupulously employ corruption, perjury, forgery, to compass their ends. His letters show that the great difference between Asiatic and European morality was constantly in his thoughts. He seems to have imagined, most erroneously in our opinion, that he could effect nothing against such adversaries, if he was content to be bound by ties from which they were free, if he went on telling truth, and hearing none, if he fulfilled, to his own hurt, all his engagements with confederates who never kept an engagement that was not to their advantage. Accordingly this man, in the other parts of his life an honourable English gentleman and a soldier, was no sooner matched against an Indian intriguer, than he became himself an Indian intriguer, and descended, without scruple, to falsehood, to hypocritical caresses, to the substitution of documents, and to the counterfeiting of hands.
The negotiations between the English and the Nabob were carried on chiefly by two agents, Mr. Watts, a servant of the Company, and a Bengalee of the name of Omichund. This Omichund had been one of the wealthiest native merchants resident at Calcutta, and had sustained great losses in consequence of the Nabob’s expedition against that place. In the course of his commercial transactions, he had seen much of the English, and was peculiarly qualified to serve as a medium of communication between them and a native court. He possessed great influence with his own race, and had in large measure the Hindoo talents, quick observation, tact, dexterity, perseverance, and the Hindoo vices, servility, greediness, and treachery.
The Nabob behaved with all the faithlessness of an Indian statesman, and with all the levity of a boy whose 239mind had been enfeebled by power and self-indulgence. He promised, retracted, hesitated, evaded. At one time he advanced with his army in a threatening manner towards Calcutta; but when he saw the resolute front which the English presented, he fell back in alarm, and consented to make peace with them on their own terms. The treaty was no sooner concluded than he formed new designs against them. He intrigued with the French authorities at Chandernagore. He invited Bussy to march from the Deccan to the Hoogley, and to drive the English out of Bengal. All this was well known to Clive and Watson. They determined accordingly to strike a decisive blow, and to attack Chandernagore, before the force there could be strengthened by new arrivals, either from the south of India, or from Europe. Watson directed the expedition by water, Clive by land. The success of the combined movements was rapid and complete. The fort, the garrison, the artillery, the military stores, all fell into the hands of the English. Near five hundred European troops were among the prisoners.
The Nabob had feared and hated the English, even while he was still able to oppose to them their French rivals. The French were now vanquished; and he began to regard the English with still greater fear and still greater hatred. His weak and unprincipled mind oscillated between servility and insolence. One day he sent a large sum to Calcutta, as part of the compensation due for the wrongs which he had committed. The next day he sent a present of jewels to Bussy, exhorting that distinguished officer to hasten to protect Bengal “against Clive, the daring in war, on whom,” says his Highness, “may all bad fortune attend.” He ordered his army to march against the English. He countermanded 240his orders. He tore Clive’s letters. He then sent answers in the most florid language of compliment. He ordered Watts out of his presence, and threatened to impale him. He again sent for Watts, and begged pardon for the insult. In the mean time, his wretched maladministration, his folly, his dissolute manners, and his love of the lowest company, had disgusted all classes of his subjects, soldiers, traders, civil functionaries, the proud and ostentatious Mahommedans, the timid, supple, and parsimonious Hindoos. A formidable confederacy was formed against him, in which were included Roydullub, the minister of finance, Meer Jaffier, the principal commander of the troops, and Jugget Seit, the richest banker in India. The plot was confided to the English agents, and a communication was opened between the malcontents at Moorshedabad and the committee at Calcutta.
In the committee there was much hesitation; but Clive’s voice was given in favour of the conspirators, and his vigour and firmness bore down all opposition. It was determined that the English should lend their powerful assistance to depose Surajah Dowlah, and to place Meer Jaffier on the throne of Bengal. In return, Meer Jaffier promised ample compensation to the Company and its servants, and a liberal donative to the army, the navy, and the committee. The odious vices of Surajah Dowlah, the wrongs which the English had suffered at his hands, the dangers to which our trade must have been exposed, had he continued to reign, appear to us fully to justify the resolution of deposing him. But nothing can justify the dissimulation which Clive stooped to practise. He wrote to Surajah Dowlah in terms so affectionate that they for a time lulled that weak prince into perfect security. The same courier 241who carried this “soothing letter,” as Clive calls it, to the Nabob, carried to Mr. Watts a letter in the following terms: “Tell Meer Jaffier to fear nothing. I will join him with five thousand men who never turned their backs. Assure him I will march night and day to his assistance, and stand by him as long as I have a man left.”
It was impossible that a plot which had so many ramifications should long remain entirely concealed. Enough reached the ears of the Nabob to arouse his suspicions. But he was soon quieted by the fictions and artifices which the inventive genius of Omichund produced with miraculous readiness. All was going well; the plot was nearly ripe; when Clive learned that Omichund was likely to play false. The artful Bengalee had been promised a liberal compensation for all that he had lost at Calcutta. But this would not satisfy him. His services had been great. He held the thread of the whole intrigue. By one word breathed in the ear of Surajah Dowlah, he could undo all that he had done. The lives of Watts, of Meer Jaffier, of all the conspirators, were at his mercy; and he determined to take advantage of his situation and to make his own terms. He demanded three hundred thousand pounds sterling as the price of his secrecy and of his assistance. The committee, incensed by the treachery and appalled by the danger, knew not what course to take. But Clive was more than Omichund’s match in Omichund’s own arts. The man, he said, was a villain. Any artifice which would defeat such knavery was justifiable. The best course would be to promise what was asked. Omichund would soon be at their mercy; and then they might punish him by withholding from him, not only the bribe which he now demanded, but also the 242compensation which all the other sufferers of Calcutta were to receive.
His advice was taken. But how was the wary and sagacious Hindoo to be deceived? He had demanded that an article touching his claims should be inserted in the treaty between Meer Jaffier and the English, and he would not be satisfied unless he saw it with his own eyes. Clive had an expedient ready. Two treaties were drawn up, one on white paper, the other on red, the former real, the latter fictitious. In the former Omichund’s name was not mentioned; the latter, which was to be shown to him, contained a stipulation in his favour.
But another difficulty arose. Admiral Watson had scruples about signing the red treaty. Omichund’s vigilance and acuteness were such that the absence of so important a name would probably awaken his suspicions.
But Clive was not a man to do any thing by halves. We almost blush to write it. He forged Admiral Watson’s name.
All was now ready for action. Mr. Watts fled secretly from Moorshedabad. Clive put his troops in motion, and wrote to the Nabob in a tone very different from that of his previous letters. He set forth all the wrongs which the British had suffered, offered to submit the points in dispute to the arbitration of Meer Jaffier, and concluded by announcing that, as the rains were about to set in, he and his men would do themselves the honour of waiting on his Highness for an answer.
Surajah Dowlah instantly assembled his whole force, and marched to encounter the English. It had been agreed that Meer Jaffier should separate himself from the Nabob, and carry over his division to Clive. But, 243as the decisive moment approached, the fears of the conspirator overpowered his ambition. Clive had advanced to Cossimbuzar; the Nabob lay with a mighty power a few miles off at Plassey; and still Meer Jaffier delayed to fulfil his engagements, and returned evasive answers to the earnest remonstrances of the English general.
Clive was in a painfully anxious situation. He could place no confidence in the sincerity or in the courage of his confederate: and whatever confidence he might place in his own military talents, and in the valour and discipline of his troops, it was no light thing to engage an army twenty times as numerous as his own. Before him lay a river over which it was easy to advance, but over which, if things went ill, not one of his little hand would ever return. On this occasion, for the first and for the last time, his dauntless spirit, during a few hours, shrank from the fearful responsibility of making a decision. He called a council of war. The majority pronounced against fighting; and Clive declared his concurrence with the majority. Long afterwards, he said that he had never called but one council of war, and that, if he had taken the advice of that council, the British would never have been masters of Bengal. But scarcely had the meeting broke up when he was himself again. He retired alone under the shade of some trees, and passed near an hour there in thought. He came back determined to put every thing to the hazard, and gave orders that all should be in readiness for passing the river on the morrow.
The river was passed; and, at the close of a toilsome day’s march, the army, long after sunset, took up its quarters in a grove of mango trees near Plassey, within a mile of the enemy. Clive was unable to 244sleep; he heard, through the whole night, the sound of drums and cymbals from the vast camp of the Nabob. It is not strange that even his stout heart should now and then have sunk, when he reflected against what odds, and for what a prize, he was in a few hours to contend.
Nor was the rest of Surajah Dowlah more peaceful.
His mind, at once weak and stormy, was distracted by wild and horrible apprehensions. Appalled by the greatness and nearness of the crisis, distrusting his captains, dreading every one who approached him, dreading to be left alone, he sat gloomily in his tent, haunted, a Greek poet would have said, by the furies of those who had cursed him with their last breath in the Black Hole.
The day broke, the day which was to decide the fate of India. At sunrise, the army of the Nabob, pouring through many openings of the camp, began to move towards the grove where the English lay. Forty thousand infantry, armed with firelocks, pikes, swords, bows and arrows, covered the plain. They were accompanied by fifty pieces of ordnance of the largest size, each tugged by a long team of white oxen, and each pushed on from behind by an elephant. Some smaller guns, under the direction of a few French auxiliaries, were perhaps more formidable. The cavalry were fifteen thousand, drawn, not from the effeminate population of Bengal, but from the bolder race which inhabits the northern provinces; and the practised eye of Clive could perceive that both the men and the horses were more powerful than those of the Carnatic. The force which he had to oppose to this great multitude consisted of only three thousand men. But of these nearly a thousand were English; and all were led by English officers, and 245trained in the English discipline. Conspicuous in the ranks of the little army were the men of the Thirty-Ninth Regiment, which still bears on its colours, amidst many honourable additions won under Wellington in Spain and Gascony, the name of Plassey, and the proud motto, Primus in Indis.
The battle commenced with a cannonade in which the artillery of the Nabob did scarcely any execution, while the few field-pieces of the English produced great effect. Several of the most distinguished officers in Surajah Dowlah’s service fell. Disorder began to spread through his ranks. His own terror increased every moment. One of the conspirators urged on him the expediency of retreating. The insidious advice, agreeing as it did with what his own terrors suggested, was readily received. He ordered his army to fall back, and this order decided his fate. Clive snatched the moment, and ordered his troops to advance. The confused and dispirited multitude gave way before the onset of disciplined valour. No mob attacked by regular soldiers was ever more completely routed. The little band of Frenchmen, who alone ventured to confront the English, were swept down the stream of fugitives. In an hour the forces of Surajah Dowlah were dispersed, never to reassemble. Only five hundred of the vanquished were slain. But their camp, their guns, their baggage, innumerable waggons, innumerable cattle, remained in the power of the conquerors. With the loss of twenty-two soldiers killed and fifty wounded, Clive had scattered an army of near sixty thousand men, and subdued an empire larger and more populous than Great Britain.
Meer Jaffier had given no assistance to the English during the action. But as soon as he saw that the 246fate of the day was decided, he drew off his division of the army, and, when the battle was over, sent his congratulations to his ally. The next morning he repaired to the English quarters, not a little uneasy as to the reception which awaited him there. He gave evident signs of alarm when a guard was drawn out to receive him with the honours due to his rank. But his apprehensions were speedily removed. Clive came forward to meet him, embraced him, saluted him as Nabob of the three great provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, listened graciously to his apologies, and advised him to march without delay to Moorshedabad.
Surajah Dowlah had fled from the field of battle with all the speed with which a fleet camel could carry him, and arrived at Moorshedabad in little more than twenty-four hours. There he called his councillors round him. The wisest advised him to put himself into the hands of the English, from whom he had nothing worse to fear than deposition and confinement. But he attributed this suggestion to treachery. Others urged him to try the chance of war again. He approved the advice, and issued orders accordingly. But he wanted spirit to adhere even during one day to a manly resolution. He learned that Meer Jaffier had arrived; and his terrors became insupportable. Disguised in a mean dress, with a casket of jewels in his hand, he let himself down at night from a window of his palace, and, accompanied by only two attendants, embarked on the river for Patna.
In a few days Clive arrived at Moorshedabad, escorted by two hundred English soldiers and three hundred sepoys. For his residence had been assigned a 247palace, which was surrounded by a garden so spacious that all the troops who accompanied him could conveniently encamp within it. The ceremony of the installation of Meer Jaffier was instantly performed. Clive led the new Nabob to the seat of honour, placed him on it, presented to him, after the immemorial fashion of the East, an offering of gold, and then, turning to the natives who filled the hall, congratulated them on the good fortune which had freed them from a tyrant. He was compelled on this occasion to use the services of an interpreter; for it is remarkable that, long as he resided in India, intimately acquainted as he was with Indian politics and with the Indian character, and adored as he was by his Indian soldiery, he never learned to express himself with facility in any Indian language. He is said indeed to have been sometimes under the necessity of employing, in his intercourse with natives of India, the smattering of Portuguese which he had acquired when a lad, in Brazil.
The new sovereign was now called upon to fulfil the engagements into which he had entered with his allies.
A conference was held at the house of Jugget Seit, the great banker, for the purpose of making the necessary arrangements. Omichund came thither, fully believing himself to stand high in the favour of Clive, who, with dissimulation surpassing even the dissimulation of Bengal, had up to that day treated him with undiminished kindness. The white treaty was produced and read. Clive then turned to Mr. Scrafton, one of the servants of the Company, and said in English, “It is now time to undeceive Omichund.”
“Omichund,” said Mr. Scrafton in Hindostanee, “the red treaty is a trick you are to have nothing.” Omichund fell back in 248to the arms of his attendants. He revived; but his mind was irreparably ruined. Clive, who, though little troubled by scruples of conscience in his dealings with Indian politicians, was not inhuman, seems to have been touched. He saw Omichund a few days later, spoke to him kindly, advised him to make a pilgrimage to one of the great temples of India, in the hope that change of scene might restore his health, and was even disposed, notwithstanding all that had passed, again to employ him in the public service. But from the moment of that sudden shock, the unhappy man sank gradually into idiocy. He who had formerly been distinguished for the strength of his understanding and the simplicity of his habits, now squandered the remains of his fortune on childish trinkets, and loved to exhibit himself dressed in rich garments, and hung with precious stones. In this abject state he languished a few months, and then died.
We should not think it necessary to offer any remarks for the purpose of directing the judgment of our readers, with respect to this transaction, had not Sir John Malcolm undertaken to defend it in all its parts. He regrets, indeed, that it was necessary to employ means so liable to abuse as forgery; but he will not admit that any blame attaches to those who deceived the deceiver. He thinks that the English were not bound to keep faith with one who kept no faith with them, and that, if they had fulfilled their engagements with the wily Bengalee, so signal an example of successful treason would have produced a crowd of imitators. Now, we will not discuss this point on any rigid principles of morality. Indeed, it is quite unnecessary to do so for, looking at the question as a question of expediency in the lowest sense of the word, and using no arguments 249but such as Machiavelli might have employed in his conferences with Borgia, we are convinced that Clive was altogether in the wrong, and that he committed, not merely a crime, but a blunder. That honesty is the best policy is a maxim which we firmly believe to be generally correct, even with respect to the temporal interests of individuals; but with respect to societies, the rule is subject to still fewer exceptions, and that for this reason, that the life of societies is longer than the life of individuals. It is possible to mention men who have owed great worldly prosperity to breaches of private faith; but we doubt whether it be possible to mention a state which has on the whole been a gainer by a breach of public faith. The entire history of British India is an illustration of the great truth, that it is not prudent to oppose perfidy to perfidy, and that the most efficient weapon with which men can encounter falsehood is truth. During a long course of years, the English rulers of India, surrounded by allies and enemies whom no engagement could bind, have generally acted with sincerity and uprightness; and the event has proved that sincerity and uprightness are wisdom. English valour and English intelligence have done less to extend and to preserve our Oriental empire than English veracity. All that we could have gained by imitating the doublings, the evasions, the fictions, the perjuries which have been employed against us is as nothing, when compared with what we have gained by being the one power in India on whose word reliance can be placed. No oath which superstition can devise, no hostage however precious, inspires a hundredth part of the confidence which is produced by the “yea, yea,” and “nay, nay,” of a British envoy. No fastness, however strong by art or nature, gives to 250its inmates a security like that enjoyed by the chief who, passing through the territories of powerful and deadly enemies, is armed with the British guarantee. The mightiest princes of the East can scarcely, by the offer of enormous usury, draw forth any portion of the wealth which is concealed under the hearths of their subjects. The British Government offers little more than four per cent.; and avarice hastens to bring forth tens of millions of rupees from its most secret repositories. A hostile monarch may promise mountains of gold to our sepoys, on condition that they will desert the standard of the Company. The Company promises only a moderate pension after a long service. But every sepoy knows that the promise of the Company will be kept: he knows that if he lives a hundred years his rice and salt are as secure as the salary of the Governor-General: and he knows that there is not another state in India which would not, in spite of the most solemn vows, leave him to die of hunger in a ditch as soon as he had ceased to be useful. The greatest advantage which a government can possess is to be the one trustworthy government in the midst of governments which nobody can trust. This advantage we enjoy in Asia. Had we acted during the last two generations on the principles which Sir John Malcolm appears to have considered as sound, had we as often as we had to deal with people like Omichund, retaliated by lying and forging, and breaking faith, after their fashion, it is our firm belief that no courage or capacity could have upheld our empire.
Sir John Malcolm admits that Clive’s breach of faith could be justified only by the strongest necessity. As we think that breach of faith not only unnecessary, but most inexpedient, we need hardly say that we altogether condemn it. 251Omichund was not the only victim of the revolution. Surajah Dowlah was taken a few days after his flight, and was brought before Meer Jaffier. There he flung himself on the ground in convulsions of fear, and with tears and loud cries implored the mercy which he had never shown. Meer Jaffier hesitated; but his son Meeran, a youth of seventeen, who in feebleness of brain and savageness of nature greatly resembled the wretched captive, was implacable. Surajah Dowlah was led into a secret chamber, to which in a short time the ministers of death were sent. In this act the English bore no part; and Meer Jaffier understood so much of their feelings, that he thought it necessary to apologize to them for having avenged them on their most malignant enemy.
The shower of wealth now fell copiously on the Company and its servants. A sum of eight hundred thousand pounds sterling, in coined silver, was sent down the river from Moorshedabad to Fort William. The fleet which conveyed this treasure consisted of more than a hundred boats, and performed its triumphal voyage with flags flying and music playing. Calcutta, which a few months before had been desolate, was now more prosperous than ever. Trade revived; and the signs of affluence appeared in every English house. As to Clive, there was no limit to his acquisitions but his own moderation. The treasury of Bengal was thrown open to him. There were piled up, after the usage of Indian princes, immense masses of coin, among which might not seldom be detected the florins and byzants with which, before any European ship had turned the Cape of Good Hope, the Venetians purchased the stuffs and spices of the East. Clive walked between heaps of gold and silver, crowned with rubies 252and diamonds, and was at liberty to help himself. He accepted between two and three hundred thousand pounds.
The pecuniary transactions between Meer Jaffier and Clive were sixteen years later condemned by the public voice, and severely criticised in Parliament. They are vehemently defended by Sir John Malcolm. The accusers of the victorious general represented his gains as the wages of corruption, or as plunder extorted at the point of the sword from a helpless ally. The biographer, on the other hand, considers these great acquisitions as free gifts, honourable alike to the donor and to the receiver, and compares them to the rewards bestowed by foreign powers on Marlborough, on Nelson, and on Wellington. It had always, he says, been customary in the East to give and receive presents; and there was, as yet, no Act of Parliament positively prohibiting English functionaries in India from profiting by this Asiatic usage. This reasoning, we own, does not quite satisfy us. We do not suspect Clive of selling the interests of his employers or his country; but we cannot acquit him of having done what, if not in itself evil, was yet of evil example. Nothing is more clear than that a general ought to be the servant of his own government, and of no other. It follows that whatever rewards he receives for his services ought to be given either by his own government, or with the full knowledge and approbation of his own government. This rule ought to be strictly maintained even with respect to the merest bauble, with respect to a cross, a medal, or a yard of coloured riband. But how can any government be well served, if those who command its forces are at liberty, without its permission, without its privity, to accept princely fortunes from its allies? It is 253idle to say that there was then no Act of Parliament prohibiting the practice of taking presents from Asiatic sovereigns. It is not on the Act which was passed at a later period for the purpose of preventing any such taking of presents, but on grounds which were valid before that Act was passed, on grounds of common law and common sense, that we arraign the conduct of Clive. There is no Act that we know of, prohibiting the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from being in the pay of continental powers, but it is not the less true that a Secretary who should receive a secret pension from France would grossly violate his duty, and would deserve severe punishment. Sir John Malcolm compares the conduct of Clive with that of the Duke of Wellington. Suppose,—and we beg pardon for putting such a supposition even for the sake of argument,—that the Duke of Wellington had, after the campaign of 1815, and while he commanded the army of occupation in France, privately accepted two hundred thousand pounds from Lewis the Eighteenth, as a mark of gratitude for the great services which his Grace had rendered to the House of Bourbon; what would be thought of such a transaction? Yet the statute-book no more forbids the taking of presents in Europe now than it forbade the taking of presents in Asia then.
At the same time, it must be admitted that, in Clive’s case, there were many extenuating circumstances. He considered himself as the general, not of the Crown, but of the Company. The Company had, by implication at least, authorised its agents to enrich themselves by means of the liberality of the native princes, and by other means still more objectionable.
It was hardly to be expected that the servant should entertain stricter notions of his duty than were entertained 254by his masters. Though Clive did not distinctly acquaint his employers with what had taken place and request their sanction, he did not, on the other hand, by studied concealment, show that he was conscious of having done wrong. On the contrary, he avowed with the greatest openness that the Nabob’s bounty had raised him to affluence. Lastly, though we think that he ought not in such a way to have taken any thing, we must admit that he deserves praise for having taken so little. He accepted twenty lacs of rupees. It would have cost him only a word to make the twenty forty. It was a very easy exercise of virtue to declaim in England against Clive’s rapacity; but not one in a hundred of his accusers would have shown so much self-command in the treasury of Moorshedabad.
Meer Jaffier could be upheld on the throne only by the hand which had placed him on it. He was not, indeed, a mere boy; nor had he been so fortunate as to be born in the purple. He was not therefore quite so imbecile or quite so depraved as his predecessor had been. But he had none of the talents or virtues which his post required; and his son and heir, Meeran, was another Surajah Dowlah. The recent revolution had unsettled the minds of men. Many chiefs were in open insurrection against the new Nabob. The viceroy of the rich and powerful province of Oude, who, like the other viceroys of the Mogul, was now in truth an independent sovereign, menaced Bengal with invasion. Nothing but the talents and authority of Clive could support the tottering government. While things were in this state a ship arrived with despatches which had been written at the India House before the news of the battle of Plassey had reached London. The Directors had determined to place the English settlements in Ben gal 255under a government constituted in the most cumbrous and absurd manner; and, to make the matter worse, no place in the arrangement was assigned to Clive. The persons who were selected to form this new government, greatly to their honour, took on themselves the responsibility of disobeying these preposterous orders, and invited Clive to exercise the supreme authority. He consented; and it soon appeared that the servants of the Company had only anticipated the wishes of their employers. The Directors, on receiving news of Clive’s brilliant success, instantly appointed him governor of their possessions in Bengal, with the highest marks of gratitude and esteem. His power was now boundless, and far surpassed even that which Dupleix had attained in the south of India. Meer Jaffier regarded him with slavish awe. On one occasion, the Nabob spoke with severity to a native chief of high rank, whose followers had been engaged in a brawl with some of the Company’s sepoys. “Are you yet to learn,” he said, “who that Colonel Clive is, and in what station God has placed him?” The chief, who, as a famous jester and an old friend of Meer Jaffier, could venture to take liberties, answered, “I affront the Colonel! I, who never get up in the morning without making three low bows to his jackass!” This was hardly an exaggeration. Europeans and natives were alike at Clive’s feet. The English regarded him as the only man who could force Meer Jaffier to keep his engagements with them. Meer Jaffier regarded him as the only man who could protect the new dynasty against turbulent subjects and encroaching neighbours.
It is but justice to say that Clive used his power ably and vigorously for the advantage of his country. He sent forth an expedition against the tract lying to the 256north of the Carnatic. In this tract the French still had the ascendency; and it was important to dislodge them. The conduct of the enterprise was intrusted to an officer of the name of Forde, who was then little known, but in whom the keen eye of the governor had detected military talents of a high order. The success of the expedition was rapid and splendid.
While a considerable part of the army of Bengal was thus engaged at a distance, a new and formidable danger menaced the western frontier. The Great Mogul was a prisoner at Delhi in the hands of a subject. His eldest son, named Shah Alum, destined to be, during many years, the sport of adverse fortune, and to be a tool in the hands, first of the Mahrattas, and then of the English, had fled from the palace of his father. His birth was still revered in India. Some powerful princes, the Nabob of Oude in particular, were inclined to favour him. Shah Alum found it easy to draw to his standard great numbers of the military adventurers with whom every part of the country swarmed. An army of forty thousand men, of various races and religions, Mahrattas, Rohillas, Jauts, and Afghans, was speedily assembled round him; and he formed the design of overthrowing the upstart whom the English had elevated to a throne, and of establishing his own authority throughout Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar.
Meer Jaffier’s terror was extreme; and the only expedient which occurred to him was to purchase, by the payment of a large sum of money, an accommodation with Shah Alum. This expedient had been repeatedly employed by those who, before him, had ruled the rich and unwarlike provinces near the mouth of the Ganges. But Clive treated the suggestion with a scorn worthy of his strong sense and dauntless courage.
“If 257you do this,” he wrote, “you will have the Nabob of Oude, the Mahrattas, and many more, come from all parts of the confines of your country, who will bully you out of money till you have none left in your treasury. I beg your Excellency will rely on the fidelity of the English, and of those troops which are attached to you.” He wrote in a similar strain to the governor of Patna, a brave native soldier whom he highly esteemed. “Come to no terms; defend your city to the last. Rest assured that the English are stanch and firm friends, and that they never desert a cause in which they have once taken a part.”
He kept his word. Shah Alum had invested Patna, and was on the point of proceeding to storm, when he learned that the Colonel was advancing by forced marches. The whole army which was approaching consisted only of four hundred and fifty Europeans and two thousand five hundred sepoys. But Clive and his Englishmen were now objects of dread over all the East. As soon as his advanced guard appeared, the besiegers fled before him. A few French adventurers who were about the person of the prince advised him to try the chance of battle; but in vain. In a few days this great army, which had been regarded with so much uneasiness by the court of Moorshedabad, melted away before the mere terror of the British name.
The conqueror returned in triumph to Fort William. The joy of Meer Jaffier was as unbounded as his fears had been, and led him to bestow on his preserver a princely token of gratitude. The quit-rent which the East India Company were bound to pay to the Nabob for the extensive lands held by them to the south of Calcutta amounted to near thirty thousand pounds sterling a year. The whole of this splendid estate, 258sufficient to support with dignity the highest rank of the British peerage, was now conferred on Clive for life.
This present we think Clive was justified in accepting. It was a present which, from its very nature, could be no secret. In fact, the Company itself was his tenant, and, by its acquiescence, signified its approbation of Meer Jaffier’s grant.
But the gratitude of Meer Jaffier did not last long. He had for some time felt that the powerful ally who had set him up might pull him down, and had been looking round for support against the formidable strength by which he had himself been hitherto supported. He knew that it would be impossible to find among the natives of India any force which would look the Colonel’s little army in the face. The French power in Bengal was extinct. But the fame of the Dutch had anciently been great in the Eastern seas; and it was not yet distinctly known in Asia how much the power of Holland had declined in Europe. Secret communications passed between the court of Moorshedabad and the Dutch factory at Chinsurah; and urgent letters were sent from Chinsurah, exhorting the government of Batavia to fit out an expedition which might balance the power of the English in Bengal. The authorities of Batavia, eager to extend the influence of their country, and still more eager to obtain for themselves a share of the wealth which had recently raised so many English adventurers to opulence, equipped a powerful armament. Seven large ships from Java arrived unexpectedly in the Hoogley. The military force on board amounted to fifteen hundred men, of whom about one half were Europeans. The enterprise was well timed. Clive had sent such large detachments to 259oppose the French in the Carnatic that his army was now inferior in number to that of the Dutch. He knew that Meer Jaffier secretly favoured the invaders. He knew that he took on himself a serious responsibility if he attacked the forces of a friendly power; that the English ministers could not wish to see a war with Holland added to that in which they were already engaged with France; that they might disavow his acts; that they might punish him. He had recently remitted a great part of his fortune to Europe, through the Dutch East India Company; and he had therefore a strong interest in avoiding any quarrel. But he was satisfied that, if he suffered the Batavian armament to pass up the river and to join the garrison of Chinsurah, Meer Jaffier would throw himself into the arms of these new allies, and that the English ascendency in Bengal would be exposed to most serious danger. He took his resolution with characteristic boldness, and was most ably seconded by his officers, particularly by Colonel Forde, to whom the most important part of the operations was intrusted. The Dutch attempted to force a passage. The English encountered them both by land and water. On both elements the enemy had a great superiority of force. On both they were signally defeated. Their ships were taken. Their troops were put to a total rout. Almost all the European soldiers, who constituted the main strength of the invading army, were killed or taken. The conquerors sat down before Chinsurah; and the chiefs of that settlement, now thoroughly humbled, consented to the terms which Clive dictated. They engaged to build no fortifications, and to raise no troops beyond a small force necessary for the police of their factories; and it was distinctly provided that, any violation of these covenants 260should be punished with instant expulsion from Bengal.
Three months after this great victory, Clive sailed for. England. At home, honours and rewards awaited him, not indeed equal to his claims or to his ambition, but still such as, when his age, his rank in the army, and his original place in society are considered, must be pronounced rare and splendid. He was raised to the Irish peerage, and encouraged to expect an English title. George the Third, who had just ascended the throne, received him with great distinction. The ministers paid him marked attention; and Pitt, whose influence in the House of Commons and in the country was unbounded, was eager to mark his regard for one whose exploits had contributed so much to the lustre of that memorable period. The great orator had already in Parliament described Clive as a heaven-born general, as a man who, bred to the labour of the desk, had displayed a military genius which might excite the admiration of the King of Prussia. There were then no reporters in the gallery; but these words, emphatically spoken by the first statesman of the age, had passed from mouth to mouth, had been transmitted to Clive in Bengal, and had greatly delighted and flattered him. Indeed, since the death of Wolfe, Clive was the only English general of whom his countrymen had much reason to be proud. The Duke of Cumberland had been generally unfortunate; and his single victory, having been gained over his countrymen and used with merciless severity, had been more fatal to his popularity than his many defeats. Conway, versed in the learning of his profession, and personally courageous, wanted vigour and capacity. Granby, honest, generous, and as brave as a lion, had neither 261science nor genius. Sackville, inferior in knowledge and abilities to none of his contemporaries, bad incurred, unjustly as we believe, the imputation most fatal to the character of a soldier. It was under the command of a foreign general that the British had triumphed at Minden and Warburg. The people therefore, as was natural, greeted with pride and delight a captain of their own, whose native courage and self-taught skill had placed him on a level with the great tacticians of Germany.
The wealth of Clive was such as enabled him to vie with the first grandees of England. There remains proof that he had remitted more than a hundred and eighty thousand pounds through the Dutch East India Company, and more than forty thousand pounds through the English Company. The amount which he had sent home through private houses was also considerable. He had invested great sums in jewels, then a very common mode of remittance from India. His purchases of diamonds at Madras alone, amounted to twenty-five thousand pounds. Besides a great mass of ready money, he had his Indian estate, valued by himself at twenty-seven thousand a year. His whole annual income, in the opinion of Sir John Malcolm, who is desirous to state it as low as possible, exceeded forty thousand pounds; and incomes of forty thousand pounds at the time of the accession of George the Third were at least as rare as incomes of a hundred thousand pounds now. We may safely affirm that no Englishman who started with nothing, has ever, in any line of life, created such a fortune at the early age of thirty-four.
It would be unjust not to add that Clive made a creditable use of his riches. As soon as the battle of 262Plassey had laid the foundation of his fortune, he sent ten thousand pounds to his sisters, bestowed as much more on other poor friends and relations, ordered his agent to pay eight hundred a year to his parents, and to insist that they should keep a carriage, and settled five hundred a year on his old commander Lawrence, whose means were very slender. The whole sum which Clive expended in this manner may be calculated at fifty thousand pounds.
He now set himself to cultivate Parliamentary interest. His purchases of land seem to have been made in a great measure with that view, and, after the general election of 1761, he found himself in the House of Commons, at the head of a body of dependents whose support must have been important to any administration. In English politics, however, he did not take a prominent part. His first attachments, as we have seen, were to Mr. Fox; at a later period he was attracted by the genius and success of Mr. Pitt; but finally he connected himself in the closest manner with George Grenville. Early in the session of 1764, when the illegal and impolitic persecution of that worthless demagogue Wilkes had strongly excited the public mind, the town was amused by an anecdote, which we have seen in some unpublished memoirs of Horace Walpole. Old Mr. Richard Clive, who, since his son’s elevation, had been introduced into society for which his former habits had not well fitted him, presented himself at the levee. The King asked him where Lord Clive was. “He will be in town very soon,” said the old gentleman, loud enough to be heard by the whole circle, “and then your Majesty will have another vote.”
But in truth all Clive’s views were directed towards 263the country in which he had so eminently distinguished himself as a soldier and a statesman; and it was by considerations relating to India that his conduct as a public man in England was regulated. The power of the Company, though an anomaly, is in our time, we are firmly persuaded, a beneficial anomaly. In the time of Clive, it was not merely an anomaly, but a nuisance. There was no Board of Control. The Director were for the most part mere traders, ignorant of general politics, ignorant of the peculiarities of the empire which had strangely become subject to them. The Court of Proprietors, wherever it chose to interfere, was able to have its way. That court was more numerous, as well as more powerful, than at present; for then every share of five hundred pounds conferred a vote. The meetings were large, stormy, even riotous, the debates indecently virulent. All the turbulence of a Westminster election, all the trickery and corruption of a Grampound election, disgraced the proceedings of this assembly on questions of the most solemn importance. Fictitious votes were manufactured on a gigantic scale. Clive himself laid out a hundred thousand pounds in the purchase of stock, which he then divided among nominal proprietors on whom he could depend, and whom he brought down in his train to every discussion and every ballot. Others did the same, though not to quite so enormous an extent.
The interest taken by the public of England in Indian questions was then far greater than at present, and the reason is obvious. At present a writer enters the service young; he climbs slowly; he is fortunate if, at forty-five, he can return to his country with an annuity of a thousand a year, and with savings amounting to thirty thousand pounds. A great quantity of wealth is made 264by English functionaries in India; but no single functionary makes a very large fortune, and what is made is slowly, hardly, and honestly earned. Only four or five high political offices are reserved for public men from England. The residencies, the secretaryships, the seats in the boards of revenue and in the Sudder courts are all filled by men who have given the best years of life to the service of the Company; nor can any talents however splendid or any connections however powerful obtain those lucrative posts for any person who has not entered by the regular door, and mounted by the regular gradations. Seventy years ago, less money was brought home from the East than in our time. But it was divided among a very much smaller number of persons, and immense sums were often accumulated in a few months. Any Englishman, whatever his age might be, might hope to be one of the lucky emigrants. If he made a good speech in Leadenhall Street, or published a clever pamphlet in defence of the chairman, he might be sent out in the Company’s service, and might return in three or four years as rich as Pigot or as Clive. Thus the India House was a lottery-office, which invited everybody to take a chance, and held out ducal fortunes as the prizes destined for the lucky few. As soon as it was known that there was a part of the world where a lieutenant-colonel had one morning received as a present an estate as large as that of the Earl of Bath or the Marquess of Rockingham, and where it seemed that such a trifle as ten or twenty thousand pounds was to be had by any British functionary for the asking, society began to exhibit all the symptoms of the South Sea year, a feverish excitement, an ungovernable impatience to be rich, a contempt for slow, sure, and moderate gains. 265At the head of the preponderating party in the India House, had long stood a powerful, able, and ambitious director of the name of Sulivan. He had conceived a strong jealousy of Clive, and remembered with bitterness the audacity with which the late governor of Bengal had repeatedly set at nought the authority of the distant Directors of the Company. An apparent reconciliation took place after Clive’s arrival; but enmity remained deeply rooted in the hearts of both. The whole body of Directors was then chosen annually. At the election of 1763, Clive attempted to break down the power of the dominant faction. The contest was carried on with a violence which he describes as tremendous. Sulivan was victorious, and hastened to take his revenge. The grant of rent which Clive had received from Meer Jaffier was, in the opinion of the best English lawyers, valid. It had been made by exactly the same authority from which the Company had received their chief possessions in Bengal, and the Company had long acquiesced in it. The Directors, however, most unjustly determined to confiscate it, and Clive was forced to file a bill in Chancery against them.
But a great and sudden turn in affairs was at hand. Every ship from Bengal had for some time brought alarming tidings. The internal misgovernment of the province had reached such a point that it could go no further. What, indeed, was to be expected from a body of public servants exposed to temptation such that, as Clive once said, flesh and blood could not bear it, armed with irresistible power, and responsible only to the corrupt, turbulent, distracted, ill informed Company, situated at such a distance that the average interval between the sending of a dispatch and the receipt 266of an answer was above a year and a half? Accordingly, during the five years which followed the departure of Clive from Bengal, the misgovernment of the English was carried to a point such as seems hardly compatible with the very existence of society. The Roman proconsul, who, in a year or two, squeezed out of a province the means of rearing marble palaces and baths on the shores of Campania, of drinking from amber, of feasting on singing birds, of exhibiting armies of gladiators and flocks of camelopards; the Spanish viceroy, who, leaving behind him the curses of Mexico or Lima, entered Madrid with a long train of gilded coaches, and of sumpter-horses trapped and shod with silver, were now outdone. Cruelty, indeed, properly so called, was not among the vices of the servants of the Company. But cruelty itself could hardly have produced greater evils than sprang from their unprincipled eagerness to be rich. They pulled down their creature, Meer Jaffier. They set up in his place another Nabob, named Meer Cossim. But Meer Cossim had parts and a will; and, though sufficiently inclined to oppress his subjects himself, he could not bear to see them ground to the dust by oppressions which yielded him no profit, nay, which destroyed his revenue in the very source. The English accordingly pulled down Meer Cossim, and set up Meer Jaffier again; and Meer Cossim, after revenging himself by a massacre surpassing in atrocity that of the Black Hole, fled to the dominions of the Nabob of Oude. At every one of these revolutions, the new prince divided among his foreign masters whatever could be scraped together in the treasury of his fallen predecessor. The immense population of his dominions was given up as a prey to those who had made him a sovereign, and who could unmake him. The servants 267of the Company obtained, not for their employers, but for themselves, a monopoly of almost the whole internal trade. They forced the natives to buy dear and to sell cheap. They insulted with impunity the tribunals, the police, and the fiscal authorities of the country. They covered with their protection a set of native dependents who ranged through the provinces, spreading desolation and terror wherever they appeared. Every servant of a British factor was armed with all the power of his master; and his master was armed with all the power of the Company. Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness. They had been accustomed to live under tyranny, but never under tyranny like this. They found the little finger of the Company thicker than the loins of Surajah Dowlali. Under their old masters they had at least one resource: when the evil became insupportable, the people rose and pulled down the government. But the English government was not to be so shaken off. That government, oppressive as the most oppressive form of barbarian despotism, was strong with all the strength of civilisation. It resembled the government of evil Genii, rather than the government of human tyrants. Even despair could not inspire the soft Bengalee with courage to confront men of English breed, the hereditary nobility of mankind, whose skill and valour had so often triumphed in spite of tenfold odds. The unhappy race never attempted resistance. Sometimes they submitted in patient misery. Sometimes they fled from the white man, as their fathers had been used to fly from the Mahratta; and the palanquin of the English traveller was often carried through silent villages and 268towns, which the report of his approach had made desolate.
The foreign lords of Bengal were naturally objects of hatred to all the neighbouring powers; and to all the haughty race presented a dauntless front. The English armies, everywhere outnumbered, were everywhere victorious. A succession of commanders, formed in the school of Clive, still maintained the fame of their country. “It must be acknowledged,” says the Mussulman historian of those times, “that this nation’s presence of mind, firmness of temper, and undaunted bravery, are past all question. They join the most resolute courage to the most cautious prudence; nor have they their equals in the art of ranging themselves in battle array and fighting in order. If to so many military qualifications they knew how to join the arts of government, if they exerted as much ingenuity and solicitude in relieving the people of God, as they do in whatever concerns their military affairs, no nation in the world would be preferable to them, or worthier of command. But the people under their dominion groan everywhere, and are reduced to poverty and distress. Oh God! come to the assistance of thine afflicted servants, and deliver them from the oppressions which they suffer.”
It was impossible, however, that even the military establishment should long continue exempt from the vices which pervaded every other part of the government. Rapacity, luxury, and the spirit of insubordination spread from the civil service to the officers of the army, and from the officers to the soldiers. The evil continued to grow till every mess-room became the seat of conspiracy and cabal, and till the sepoys could be kept in order only by wholesale executions. 269At length the state of things in Bengal began to excite uneasiness at home. A succession of revolutions; a disorganized administration; the natives pillaged, yet the Company not enriched; every fleet bringing back fortunate adventurers who were able to purchase manors and to build stately dwellings, yet bringing back also alarming accounts of the financial prospects of the government; war on the frontiers; disaffection in the army; the national character disgraced by excesses resembling those of Verres and Pizarro; such was the spectacle which dismayed those who were conversant with Indian affairs. The general cry was that Clive, and Clive alone, could save the empire which he had founded.
This feeling manifested itself in the strongest manner at a very full General Court of Proprietors. Men of all parties, forgetting their feuds and trembling for their dividends, exclaimed that Clive was the man whom the crisis required, that the oppressive proceedings which had been adopted respecting his estate ought to be dropped, and that he ought to be entreated to return to India.
Clive rose. As to his estate, he said, he would make such propositions to the Directors, as would, he trusted, lead to an amicable settlement. But there was a still greater difficulty. It was proper to tell them that he never would undertake the government of Bengal while his enemy Sulivan was chairman of the Company. The tumult was violent. Sulivan could scarcely obtain a hearing. An overwhelming majority of the assembly was on Clive’s side. Sulivan wished to try the result of a ballot. But, according to the by-laws of the Company, there, can be no ballot except on a requisition signed by nine proprietors; and, though 270hundreds were present, nine persons could not be found to set their hands to such a requisition.
Clive was in consequence nominated Governor and Commander-in-chief of the British possessions in Bengal. But he adhered to his declaration, and refused to enter on his office till the event of the next election of Directors should be known. The contest was obstinate; but Clive triumphed. Sulivan, lately absolute master of the India House, was within a vote of losing his own seat; and both the chairman and the deputy-chairman were friends of the new governor.
Such were the circumstances under which Lord Clive sailed for the third and last time to India. In May, 1765, he reached Calcutta; and he found the whole machine of government even more fearfully disorganized than he had anticipated. Meer Jaffier, who had some time before lost his eldest son Meeran, had died while Clive was on his voyage out. The English functionaries at Calcutta had already received from home strict orders not to accept presents from the native princes. But, eager for gain, and unaccustomed to respect the commands of their distant, ignorant, and negligent masters, they again set up the throne of Bengal to sale. About one hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling was distributed among nine of the most powerful servants of the Company; and, in consideration of this bribe, an infant son of the deceased Nabob was placed on the seat of his father. The news of the ignominious bargain met Clive on his arrival. In a private letter, written immediately after his landing, to an intimate friend, he poured out his feelings in language which, proceeding from a man so daring, so resolute, and so little given to theatrical display of sentiment, seems to us singularly touching. “Alas!” he 271says, “how is the English name sunk! I could not avoid paying the tribute of a few tears to the departed and lost fame of the British nation—irrecoverably so, I fear. However, I do declare, by that great Being who is the searcher of all hearts, and to whom we must be accountable if there be a hereafter, that I am come out with a mind superior to all corruption, and that I am determined to destroy these great and growing evils, or perish in the attempt.”
The Council met, and Clive stated to them his full determination to make a thorough reform, and to use for that purpose the whole of the ample authority, civil and military, which had been confided to him. Johnstone, one of the boldest and worst men in the assembly, made some show of opposition. Clive interrupted him, and haughtily demanded whether he meant to question the power of the new government. Johnstone was cowed, and disclaimed any such intention. All the faces round the board grew long and pale; and not another syllable of dissent was uttered.
Clive redeemed his pledge. He remained in India about a year and a half; and in that short time effected one of the most extensive, difficult, and salutary reforms that ever was accomplished by any statesman. This was the part of his life on which he afterwards looked back with most pride. He had it in his power to triple his already splendid fortune; to connive at abuses while pretending to remove them; to conciliate the good-will of all the English in Bengal, by giving up to their rapacity a helpless and timid race, who knew not where lay the island which sent forth their oppressors, and whose complaints had little chance of being heard across fifteen thousand miles of ocean. He knew that if he applied himself in earnest to the work 272of reformation, he should raise every bad passion in arms against him. He knew how unscrupulous, how implacable, would be the hatred of those ravenous adventurers who, having counted on accumulating in a few months fortunes sufficient to support peerages, should find all their hopes frustrated. But he had chosen the good part; and he called up all the force of his mind for a battle far harder than that of Plassey. At first success seemed hopeless; but soon all obstacles began to bend before that iron courage and that vehement will. The receiving of presents from the natives was rigidly prohibited. The private trade of the servants of the Company was put down. The whole settlement seemed to be set, as one man, against these measures. But the inexorable governor declared that, if he could not find support at Fort William, he would procure it elsewhere, and sent for some civil servants from Madras to assist him in carrying on the administration. The most factious of his opponents he turned out of their offices. The rest submitted to what was inevitable; and in a very short time all resistance was quelled.
But Clive was far too wise a man not to see that the recent abuses were partly to be ascribed to a cause which could not fail to produce similar abuses, as soon as the pressure of his strong hand was withdrawn. The Company had followed a mistaken policy with respect to the remuneration of its servants. The salaries were too low to afford even those indulgences which are necessary to the health and comfort of Europeans in a tropical climate. To lay by a rupee from such scanty pay was impossible. It could not be supposed that men of even average abilities would consent to pass the best years of life in exile, under a burning sun. 273for no other consideration than these stinted wages. It had accordingly been understood, from a very early period, that the Company’s agents were at liberty to enrich themselves by their private trade. This practice had been seriously injurious to the commercial interests of the corporation. That very intelligent observer, Sir Thomas Roe, in the reign of James the First, strongly urged the Directors to apply a remedy to the abuse. “Absolutely prohibit the private trade,” said he; “for your business will be better done. I know this is harsh. Men profess they come not for bare wages. But you will take away this plea if you give great wages to their content; and then you know what you part from.”
In spite of this excellent advice, the Company adhered to the old system, paid low salaries, and connived at the indirect gains of the agents. The pay of a member of Council was only three hundred pounds a year. Yet it was notorious that such a functionary could not live in India for less than ten times that sum; and it could not be expected that he would be content to live even handsomely in India without laying up something against the time of his return to England. This system, before the conquest of Bengal, might affect the amount of the dividends payable to the proprietors, but could do little harm in any other way. But the Company was now a ruling body. Its servants might still be called factors, junior merchants, senior merchants. But they were in truth proconsuls, proprætors, procurators of extensive regions. They had immense power. Their regular pay was universally admitted to be insufficient. They were, by the ancient usage of the service, and by the implied permission of their employers, warranted in enriching 274themselves by indirect means; and this had been the origin of the frightful oppression and corruption which had desolated Bengal. Clive saw clearly that it was absurd to give men power, and to require them to live in penury. He justly concluded that no reform could be effectual which should not be coupled with a plan for liberally remunerating the civil servants of the Company. The Directors, he knew, were not disposed to sanction any increase of the salaries out of their own treasury. The only course which remained open to the governor was one which exposed him to much misrepresentation, but which we think him fully justified in adopting. He appropriated to the support of the service the monopoly of salt, which has formed, down to our own time, a principal head of Indian revenue; and he divided the proceeds according to a scale which seems to have been not unreasonably fixed. He was in consequence accused by his enemies, and has been accused by historians, of disobeying his instructions, of violating his promises, of authorising that very abuse which it was his special mission to destroy, namely the trade of the Company’s servants. But every discerning and impartial judge will admit, that there was really nothing in common between the system which he set up and that which he was sent to destroy. The monopoly of salt had been a source of revenue to the governments of India before Clive was born. It continued to be so long after his death. The civil servants were clearly entitled to a maintenance out of the revenue; and all that Clive did was to charge a particular portion of the revenue with their maintenance. He thus, while he put an end to the practices by which gigantic fortunes had been rapidly accumulated, gave to every British functionary employed in the East the means 275of slowly, but surely, acquiring a competence. Yet, such is the injustice of mankind, that none of those acts which are the real stains of his life has drawn on him so much obloquy as this measure, which was in truth a reform necessary to the success of all his other reforms.
He had quelled the opposition of the civil service: that of the army was more formidable. Some of the retrenchments which had been ordered by the Directors affected the interests of the military service; and a storm arose, such as even Caesar would not willingly have faced. It was no light thing to encounter the resistance of those who held the power of the sword, in a country governed only by the sword. Two hundred English officers engaged in a conspiracy against the government, and determined to resign their commissions on the same day, not doubting that Clive would grant any terms rather than see the army, on which alone the British empire in the East rested, left without commanders. They little knew the unconquerable spirit with which they had to deal. Clive had still a few officers round his person on whom he could rely. He sent to Fort St. George for a fresh supply. He gave commissions even to mercantile agents who were disposed to support him at this crisis; and he sent orders that every officer who resigned should be instantly brought up to Calcutta. The conspirators found that they had miscalculated. The governor was inexorable. The troops were steady. The sepoys, over whom Clive had always possessed extraordinary influence, stood by him with unshaken fidelity. The leaders in the plot were arrested, tried, and cashiered. The rest, humbled and dispirited, begged to be permitted to withdraw their resignations. Many of them declared their 276repentance even with tears. The younger offenders Clive treated with lenity. To the ringleaders he was inflexibly severe; but his severity was pure from all taint of private malevolence. While he sternly upheld the just authority of his office, he passed by personal insults and injuries with magnanimous disdain. One of the conspirators was accused of having planned the assassination of the governor; but Clive would not listen to the charge. “The officers,” he said, “are Englishmen, not assassins.”
While he reformed the civil service and established his authority over the army, he was equally successful in his foreign policy. His landing on Indian ground was the signal for immediate peace. The Nabob of Oude, with a large army, lay at that time on the frontier of Baliar. He had been joined by many Afghans and Mahrattas, and there was no small reason to expect a general coalition of all the native powers against the English. But the name of Clive quelled in an instant all opposition. The enemy implored peace in the humblest language, and submitted to such terms as the new governor chose to dictate.
At the same time, the Government of Bengal was placed on a new footing. The power of the English in that province had hitherto been altogether undefined. It was unknown to the ancient constitution of the empire, and it had been ascertained by no compact. It resembled the power which, in the last decrepitude of the Western Empire, was exercised over Italy by the great chiefs of foreign mercenaries, the Ricimers and the Odoacers, who put up and pulled down at their pleasure a succession of insignificant princes, dignified with the names of Cæsar and Augustus. But as in Italy, so in India, the warlike strangers at length found 277it expedient to give to a domination which had been established by arms the sanction of law and ancient prescription. Theodoric thought it politic to obtain from the distant court of Byzantium a commission appointing him ruler of Italy; and Clive, in the same manner, applied to the Court of Delhi for a formal grant of the powers of which he already possessed the reality. The Mogul was absolutely helpless; and, though he murmured, had reason to be well pleased that the English were disposed to give solid rupees, which he never could have extorted from them, in exchange for a few Persian characters which cost him nothing. A bargain was speedily struck; and the titular sovereign of Hindostan issued a warrant, empowering the Company to collect and administer the revenues of Bengal, Orissa, and Baliar.
There was still a Nabob, who stood to the British authorities in the same relation in which the last drivelling Chilperics and Childerics of the Merovingian line stood to their able and vigorous Mayors of the Palace, to Charles Martel and to Pepin. At one time Clive had almost made up his mind to discard this phantom altogether: but he afterwards thought that it might be convenient still to use the name of the Nabob, particularly in dealings with other European nations. The French, the Dutch, and the Danes, would, he conceived, submit far more readily to the authority of the native Prince, whom they had always been accustomed to respect, than to that of a rival trading corporation. This policy may, at that time, have been judicious. But the pretence was soon found to be too flimsy to impose on anybody; and it was altogether laid aside. The heir of Meer Jaffier still resides at Moorshedabad, the ancient capital of his house, still bears the title of 278Nabob, is still accosted by the English as “Your Highness,” and is still suffered to retain a portion of the regal state which surrounded his ancestors. A pension of a hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year is annually paid to him by the government. His carriage is surrounded by guards, and preceded by attendants with silver maces. His person and his dwelling are exempted from the ordinary authority of the ministers of justice. But he has not the smallest share of political power, and is, in fact, only a noble and wealthy subject of the Company.
It would have been easy for Clive, during his second administration in Bengal, to accumulate riches, such as no subject in Europe possessed. He might indeed, without subjecting the rich inhabitants of the province to any pressure beyond that to which their mildest rulers had accustomed them, have received presents to the amount of three hundred thousand pounds a year. The neighbouring princes would gladly have paid any price for his favour. But he appears to have strictly adhered to the rules which he had laid down for the guidance of others. The Rajah of Benares offered him diamonds of great value. The Nabob of Oude pressed him to accept a large sum of money, and a casket of costly jewels. Clive courteously but peremptorily refused: and it should be observed that he made no merit of his refusal, and that the facts did not come to light till after his death. He kept an exact account of his salary, of his share of the profits accruing from the trade in salt, and of those presents which, according to the fashion of the East, it would be churlish to refuse. Out of the sum arising from these resources he defrayed the expenses of his situation. The surplus he divided among a few attached friends who had accompanied 279him to India. He always boasted, and, as far as we can judge, he boasted with truth, that his last administration diminished instead of increasing his fortune.
One large sum indeed he accepted. Meer Jaffier had left him by will above sixty thousand pounds sterling in specie and jewels: and the rules which had been recently laid down extended only to presents from the living, and did not affect legacies from the dead. Clive took the money, but not for himself. He made the whole over to the Company, in trust for officers and soldiers invalided in their service. The fund which still bears his name, owes its origin to this princely donation. After a stay of eighteen months, the state of his health made it necessary for him to return to Europe. At the close of January, 1767, he quitted for the last time the country, on whose destinies he had exercised so mighty an influence.
His second return from Bengal was not, like his first, greeted by the acclamations of his countrymen. Numerous causes were already at work which embittered the remaining years of his life, and hurried him to an untimely grave. His old enemies at the India House were still powerful and active; and they had been reinforced by a large band of allies, whose violence far exceeded their own. The whole crew of pilferers and oppressors from whom he had rescued Bengal persecuted him with the implacable rancour which belong to such abject natures. Many of them even invested their property in India stock, merely that they might be better able to annoy the man whose firmness had set bounds to their rapacity. Lying newspapers were set up for no purpose but to abuse him; and the temper of the public mind was then such, that 280these arts, which under ordinary circumstances would have been ineffectual against truth and merit, produced an extraordinary impression.
The great events which had taken place in India had called into existence a new class of Englishmen, to whom their countrymen gave the name of Nabobs. These persons had generally sprung from families neither ancient nor opulent; they had generally been sent at an early age to the East; and they had there acquired large fortunes, which they had brought back to their native land. It was natural that, not having had much opportunity of mixing with the best society, they should exhibit some of the awkwardness and some of the pomposity of upstarts. It was natural that, during their sojourn in Asia, they should have acquired some tastes and habits surprising, if not disgusting, to persons who had never quitted Europe. It was natural that, having enjoyed great consideration in the East, they should not be disposed to sink into obscurity at home; and as they had money, and had not birth or high connection, it was natural that they should display a little obtrusively the single advantage that they possessed. Wherever they settled there was a kind of feud between them and the old nobility and gentry, similar to that which raged in France between the farmer-general and the marquess. This enmity to the aristocracy long continued to distinguish the servants of the Company. More than twenty years after the time of which we are now speaking, Burke pronounced that among the Jacobins might be reckoned “the East Indians almost to a man, who cannot bear to find that their present importance does not bear a proportion to their wealth.”.
The Nabobs soon became a most unpopular class of men. 281Some of them had in the East displayed eminent talents, and rendered great services to the state; but at home their talents were not shown to advantage, and their services were little known. That they had sprung from obscurity, that they had acquired great wealth, that they exhibited it insolently, that they spent it extravagantly, that they raised the price of every thing in their neighbourhood, from fresh eggs to rotten boroughs, that their liveries outshone those of dukes, that their coaches were finer than that of the Lord Mayor, that the examples of their large and ill governed households corrupted half the servants in the country, that some of them, with all their magnificence, could not catch the tone of good society, but, in spite of the stud and the crowd of menials, of the plate and the Dresden china, of the venison and the Burgundy, were still low men; these were things which excited, both in the class from which they had sprung and in the class into which they attempted to force themselves, the bitter aversion which is the effect of mingled envy and contempt. But when it was also rumoured that the fortune which had enabled its possessor to eclipse the Lord Lieutenant on the race-ground, or to carry the county against the head of a house as old as Domesday Book, had been accumulated by violating public faith, by deposing legitimate princes, by reducing whole provinces to beggary, all the higher and better as well as all the low and evil parts of human nature were stirred against the wretch who had obtained by guilt and dishonour the riches which he now lavished with arrogant and inelegant profusion. The unfortunate Nabob seemed to be made up of those foibles against which comedy has pointed the most merciless ridicule, and of those crimes which have thrown the deepest 282gloom over tragedy, of Turcaret and Nero, of Monsieur Jourdain and Richard the Third. A tempest of execration and derision, such as can be compared only to that outbreak of public feeling against the Puritans which took place at the time of the Restoration, burst on the servants of the Company. The humane man was horror-struck at the way in which they had got their money, the thrifty man at the way in which they spent it. The Dilettante sneered at their want of taste. The Maccaroni black-balled them as vulgar fellows. Writers the most unlike in sentiment and style, Methodists and libertines, philosophers and buffoons, were for once on the same side. It is hardly too much to say that, during a space of about thirty years, the whole lighter literature of England was coloured by the feelings which we have described. Foote brought on the stage an Anglo-Indian chief, dissolute, ungenerous, and tyrannical, ashamed of the humble friends of his youth, hating the aristocracy, yet childishly eager to be numbered among them, squandering his wealth on pandars and flatterers, tricking out his chairman with the most costly hot-house flowers, and astounding the ignorant with jargon about rupees, lacs, and jaghires. Mackenzie, with more delicate humour, depicted a plain country family raised by the Indian acquisitions of one of its members to sudden opulence, and exciting derision by an awkward mimicry of the maimers of the great. Cowper in that lofty expostulation which glows with the very spirit of the Hebrew poets, placed the oppression of India foremost in the list of those national crimes for which God had punished England with years of disastrous war, with discomfiture in her own seas, and with the loss of her transatlantic empire. If any of our readers will take 283the trouble to search in the dusty recesses of circulating libraries for some novel published sixty years ago, the chance is that the villain or sub-villain of the story will prove to be a savage old Nabob, with an immense fortune, a tawny complexion, a bad liver, and a worse heart.
Such, as far as we can now judge, was the feeling of the country respecting Nabobs in general. And Clive was eminently the Nabob, the ablest, the most celebrated, the highest in rank, the highest in fortune, of all the fraternity. His wealth was exhibited in a manner which could not fail to excite odium. He lived with great magnificence in Berkeley Square. He reared one palace in Shropshire and another at Claremont. His parliamentary influence might vie with that of the greatest families. But in all this splendour and power envy found something to sneer at. On some of his relations wealth and dignity seem to have sat as awkwardly as on Mackenzie’s Margery Mushroom. Nor was he himself, with all his great qualities, free from those weaknesses which the satirists of that age represented as characteristic of his whole class. In the field, indeed, his habits were remarkably simple. He was constantly on horseback, was never seen but in his uniform, never wore silk, never entered a palanquin, and was content with the plainest fare. But when he was no longer at the head of an army, he laid aside this Spartan temperance for the ostentatious luxury of a Sybarite. Though his person was ungraceful, and though his harsh features were redeemed from vulgar ugliness only by their stern, dauntless, and commanding expression, he was fond of rich and gay clothing, and replenished his wardrobe with absurd profusion. Sir John Malcolm gives us a letter worthy of Sir Matthew Mite, in 284which Clive orders “two hundred shirts, the best and finest that can be got for love or money.” A few follies of this description, grossly exaggerated by report, produced an unfavourable impression on the public mind. But this was not the worst. Black stories, of which the greater part were pure inventions, were circulated touching his conduct in the East. He had to bear the whole odium, not only of those bad acts to which he had once or twice stooped, but of all the bad acts of all the English in India, of bad acts committed when he was absent, nay, of bad acts which he had manfully opposed and severely punished. The very abuses against which he had waged an honest, resolute, and successful war, were laid to his account. He was, in fact, regarded as the personification of all the vices and weaknesses which the public, with or without reason, ascribed to the English adventurers in Asia. We have ourselves heard old men, who knew. nothing of his history, but who still retained the prejudices conceived in their youth, talk of him as an incarnate fiend. Johnson always held this language. Brown, whom Clive employed to lay out his pleasure grounds, was amazed to see in the house of his noble employer a chest which had once been filled with gold from the treasury of Moorshedabad, and could not understand how the conscience of the criminal could suffer him to sleep with such an object so near to his bedchamber. The peasantry of Surrey looked with mysterious horror on the stately house which was rising at Claremont, and whispered that the great wicked lord had ordered the walls to be made so thick in order to keep out the devil, who would one day carry him away bodily. Among the gaping clowns who drank in this frightful story was a worthless 285ugly lad of the name of Hunt, since widely known as William Huntington, S. S.; and the superstition which was strangely mingled with the knavery of that remarkable impostor seems to have derived no small nutriment from the tales which he heard of the life and character of Clive.
In the mean time, the impulse which Clive had given to the administration of Bengal was constantly becoming fainter and fainter. His policy was to a great extent abandoned; the abuses which he had suppressed began to revive; and at length the evils which a bad government had engendered were aggravated by one of those fearful visitations which the best government cannot avert. In the summer of 1770, the rains failed; the earth was parched up; the tanks were empty; the rivers shrank within their beds; and a famine, such as is known only in countries where every household depends for support on its own little patch of cultivation, filled the whole valley of the Ganges with misery and death. Tender and delicate women, whose veils had never been lifted before the public gaze, came forth from the inner chambers in which Eastern jealousy had kept watch over their beauty, threw themselves on the earth before the passers-by, and, with loud wailings, implored a handful of rice for their children. The Hoogley every day rolled down thousands of corpses close to the porticoes and gardens of the English conquerors. The very streets of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying and the dead. The lean and feeble survivors had not energy enough to bear the bodies of their kindred to the funeral pile or to the holy river, or even to scare away the jackals and vultures, who fed on human remains in the face of day. The extent of the mortality 286was never ascertained; but it was popularly reckoned by millions. This melancholy intelligence added to the excitement which already prevailed in England on Indian subjects. The proprietors of East India stock were uneasy about their dividends. All men of common humanity were touched by the calamities of our unhappy subjects; and indignation soon began to mingle itself with pity. It was rumoured that the Company’s servants had created the famine by engrossing all the rice of the country; that they had sold grain for eight, ten, twelve times the price at which they had bought it; that one English functionary who, the year before, was not worth a hundred guineas, had, during that season of misery, remitted sixty thousand pounds to London. These charges we believe to have been unfounded. That servants of the Company had ventured, since Clive’s departure, to deal in rice, is probable. That, if they dealt in rice, they must have gained by the scarcity, is certain. But there is no reason for thinking that they either produced or aggravated an evil which physical causes sufficiently explain. The outcry which was raised against them on this occasion was, we suspect, as absurd as the imputations which, in times of dearth at home, were once thrown by statesmen and judges, and are still thrown by two or three old women, on the corn factors. It was, however, so loud and so general that it appears to have imposed even on an intellect raised so high above vulgar prejudices as that of Adam Smith. What was still more extraordinary, these unhappy events greatly increased the unpopularity of Lord Clive. He had been some years in England when the famine took place. None of his acts had the smallest tendency to produce such a calamity. If the 287servants of the Company had traded in rice, they had done so in direct contravention of the rule which he had laid down, and, while in power, had resolutely enforced. But, in the eyes of his countrymen, he was, as we have said, the Nabob, the Anglo-Indian character personified; and, while he was building and planting in Surrey, he was held responsible for all the effects of a dry season in Bengal.
Parliament had hitherto bestowed very little attention on our Eastern possessions. Since the death of George the Second, a rapid succession of weak administrations, each of which was in turn flattered and betrayed by the Court, had held the semblance of power. Intrigues in the palace, riots in the capital, and insurrectionary movements in the American colonies, had left the advisers of the crown little leisure to study Indian politics. When they did interfere, their interference was feeble and irresolute. Lord Chatham, indeed, during the short period of his ascendency in the councils of George the Third, had meditated a bold attack on the Company. But his plans were rendered abortive by the strange malady which about that time began to overcloud his splendid genius.
At length, in 1772, it was generally felt that Parliament could no longer neglect the affairs of India. The Government was stronger than any which had held power since the breach between Mr. Pitt and the great Whig connection in 1761. No pressing question of domestic or European policy required the attention of public men. There was a short and delusive lull between two tempests. The excitement produced by the Middlesex election was over; the discontents of America did not yet threaten civil war; the financial difficulties of the Company brought on a crisis; the 288Ministers were forced to take up the subject; and the whole storm, which had long been gathering, now broke at once on the head of Clive.
His situation was indeed singularly unfortunate. He was hated throughout the country, hated at the India House, hated, above all, by those wealthy and powerful servants of the Company, whose rapacity and tyranny he had withstood. He had to bear the double odium of his bad and of his good actions, of every Indian abuse and of every Indian reform. The state of the political world was such that he could count on the support of no powerful connection. The party to which he had belonged, that of George Grenville, had been hostile to the Government, and yet had never cordially united with the other sections of the Opposition, with the little hand which still followed the fortunes of Lord Chatham, or with the large and respectable body of which Lord Rockingham was the acknowledged leader. George Grenville was now dead: his followers were scattered; and Clive, unconnected with any of the powerful factions which divided the Parliament, could reckon only on the votes of those members who were returned by himself. His enemies, particularly those who were the enemies of his virtues, were unscrupulous, ferocious, implacable. Their malevolence aimed at nothing less than the utter ruin of his fame and fortune. They wished to see him expelled from Parliament, to see his spurs chopped off, to see his estate confiscated; and it may be doubted whether even such a result as this would have quenched their thirst for revenge.
Clive’s parliamentary tactics resembled his military tactics. Deserted, surrounded, outnumbered, and with every thing at stake, he did not even deign to stand 289on the defensive, but pushed boldly forward to the attack. At an early stage of the discussions on Indian affairs he rose, and in a long and elaborate speech vindicated himself from a large part of the accusations which had been brought against him. He is said to have produced a great impression on his audience. Lord Chatham, who, now the ghost of his former self, loved to haunt the scene of his glory, was that night under the gallery of the House of Commons, and declared that he had never heard a finer speech. It was subsequently printed under Clive’s direction, and, when the fullest allowance has been made for the assistance which he may have obtained from literary friends, proves him to have possessed, not merely strong sense and a manly spirit, but talents both for disquisition and declamation which assiduous culture might have improved into the highest excellence. He confined his defence on this occasion to the measures of his last administration, and succeeded so far that his enemies thenceforth thought it expedient to direct their attacks chiefly against the earlier part of his life.
The earlier part of his life unfortunately presented some assailable points to their hostility. A committee was chosen by ballot to inquire into the affairs of India; and by this committee the whole history of that great revolution which threw down Surajah Dowlah and raised Meer Jaffier was sifted with malignant care. Clive was subjected to the most unsparing examination and cross-examination, and afterwards bitterly complained that he, the Baron of Plassey, had been treated like a sheep-stealer. The boldness and ingenuousness of his replies would alone suffice to show how alien from his nature were the frauds to which, in the course of his eastern negotiations, he had sometimes descended. 290He avowed the arts which he had employed to deceive Omichund, and resolutely said that he was not ashamed of them, and that, in the same circumstances, he would again act in the same manner. He admitted that he had received immense sums from Meer Jaffier; but he denied that, in doing so, he had violated any obligation of morality or honour. He laid claim, on the contrary, and not without some reason, to the praise of eminent disinterestedness. He described in vivid language the situation in which his victory had placed him; great princes dependent on his pleasure; an opulent city afraid of being given up to plunder; wealthy bankers bidding against each other for his smiles; vaults piled with gold and jewels thrown open to him alone. “By God, Mr. Chairman,” he exclaimed, “at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.”
The inquiry was so extensive that the House rose before it had been completed. It was continued in the following session. When at length the committee had concluded its labours, enlightened and impartial men had little difficulty in making up their minds as to the result. It was clear that Clive had been guilty of some acts which it is impossible to vindicate without attacking the authority of all the most sacred laws which regulate the intercourse of individuals and of states. But it was equally clear that he had displayed great talents, and even great virtues; that he had rendered eminent services both to his country and to the people of India; and that it was in truth not for his dealings with Meer Jaffier, nor for the fraud which he had practised on Omichund, but for his determined resistance to avarice and tyranny, that he was now called in question.
Ordinary criminal justice knows nothing of set-off. 291The greatest desert cannot be pleaded in answer to a charge of the slightest transgression. If a man has sold beer on Sunday morning, it is no defence that he has saved the life of a fellow-creature at the risk of his own. If he has harnessed a Newfoundland dog to his little child’s carriage, it is no defence that he was wounded at Waterloo. But it is not in this way that we ought to deal with men who, raised far above ordinary restraints, and tried by far more than ordinary temptations, are entitled to a more than ordinary measure of indulgence. Such men should be judged by their contemporaries as they will be judged by posterity. Their bad actions ought not, indeed, to be called good; but their good and bad actions ought to be fairly weighed; and if on the whole the good preponderate, the sentence ought to be one, not merely of acquittal, but of approbation. Not a single great ruler in history can be absolved by a judge who fixes his eye inexorably on one or two unjustifiable acts. Bruce the deliverer of Scotland, Maurice the deliverer of Germany, William the deliverer of Holland, his great descendant the deliverer of England, Murray the good regent, Cosmo the father of his country, Henry the Fourth of France, Peter the Great of Russia, how would the best of them pass such a scrutiny? History takes wider views; and the best tribunal for great political cases is the tribunal which anticipates the verdict of history.
Reasonable and moderate men of all parties felt this in Clive’s case. They could not pronounce him blameless; but they were not disposed to abandon him to that low-minded and rancorous pack who had run him down and were eager to worry him to death. Lord North, though not very friendly to him, was not disposed to go to extremities against him. While the inquiry was 292still in progress, Clive, who had some years before been created a Knight of the Bath, was installed with great pomp in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel. He was soon after appointed Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire. When he kissed hands, George the Third, who had always been partial to him, admitted him to a private audience, talked to him half an hour on Indian politics, and was visibly affected when the persecuted general spoke of his services and of the way in which they had been requited.
At length the charges came in a definite form before the House of Commons. Burgoyne, chairman of the committee, a man of wit, fashion, and honour, an agreeable dramatic writer, an officer whose courage was never questioned, and whose skill was at that time highly esteemed, appeared as the accuser. The members of the administration took different sides; for in that age all questions were open questions, except such as were brought forward by the Government, or such as implied some censure on the Government. Thurlow, the Attorney General, was among the assailants. Wedderbume, the Solicitor General, strongly attached to Clive, defended his friend with extraordinary force of argument and language. It is a curious circumstance that, some years later, Thurlow was the most conspicuous champion of Warren Hastings, while Wedderburne was among the most unrelenting persecutors of that great though not faultless statesman. Clive spoke in his own defence at less length and with less art than in the preceding year, but with much energy and pathos. He recounted his great actions and his wrongs; and, after bidding his hearers remember, that they were about to decide not only on his honour but on their own; he retired from the House.
The Commons resolved that acquisitions made by 293the arms of the State belong to the State alone, and that it is illegal in the servants of the State to appropriate such acquisitions to themselves. They resolved that this wholesome rule appeared to have been systematically violated by the English functionaries in Bengal. On a subsequent day they went a step farther, and resolved that Clive had, by means of the power, which he possessed as commander of the British forces in India, obtained large sums from Meer Jaffier. Here the Commons stopped. They had voted the major and minor of Burgoyne’s syllogism; but they shrank from drawing the logical conclusion. When it was moved that Lord Clive had abused his powers, and set an evil example to the servants of the public, the previous question was put and carried. At length, long after the sun had risen on an animated debate, Wedderburne moved that Lord Clive had at the same time rendered great and meritorious services to his country; and this motion passed without a division.
The result of this memorable inquiry appears to us, on the whole, honourable to the justice, moderation, and discernment of the Commons. They had indeed no great temptation to do wrong. They would have been very bad judges of an accusation brought against Jenkinson or against Wilkes. But the question respecting Clive was not a party question; and the House accordingly acted with the good sense and good feeling which may always be expected from an assembly of English gentlemen not blinded by faction.
The equitable and temperate proceedings of the British Parliament were set off to the greatest advantage by a foil. The wretched government of Lewis the Fifteenth had murdered, directly or indirectly, almost every Frenchman who had served his country 294with distinction in the East. Labourdonnais was flung into the Bastile, and, after years of suffering, left it only to die. Dupleix, stripped of his immense fortune, and broken-hearted by humiliating attendance in antechambers, sank into an obscure grave. Lally was dragged to the common place of execution with a gag between his lips. The Commons of England, on the other hand, treated their living captain with that discriminating justice which is seldom shown except to the dead. They laid down sound general principles; they delicately pointed out where he had deviated from those principles; and they tempered the gentle censure with liberal eulogy. The contrast struck Voltaire, always partial to England, and always eager to expose the abuses of the Parliaments of France. Indeed he seems, at this time, to have meditated a history of the conquest of Bengal. He mentioned his design to Dr. Moore when that amusing writer visited him at Ferney. Wedderburne took great interest in the matter, and pressed Clive to furnish materials. Had the plan been carried into execution, we have no doubt that Voltaire would have produced a book containing much lively and picturesque narrative, many just and humane sentiments poignantly expressed, many grotesque blunders, many sneers at the Mosaic chronology, much scandal about the Catholic missionaries, and much sublime theo-philanthropy, stolen from the New Testament, and put into the mouths of virtuous and philosophical Brahmins.
Clive was now secure in the enjoyment of his fortune and his honours. He was surrounded by attached friends and relations; and he had not yet passed the season of vigorous bodily and mental exertion. But clouds had long been gathering over his mind, and now 295settled on it in thick darkness. From early youth he had been subject to fits of that strange melancholy “which rejoiceth exceedingly and is glad when it can find the grave.” While still a writer at Madras, he had twice attempted to destroy himself. Business and prosperity had produced a salutary effect on his spirits. In India, while he was occupied by great affairs, in England, while wealth and rank had still the charm of novelty, he had borne up against his constitutional misery. But he had now nothing to do and nothing to wish for. His active spirit in an inactive situation drooped and withered like a plant in an uncongenial air. The malignity with which his enemies had pursued him, the indignity with which he had been treated by the committee, the censure, lenient as it was, which the House of Commons had pronounced, the knowledge that he was regarded by a large portion of his countrymen as a cruel and perfidious tyrant, all concurred to irritate and depress him. In the mean time his temper was tried by acute physical suffering. During his long residence in tropical climates, he had contracted several painful distempers. In order to obtain ease he called in the help of opium; and he was gradually enslaved by this treacherous ally. To the last, however, his genius occasionally flashed through the gloom. It was said that he would sometimes, after sitting silent and torpid for hours, rouse himself to the discussion of some great question, would display in full vigour all the talents of the soldier and the statesman, and would then sink back into his melancholy repose.
The disputes with America had now become so serious that an appeal to the sword seemed inevitable; and the Ministers were desirous to avail themselves of the services of Clive. Had he still been what he was when 296he raised the siege of Patna, and annihilated the Dutch army and navy at the mouth of the Ganges, it is not improbable that the resistance of the Colonists would have been put down, and that the inevitable separation would have been deferred for a few years. But it was too late. His strong mind was fast sinking under many kinds of suffering. On the twenty-second of November, 1774, he died by his own hand. He had just completed his forty-ninth year.
In the awful close of so much prosperity and glory, the vulgar saw only a confirmation of all their prejudices; and some men of real piety and genius so far forgot the maxims both of religion and of philosophy as confidently to ascribe the mournful event to the just vengeance of God, and to the horrors of an evil conscience. It is with very different feelings that we contemplate the spectacle of a great mind ruined by the weariness of satiety, by the pangs of wounded honour, by fatal diseases, and more fatal remedies.
Clive committed great faults; and we have not attempted to disguise them. But his faults, when weighed against his merits, and viewed in connection with his temptations, do not appear to us to deprive him of his right to an honourable place in the estimation of posterity.
From his first visit to India dates the renown of the English arms in the East. Till he appeared, his countrymen were despised as mere pedlars, while the French were revered as a people formed for victory and command. His courage and capacity dissolved the charm. With the defence of Arcot commences that long series of Oriental triumph which closes with the fall of Ghizni. Nor must we forget that he was only twenty-five years old when he approved himself ripe for military command. 297This is a rare if not a singular distinction. It is true that Alexander, Condé, and Charles the Twelfth, won great battles at a still earlier age; but those princes were surrounded by veteran generals of distinguished skill, to whose suggestions must be attributed the victories of the Granicus, of Rocroi, and of Narva. Clive, an inexperienced youth, had yet more experience than any of those who served under him. He had to form himself, to form his officers, and to form his army. The only man, as far as we recollect, who at an equally early age ever gave equal proof of talents for war, was Napoleon Bonaparte.
From Clive’s second visit to India dates the political ascendency of the English in that country. His dexterity and resolution realised, in the course of a few months, more than all the gorgeous visions which had floated before the imagination of Dupleix. Such an extent of cultivated territory, such an amount of revenue, such a multitude of subjects, was never added to the dominion of Rome by the most successful proconsul. Nor were such wealthy spoils ever borne under arches of triumph, down the Sacred Way, and through the crowded Forum, to the threshold of Tarpeian Jove. The fame of those who subdued Antiochus and Tigranes grows dim when compared with the splendour of the exploits which the young English adventurer achieved at the head of an army not equal in numbers to one half of a Roman legion.
From Clive’s third visit to India dates the purity of our Eastern empire. When he landed in Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was regarded as a place to which Englishmen were sent only to get rich, by any means, in the shortest possible time. He first made dauntless and unsparing war on that gigantic system of oppression, 298extortion, and corruption. In that war he manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame, and his splendid fortune. The same sense of justice which forbids us to conceal or extenuate the faults of his earlier days compels us to admit that those faults were nobly repaired. If the reproach of the Company and of its servants has been taken away, if in India the yoke of foreign masters, elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been found lighter than that of any native dynasty, if to that gang of public robbers, which formerly spread terror through the whole plain of Bengal, has succeeded a body of functionaries not more highly distinguished by ability and diligence than by integrity, disinterestedness, and public spirit, if we now see such men as Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, after leading victorious armies, after making and deposing kings, return, proud of their honourable poverty, from a land which once held out to every greedy factor the hope of boundless wealth, the praise is in no small measure due to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of conquerors. But it is found in a better list, in the list of those who have done and suffered much for the happiness of mankind. To the warrior, history will assign a place in the same rank with Lucullus and Trajan. Nor will she deny to the reformer a share of that veneration with which France cherishes the memory of Turgot, and with which the latest generations of Hindoos will contemplate the statue of Lord William Bentinck.
It 299is hardly necessary for us to say that this is an excellent book excellently translated. The original work of Professor Ranke is known and esteemed wherever German literature is studied, and has been found interesting even in a most inaccurate and dishonest French version. It is, indeed, the work of a mind fitted both for minute researches and for large speculations. It is written also in an admirable spirit, equally remote from levity and bigotry, serious and earnest, yet tolerant and impartial. It is, therefore, with the greatest pleasure that we now see this book take its place among the English classics. Of the translation we need only say that it is such as might be expected from the skill, the taste, and the scrupulous integrity of the accomplished lady who, as an interpreter between the mind of Germany and the mind of Britain, has already deserved so well of both countries.
The subject of this book has always appeared to us singularly interesting. How it was that Protestantism did so much, yet did no more, how it was that the
(1) The Ecclesiastical and Political History of the Popes
of Rome, during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. By
Leopold Ranke, Professor in the University of Berlin:
Translated from the German, by Sakah Austin. 3 vols. 8vo.
London: 1840.
300Church of Rome, having lost a large part of Europe, not only ceased to lose, but actually regained nearly half of what she had lost, is certainly a most curious and important question; and on this question Professor Ranke has thrown far more light than any other person who has written on it.
There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilisation. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and useful vigour. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin, and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the 301vast countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn, countries which, a century hence, may not improbably contain a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The members of her communion are certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty millions; and it will be difficult to show that all other Christian sects united amount to a hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.
We often hear it said that the world is constantly becoming more and more enlightened, and that this enlightening must be favourable to Protestantism, and unfavourable to Catholicism. We wish that we could think so. But we see great reason to doubt whether this be a well founded expectation. We see that during the last two hundred and fifty years the human mind has been in the highest degree active, that it has made great advances in every branch of natural philosophy, that it has produced innumerable inventions tending to promote the convenience of life, that medicine, surgery, chemistry, engineering, have been very greatly improved, that government, police, and law have been 302improved, though not to so great an extent as the physical sciences. But we see that, during these two hundred and fifty years, Protestantism has made no conquests worth speaking of. Nay, we believe that, as far as there has been a change, that change has, on the whole, been in favour of the Church of Rome. We cannot, therefore, feel confident that the progress of knowledge will necessarily be fatal to a system which has, to say the least, stood its ground in spite of the immense progress made by the human race in knowledge since the days of Queen Elizabeth.
Indeed the argument which we are considering, seems to us to be founded on an entire mistake. There are branches of knowledge with respect to which the law of the human mind is progress. In mathematics, when once a proposition has been demonstrated, it is never afterwards contested. Every fresh story is as solid a basis for a new superstructure as the original foundation was. Here, therefore, there is a constant addition to the stock of truth. In the inductive sciences again, the law is progress. Every day furnishes new facts, and thus brings theory nearer and nearer to perfection. There is no chance that, either in the purely demonstrative, or in the purely experimental sciences, the world will ever go back or even remain stationary. Nobody ever heard of a reaction against Taylor’s theorem, or of a reaction against Harvey’s doctrine of the circulation of the blood.
But with theology the case is very different. As respects natural religion,—revelation being for the present altogether left out of the question,—it is not easy to see that a philosopher of the present day is more favourably situated than Thales or Simonides. He has before him just the same evidences of design 303in the structure of the universe which the early Greeks had. We say just the same; for the discoveries of modern astronomers and anatomists have really added nothing to the force of that argument which a reflecting mind finds in every beast, bird, insect, fish, leaf, flower, and shell. The reasoning by which Socrates, in Xenophon’s hearing, confuted the little atheist Aristodemus, is exactly the reasoning of Paley’s Natural Theology. Socrates makes precisely the same use of the statues of Polycletus and the pictures of Zeuxis which Paley makes of the watch. As to the other great question, the question, what becomes of man after death, we do not see that a highly educated European, left to his unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass the Blackfoot Indians throws the smallest light on the state of the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted, without the help of revelation, to prove the immortality of man, from Plato down to Franklin, appear to us to have failed deplorably.
Then, again, all the great enigmas which perplex the natural theologian are the same in all ages. The ingenuity of a people just emerging from barbarism is quite sufficient to propound those enigmas. The genius of Locke or Clarke is quite unable to solve them. It is a mistake to imagine that subtle speculations touching the Divine attributes, the origin of evil, the necessity of human actions, the foundation of moral obligation, imply any high degree of intellectual culture. Such speculations, on the contrary, are in a peculiar manner the delight of intelligent children and of half civilised men. The number of boys is not 304small who, at fourteen, have thought enough on these questions to be fully entitled to the praise which Voltaire gives to Zadig. “Il en savait ce qu’on en a su dans tous les âges; c’est-à-dire, fort peu de chose.” The book of Job shows that, long before letters and arts were known to Ionia, these vexing questions were debated with no common skill and eloquence, under the tents of the Idumean Emirs; nor has human reason, in the course of three thousand years, discovered any satisfactory solution of the riddles which perplexed Eliphaz and Zophar.
Natural theology, then, is not a progressive science. That knowledge of our origin and of our destiny which we derive from revelation is indeed of very different clearness, and of very different importance. But neither is revealed religion of the nature of a progressive science. All Divine truth is, according to the doctrine of the Protestant Churches, recorded in certain books. It is equally open to all who, in any age, can read those books; nor can all the discoveries of all the philosophers in the world add a single verse to any of those books. It is plain, therefore, that in divinity there cannot be a progress analogous to that which is constantly taking place in pharmacy, geology, and navigation. A Christian of the fifth century with a Bible is neither better nor worse situated than a Christian of the nineteenth century with a Bible, candour and natural acuteness being, of course, supposed equal. It matters not at all that the compass, printing, gunpowder, steam, gas, vaccination, and a thousand other discoveries and inventions, which were unknown in the fifth century, are familiar to the nineteenth. None of these discoveries and inventions has the smallest bearing on the question 305whether man is justified by faith alone, or whether the invocation of saints is an orthodox practice. It seems to us, therefore, that we have no security for the future against the prevalence of any theological error that ever has prevailed in time past among Christian men. We are confident that the world will never go back to the solar system of Ptolemy; nor is our confidence in the least shaken by the circumstance, that even so great a man as Bacon rejected the theory of Galileo with scorn; for Bacon had not all the means of arriving at a sound conclusion which are within our reach, and which secure people who would not have been worthy to mend his pens from falling into his mistakes. But when we reflect that Sir Thomas More was ready to die for the doctrine of transubstantiation, we cannot but feel some doubt whether the doctrine of transubstantiation may not triumph over all opposition. More was a man of eminent talents. He had all the information on the subject that we have, or that, while the world lasts, any human being will have. The text, “This is my body,” was in his New Testament as it is in ours. The absurdity of the literal interpretation was as great and as obvious in the sixteenth century as it is now. No progress that science has made, or will make, can add to what seems to us the overwhelming force of the argument against the real presence. We are, therefore, unable to understand why what Sir Thomas More believed respecting transubstantiation may not be believed to the end of time by men equal in abilities and honesty to Sir Thomas More. But Sir Thomas More is one of the choice specimens of human wisdom and virtue; and the doctrine of transubstantiation is a kind of proof charge. A faith which stands that test will stand any test. The prophecies of Brothers 306and the miracles of Prince Hohenlohe sink to trifles in the comparison.
One reservation, indeed, must be made. The books and traditions of a sect may contain, mingled with propositions strictly theological, other propositions, purporting to rest on the same authority, which relate to physics. If new discoveries should throw discredit on the physical propositions, the theological propositions, unless they can be separated from the physical propositions, will share in that discredit. In this way, undoubtedly, the progress of science may indirectly serve the cause of religious truth. The Hindoo mythology, for example, is bound up with a most absurd geography. Every young Brahmin, therefore, who learns geography in our colleges, learns to smile at the Hindoo mythology. If Catholicism has not suffered to an equal degree from the Papal decision that the sun goes round the earth, this is because all intelligent Catholics now hold, with Pascal, that, in deciding the point at all, the Church exceeded her powers, and was, therefore, justly left destitute of that supernatural assistance which, in the exercise of her legitimate functions, the promise of her Founder authorised her to expect.
This reservation affects not at all the truth of our proposition, that divinity, properly so called, is not a progressive science. A very common knowledge of history, a very little observation of life, will suffice to prove that no learning, no sagacity, affords a security against the greatest errors on subjects relating to the invisible world. Bayle and Chillingworth, two of the most sceptical of mankind, turned Catholics from sincere conviction. Johnson, incredulous on all other points, was a ready believer in miracles and apparitions. He would not believe in Ossian; but he was willing to 307believe in the second sight. He would not believe in the earthquake of Lisbon; but he was willing to believe in the Cock Lane ghost.
For these reasons we have ceased to wonder at any vagaries of
superstition. We have seen men, not of mean intellect or neglected
education, but qualified by their talents and acquirements to attain
eminence either in active or speculative pursuits, well read scholars,
expert logicians, keen observers of life and manners, prophesying,
interpreting, talking unknown tongues, working miraculous cures, coming
down with messages from God to the House of Commons. We have seen an old
woman, with no talents beyond the cunning of a fortune-teller, and with
the education of a scullion, exalted into a prophetess, and surrounded by
tens of thousands of devoted followers, many of whom were, in station and
knowledge, immeasurably her superiors; and all this in the nineteenth
century; and all this in London. Yet why not? For of the dealings of God
with man no more has been revealed to the nineteenth century than to the
first, or to London than to the wildest parish in the Hebrides. It is true
that, in those things which concern this life and this world, man
constantly becomes wiser and wiser. But it is no less true that, as
respects a higher power and a future state, man, in the language of
Goethe’s scoffing fiend,
“bleibt stets
von gleichem Schlag,
Und ist so Wunderlich als
wie am ersten Tag.”
The history of Catholicism strikingly illustrates these observations. During the last seven centuries the public mind of Europe has made constant progress in every department of secular knowledge. But in religion we can trace no constant progress. The ecclesiastical 308history of that long period is a history of movement to and fro. Four times, since the authority of the Church of Rome was established in Western Christendom, has the human intellect risen up against her yoke. Twice that Church remained completely victorious. Twice she came forth from the conflict bearing the marks of cruel wounds, but with the principle of life still strong within her. When we reflect on the tremendous assaults which she has survived, we find it difficult to conceive in what way she is to perish.
The first of these insurrections broke out in the region where the beautiful language of Oc was spoken. That country, singularly favoured by nature, was, in the twelfth century, the most flourishing and civilised portion of Western Europe. It was in nowise a part of France. It had a distinct political existence, a distinct national character, distinct usages, and a distinct speech. The soil was fruitful and well cultivated; and amidst the cornfields and vineyards arose many rich cities, each of which was a little republic, and many stately castles, each of which contained a miniature of an imperial court. It was there that the spirit of chivalry first laid aside its terrors, first took a humane and graceful form, first appeared as the inseparable associate of art and literature, of courtesy and love. The other vernacular dialects which, since the fifth century, had sprung up in the ancient provinces of the Roman empire, were still rude and imperfect. The sweet Tuscan, the rich and energetic English, were abandoned to artisans and shepherds. No clerk had ever condescended to use such barbarous jargon for the teaching of science, for the recording of great events, or for the painting of life and manners; But the language of Provence was already the language of the learned and polite, and was 309employed by numerous writers, studious of all the arts of composition and versification. A literature rich in ballads, in war-songs, in satire, and, above all, in amatory poetry, amused the leisure of the knights and ladies, whose fortified mansions adorned the banks of the Rhone and Garonne. With civilisation had come freedom of thought. Use had taken away the horror with which misbelievers were elsewhere regarded. No Norman or Breton ever saw a Mussulman, except to give and receive blows on some Syrian field of battle. But the people of the rich countries which lay under the Pyrenees lived in habits of courteous and profitable intercourse with the Moorish kingdoms of Spain, and gave a hospitable welcome to skilful leeches and mathematicians who, in the schools of Cordova and Granada, had become versed in all the learning of the Arabians. The Greek, still preserving, in the midst of political degradation, the ready wit and the inquiring spirit of his fathers, still able to read the most perfect of human compositions, still speaking the most powerful and flexible of human languages, brought to the marts of Narbonne and Toulouse, together with the drugs and silks of remote climates, bold and subtle theories long unknown to the ignorant and credulous West. The Paulician theology, a theology in which, as it should seem, many of the doctrines of the modern Calvinists were mingled with some doctrines derived from the ancient Manichees, spread rapidly through Provence and Languedoc. The clergy of the Catholic Church were regarded with loathing and contempt. “Viler than a priest,” “I would as soon be a priest,” became proverbial expressions. The Papacy had lost all authority with all classes, from the great feudal princes down to the cultivators of the soil. 310The danger to the hierarchy was indeed formidable. Only one transalpine nation had emerged from barbarism; and that nation had thrown off all respect for Rome. Only one of the vernacular languages of Europe had yet been extensively employed for literary purposes; and that language was a machine in the hands of heretics. The geographical position of the sectaries made the danger peculiarly formidable. They occupied a central region communicating directly with France, with Italy, and with Spain. The provinces which were still untainted were separated from each other by this infected district. Under these circumstances, it seemed probable that a single generation would suffice to spread the reformed doctrine to Lisbon, to London, and to Naples. But this was not to be. Rome cried for help to the warriors of northern France. She appealed at once to their superstition and to their cupidity. To the devout believer she promised pardons as ample as those with which she had rewarded the deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre. To the rapacious and profligate she offered the plunder of fertile plains and wealthy cities. Unhappily, the ingenious and polished inhabitants of the Languedocian provinces were far better qualified to enrich and embellish their country than to defend it. Eminent in the arts of peace, unrivalled in the “gay science,” elevated above many vulgar superstitions, they wanted that iron courage, and that skill in martial exercises, which distinguished the chivalry of the region beyond the Loire, and were ill fitted to face enemies who, in every country from Ireland to Palestine, had been victorious against tenfold odds. A war, distinguished even among wars of religion by merciless atrocity, destroyed the Albigensian heresy, and with that heresy the 311prosperity, the civilisation, the literature, the national existence, of what was once the most opulent and enlightened part of the great European family. Rome, in the mean time, warned by that fearful danger from which the exterminating swords of her crusaders had narrowly saved her, proceeded to revise and to strengthen her whole system of polity. At this period were instituted the Order of Francis, the Order of Dominic, the Tribunal of the Inquisition. The new spiritual police was everywhere. No alley in a great city, no hamlet on a remote mountain, was unvisited by the begging friar. The simple Catholic, who was content to be no wiser than his fathers, found, wherever he turned, a friendly voice to encourage him. The path of the heretic was beset by innumerable spies; and the Church, lately in danger of utter subversion, now appeared to be impregnably fortified by the love, the reverence, and the terror of mankind.
A century and a half passed away; and then came the second great rising up of the human intellect against the spiritual domination of Rome. During the two generations which followed the Albigensian crusade, the power of the Papacy had been at the height. Frederic the Second, the ablest and most accomplished of the long line of German Cæsars, had in vain exhausted all the resources of military and political skill in the attempt to defend the rights of the civil power against the encroachments of the Church. The vengeance of the priesthood had pursued his house to the third generation. Manfred had perished on the field of battle, Conradin on the scaffold. Then a turn took place. The secular authority, long unduly depressed, regained the ascendant with startling rapidity. The change is doubtless to be ascribed chiefly to the general 312disgust excited by the way in which the Church had abused its power and its success. But something must be attributed to the character and situation of individuals. The man who bore the chief part in effecting this revolution was Philip the Fourth of France, surnamed the Beautiful, a despot by position, a despot by temperament, stern, implacable, and unscrupulous, equally prepared for violence and for chicanery, and surrounded by a devoted band of men of the sword and of men of law. The fiercest and most highminded of the Roman Pontiffs, while bestowing kingdoms and citing great princes to his judgment-seat, was seized in his palace by armed men, and so foully outraged that he died mad with rage and terror. “Thus,” sang the great Florentine poet, “was Christ, in the person of his vicar, a second time seized by ruffians, a second time mocked, a second time drenched with the vinegar and the gall.” The seat of the Papal court was carried beyond the Alps, and the Bishops of Rome became dependents of France. Then came the great schism of the West. Two Popes, each with a doubtful title, made all Europe ring with their mutual invectives and anathemas. Rome cried out against the corruptions of Avignon; and Avignon, with equal justice, recriminated on Rome. The plain Christian people, brought up in the belief that it was a sacred duty to be in communion with the head of the Church, were unable to discover, amidst conflicting testimonies and conflicting arguments, to which of the two worthless priests who were cursing and reviling each other, the headship of the Church rightfully belonged. It was nearly at this juncture that the voice of John Wickliffe began to make itself heard. The public mind of England was soon stirred to its inmost depths; and the influence of 313the new doctrines was soon felt, even in the distant kingdom of Bohemia. In Bohemia, indeed, there had long been a predisposition to heresy. Merchants from the Lower Danube were often seen in the fairs of Prague; and the Lower Danube was peculiarly the seat of the Paulician theology. The Church, torn by schism, and fiercely assailed at once in England and in the German empire, was in a situation scarcely less perilous than at the crisis which preceded the Albigensian crusade.
But this danger also passed by. The civil power gave its strenuous support to the Church; and the Church made some show of reforming itself. The Council of Constance put an end to the schism. The whole Catholic world was again united under a single chief; and rules were laid down which seemed to make it improbable that the power of that chief would be grossly abused. The most distinguished teachers of the new doctrine were slaughtered. The English government put down the Lollards with merciless rigour; and, in the next generation, scarcely one trace of the second great revolt against the Papacy could be found, except among the rude population of the mountains of Bohemia.
Another century went by; and then began the third and the most memorable struggle for spiritual freedom. The times were changed. The great remains of Athenian and Roman genius were studied by thousands. The Church had no longer a monopoly of learning. The powers of the modern languages had at length been developed. The invention of printing had given new facilities to the intercourse of mind with mind. With such auspices commenced the great Reformation. 314We will attempt to lay before our readers, in a short compass, what appears to us to be the real history of the contest which began with the preaching of Luther against the Indulgences, and which may, in one sense, be said to have been terminated, a hundred and thirty years later, by the treaty of Westphalia.
In the northern parts of Europe the victory of Protestantism was rapid and decisive. The dominion of the Papacy was felt by the nations of Teutonic blood as the dominion of Italians, of foreigners, of men who were aliens in language, manners, and intellectual constitution. The large jurisdiction exercised by the spiritual tribunals of Rome seemed to be a degrading badge of servitude. The sums which, under a thousand pretexts, were exacted by a distant court, were regarded both as a humiliating and as a ruinous tribute. The character of that court excited the scorn and disgust of a grave, earnest, sincere, and devout people. The new theology spread with a rapidity never known before. All ranks, all varieties of character, joined the ranks of the innovators. Sovereigns impatient to appropriate to themselves the prerogatives of the Pope, nobles desirous to share the plunder of abbeys, suitors exasperated by the extortions of the Roman Camera, patriots impatient of a foreign rule, good men scandalized by the corruptions of the Church, bad men desirous of the license inseparable from great moral revolutions, wise men eager in the pursuit of truth, weak men allured by the glitter of novelty, all were found on one side. Alone among the northern nations the Irish adhered to the ancient faith: and the cause of this seems to have been that the national feeling which, in happier countries, was directed against Rome, was in Ireland directed against England. Within 315fifty years from the day on which Luther publicly renounced communion with the Papacy, and burned the bull of Leo before the gates of Wittenberg, Protestantism attained its highest ascendency, an ascendency which it soon lost, and which it has never regained. Hundreds, who could well remember Brother Martin a devout Catholic, lived to see the revolution of which he was the chief author, victorious in half the states in Europe. In England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Livonia, Prussia, Saxony, Hesse, Wurtemburg, the Palatinate, in several cantons of Switzerland, in the Northern Netherlands, the Reformation had completely triumphed; and in all the other countries on this side of the Alps and the Pyrenees, it seemed on the point of triumphing.
But while this mighty work was proceeding in the north of Europe, a revolution of a very different kind had taken place in the south. The temper of Italy and Spain was widely different from that of Germany and England. As the national feeling of the Teutonic nations impelled them to throw off the Italian supremacy, so the national feeling of the Italians impelled them to resist any change which might deprive their country of the honours and advantages which she enjoyed as the seat of the government of the Universal Church. It was in Italy that the tributes were spent of which foreign nations so bitterly complained. It was to adorn Italy that the traffic in Indulgences had been carried to that scandalous excess which had roused the indignation of Luther. There was among the Italians both much piety and much impiety: but, with very few exceptions, neither the piety nor the impiety took the turn of Protestantism. The religious Italians desired a reform of morals and discipline, but 316not a reform of doctrine, and least of all a schism. The irreligious Italians simply disbelieved Christianity, without hating it. They looked at it as artists or as statesmen; and, so looking at it, they liked it better in the established form than in any other. It was to them what the old Pagan worship was to Trajan and Pliny. Neither the spirit of Savonarola nor the spirit of Machiavelli had any thing in common with the spirit of the religious or political Protestants of the North.
Spain again was, with respect to the Catholic Church, in a situation very different from that of the Teutonic nations. Italy was, in truth, a part of the empire of Charles the Fifth; and the court of Rome was, on many important occasions, his tool. He had not, therefore, like the distant princes of the North, a strong selfish motive for attacking the Papacy. In fact, the very measures which provoked the Sovereign of England to renounce all connection with Rome were dictated by the Sovereign of Spain. The feeling, of the Spanish people concurred with the interest of the Spanish government. The attachment of the Castilian to the faith of his ancestors was peculiarly strong and ardent. With that faith were inseparably bound up the institutions, the independence, and the glory of his countiy. Between the day when the last Gothic king was vanquished on the banks of the Xeres, and the day when Ferdinand and Isabella entered Granada in triumph, near eight hundred years had elapsed; and during those years the Spanish nation had been engaged in a desperate struggle against misbelievers. The Crusades had been merely an episode in the history of other nations. The existence of Spain had been one long Crusade. After fighting Mussulmans in the Old 317World, she began to fight heathens in the New. It was under the authority of a Papal bull that her children steered into unknown seas. It was under the standard of the cross that they marched fearlessly into the heart of great kingdoms. It was with the cry of “St. James for Spain,” that they charged armies which outnumbered them a hundredfold. And men said that the Saint had heard the call, and had himself, in arms, on a gray war-horse, led the onset before which the worshippers of false gods had given way. After the battle, every excess of rapacity or cruelty was sufficiently vindicated by the plea that the sufferers were unbaptized. avarice stimulated zeal. Zeal consecrated avarice. Proselytes and gold mines were sought with equal ardour. In the very year in which the Saxons, maddened by the exactions of Rome, broke loose from her yoke, the Spaniards, under the authority of Rome, made themselves masters of the empire and of the treasures of Montezuma. Thus Catholicism which, in the public mind of Northern Europe, was associated with spoliation and oppression, was in the public mind of Spain associated with liberty, victory, dominion, wealth, and glory.
It is not, therefore, strange that the effect of the great outbreak of Protestantism in one part of Christendom should have been to produce an equally violent outbreak of Catholic zeal in another. Two reformations were pushed on at once with equal energy and effect, a reformation of doctrine in the North, a reformation of manners and discipline in the South. In the course of a single generation, the whole spirit of the church of Rome underwent a change. From the halls of the Vatican to the most secluded hermitage of the Apennines, the great revival wad 318everywhere felt and seen. All the institutions anciently devised for the propagation and defence of the faith were furbished up and made efficient. Fresh engines of still more formidable power were constructed. Everywhere old religious communities were remodelled and new religious communities called into existence. Within a year after the death of Leo, the order of Camaldoli was purified. The Capuchins restored the old Franciscan discipline, the midnight prayer and the life of silence. The Barnabites and the society of Somasca devoted themselves to the relief and education of the poor. To the Theatine order a still higher interest belongs. Its great object was the same with that of our early Methodists, namely to supply the deficiencies of the parochial clergy. The Church of Rome, wiser than the Church of England, gave every countenance to the good work. The members of the new brotherhood preached to great multitudes in the streets and in the fields, prayed by the beds of the sick, and administered the last sacraments to the dying. Foremost among them in zeal and devotion was Gian Pietro Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul the Fourth. In the convent of the Theatines at Venice, under the eye of Caraffa, a Spanish gentleman took up his abode, tended the poor in the hospitals, went about in rags, starved himself almost to death, and often sallied into the streets, mounted on stones, and, waving his hat to invite the passers-by, began to preach in a strange jargon of mingled Castilian and Tuscan. The Theatines were among the most zealous and rigid of men; but to this enthusiastic neophyte their discipline seemed lax, and their movements sluggish; for his own mind, naturally passionate and imaginative, had passed through a training which had given to all its peculiarities a morbid 319intensity and energy. In his early life lie had been the very prototype of the hero of Cervantes. The single study of the young Hidalgo had been chivalrous romance; and his existence had been one gorgeous day-dream of princesses rescued and infidels subdued. He had chosen a Dulcinea, “no countess, no duchess,”—these are his own words,—but one of far higher station and he flattered himself with the hope of laying at her feet the keys of Moorish castles and the jewelled turbans of Asiatic kings. In the midst of these visions of martial glory and prosperous love, a severe wound stretched him on a bed of sickness. His constitution was shattered and he was doomed to be a cripple for life. The palm of strength, grace, and skill in knightly exercises, was no longer for him. He could no longer hope to strike down gigantic soldans, or to find favour in the sight of beautiful women. A new vision then arose in his mind, and mingled itself with his own delusions in a manner which to most Englishmen must seem singular, but which those who know how close was the union between religion and chivalry in Spain will be at no loss to understand. He would still be a soldier; he would still be a knight errant; but the soldier and knight errant of the spouse of Christ. He would smite the Great Red Dragon. He would be the champion of the Woman clothed with the Sun. He would break the charm under which false prophets held the souls of men in bondage. His restless spirit led him to the Syrian deserts, and to the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. Thence he wandered back to the farthest West, and astonished the convents of Spain and the schools of France by his penances and vigils. The same lively imagination which had been employed in picturing the 320tumult of unreal battles, and the charms of unreal queens, now peopled his solitude with saints and angels. The Holy Virgin descended to commune with him. He saw the Saviour face to face with the eye of flesh. Even those mysteries of religion which are the hardest trial of faith were in his case palpable to sight. It is difficult to relate without a pitying smile that, in the sacrifice of the mass, he saw transubstantiation take place, and that, as he stood praying on the steps of the Church of St. Dominic, he saw the Trinity in Unity, and wept aloud with joy and wonder. Such was the celebrated Ignatius Loyola, who, in the great Catholic reaction, bore the same part which Luther bore in the great Protestant movement.
Dissatisfied with the system of the Theatines, the enthusiastic Spaniard turned his face towards Rome. Poor, obscure, without a patron, without recommendations, he entered the city where now two princely temples, rich with painting and many-coloured marble, commemorate his great services to the Church; where his form stands sculptured in massive silver; where his bones, enshrined amidst jewels, are placed beneath the altar of God. His activity and zeal bore down all opposition; and under his rule the order of Jesuits began to exist, and grew rapidly to the full measure of his gigantic powers. With what vehemence, with what policy, with what exact discipline, with what dauntless courage, with what self-denial, with what forgetfulness of the dearest private ties, with what intense and stubborn devotion to a single end, with what unscrupulous laxity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battle of their church, is written in every page of the annals of Europe during several generations. In the order of Jesus was concentrated the 321quintessence of the Catholic spirit; and the history of the order of Jesus is the history of the great Catholic reaction. That order possessed itself at once of all the strongholds which command the public mind, of the pulpit, of the press, of the confessional, of the academies. Wherever the Jesuit preached, the church was too small for the audience. The name of Jesuit on a title-page secured the circulation of a book. It was in the ears of the Jesuit that the powerful, the noble, and the beautiful, breathed the secret history of their lives. It was at the feet of the Jesuit that the youth of the higher and middle classes were brought up from childhood to manhood, from the’ first rudiments to the courses of rhetoric and philosophy. Literature and science, lately associated with infidelity or with heresy, now became the allies of orthodoxy. Dominant in the South of Europe, the great order soon went forth conquering and to conquer. In spite of oceans and deserts, of hunger and pestilence, of spies and penal laws, of dungeons and racks, of gibbets and quartering-blocks, Jesuits were to be found under every disguise, and in every country; scholars, physicians, merchants, serving men; in the hostile court of Sweden, in the old manor-house of Cheshire, among the hovels of Connaught; arguing, instructing, consoling, stealing away the hearts of the young, animating the courage of the timid, holding up the crucifix before the eyes of the dying. Nor was it less their office to plot against the thrones and lives of the apostate kings, to spread evil rumours, to raise tumults, to inflame civil wars, to arm the hand of the assassin. Inflexible in nothing but in their fidelity to the Church, they were equally ready to appeal in her cause to the spirit of loyalty and to the spirit of freedom. Extreme doctrines of obedience 322and extreme doctrines of liberty, the right of rulers to misgovern the people, the right of every one of the people to plunge his knife in the heart of a bad ruler, were inculcated by the same man, according as he addressed himself to the subject of Philip or to the subject of Elizabeth. Some described these divines as the most rigid, others as the most indulgent of spiritual directors; and both descriptions were correct. The truly devout listened with awe to the high and saintly morality of the Jesuit. The gay cavalier who had run his rival through the body, the frail beauty who had forgotten her marriage-vow, found in the Jesuit an easy well-bred man of the world, who knew how to make allowance for the little irregularities of people of fashion. The confessor was strict or lax, according to the temper of the penitent. The first object was to drive no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were bad people, it was better that they should be bad Catholics than bad Protestants. If a person was so unfortunate as to be a bravo, a libertine, or a gambler, that was no reason for making him a heretic too.
The Old World was not wide enough for this strange activity. The Jesuits invaded all the countries which the great maritime discoveries of the preceding age had laid open to European enterprise. They were to be found in the depths of the Peruvian mines, at the marts of the African slave-caravans, on the shores of the Spice Islands, in the observatories of China. They made converts in regions which neither avarice nor curiosity had tempted any of their countrymen to enter; and preached and disputed in tongues of which no other native of the West understood a word.
The spirit which appeared so eminently in this order animated the whole Catholic world. The Court of 323Rome itself was purified. During the generation which preceded the Reformation, that court had been a scandal to the Christian name. Its annals are black with treason, murder, and incest. Even its more respectable members were utterly unfit to be ministers of religion. They were men like Leo the Tenth; men who, with the Latinity of the Augustan age, had acquired its atheistical and scoffing spirit. They regarded those Christian mysteries, of which they were stewards, just as the Augur Cicero and the high Pontiff Cæsar regarded the Sibylline books and the pecking of the sacred chickens. Among themselves, they spoke of the Incarnation, the Eucharist, and the Trinity, in the same tone in which Cotta and Velleius talked of the oracle of Delphi or the voice of Faunus in the mountains. Their years glided by in a soft dream of sensual and intellectual voluptuousness. Choice cookery, delicious wines, lovely women, hounds, falcons, horses, newly discovered manuscripts of the classics, sonnets and burlesque romances in the sweetest Tuscan, just as licentious as a fine sense of the graceful would permit, plate from the hand of Benvenuto, designs for palaces by Michael Angelo, frescoes by Raphael, busts, mosaics, and gems just dug up from among the ruins of ancient temples and villas, these things were the delight and even the serious business of their lives. Letters and the fine arts undoubtedly owe much to this not inelegant sloth. But when the great Stirling of the mind of Europe began, when doctrine after doctrine was assailed, when nation after nation withdrew from communion with the successor of St. Peter, it was felt that the Church could not be safely confided to chiefs whose highest praise was that they were good judges of Latin compositions, of 324paintings, and of statues, whose severest studies had a pagan character, and who were suspected of laughing in secret at the sacraments which they administered, and of believing no more of the Gospel than of the Morgante Maggiore. Men of a very different class now rose to the direction of ecclesiastical affairs, men whose spirit resembled that of Dunstan and of Becket. The Roman Pontiffs exhibited in their own persons all the austerity of the early anchorites of Syria. Paul the Fourth brought to the Papal throne the same fervent zeal which had carried him into the Theatine convent. Pius the Fifth, under his gorgeous vestments, wore day and night the hair shirt of a simple friar, walked barefoot in the streets at the head of processions, found, even in the midst of his most pressing avocations, time for private prayer, often regretted that the public duties, of his station were unfavourable to growth of holiness, and edified his flock by innumerable instances of humility, charity, and forgiveness of personal injuries, while, at the same time, he upheld the authority of his see, and the unadulterated doctrines of his Church, with all the stubbornness and vehemence of Hildebrand. Gregory the Thirteenth exerted himself not only to imitate but to surpass Pius in the severe virtues of his sacred profession. As was the head, such were the members. The change in the spirit of the Catholic world may be traced in every walk of literature and of art. It will be at once perceived by every person who compares the poem of Tasso with that of Ariosto, or the monuments of Sixtus the Fifth with those of Leo the Tenth.
But it was not on moral influence alone that the Catholic Church relied. The civil sword in Spain and Italy was unsparingly employed in her support. The 325Inquisition was armed with new powers and inspired with a new energy. If Protestantism, or the semblance of Protestantism, showed itself in any quarter, it was instantly met, not by petty, teasing persecution, but by persecution of that sort which bows down and crashes all but a very few select spirits. Whoever was suspected of heresy, whatever his rank, his learning, or his reputation, knew that he must purge himself to the satisfaction of a severe and vigilant tribunal, or die by fire. Heretical books were sought out and destroyed with similar rigour. Works which were once in every house were so effectually suppressed that no copy of them is now to be found in the most extensive libraries. One book in particular, entitled “Of the Benefits of the Death of Christ,” had this fate. It was written in Tuscan, was many times reprinted, and was eagerly read in every part of Italy. But the inquisitors detected in it the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone. They proscribed it; and it is now as hopelessly lost as the second decade of Livy.
Thus, while the Protestant reformation proceeded rapidly at one extremity of Europe, the Catholic revival went on as rapidly at the other. About half a century after the great separation, there were, throughout the North, Protestant governments and Protestant nations. In the South were governments and nations actuated by the most intense zeal for the ancient Church. Between these two hostile regions lay, morally as well as geographically, a great debatable land. In France, Belgium, Southern Germany, Hungary, and Poland, the contest was still undecided. The governments of those countries had not renounced their connection with Rome; but the Protestants were numerous, powerful, bold, and active. In France, they formed a commonwealth 326within the realm, held fortresses, were able to bring great armies into the field, and had treated with their sovereign on terms of equality. In Poland, the King was still a Catholic; but the Protestants had the upper hand in the Diet, filled the chief offices in the administration, and, in the large towns, took possession of the parish churches. “It appeared,” says the Papal nuncio, “that in Poland, Protestantism would completely supersede Catholicism.” In Bavaria, the state of things was nearly the same. The Protestants had a majority in the Assembly of the States, and demanded from the duke concessions in favour of their religion, as the price of their subsidies. In Transylvania, the House of Austria was unable to prevent the Diet from confiscating, by one sweeping decree, the estates of the Church. In Austria Proper it was generally said that only one thirtieth part of the population could be counted on as good Catholics. In Belgium the adherents of the new opinions were reckoned by hundreds of thousands.
The history of the two succeeding generations is the history of the struggle between Protestantism possessed of the North of Europe, and Catholicism possessed of the South, for the doubtful territory which lay between. All the weapons of carnal and of spiritual warfare were employed. Both sides may boast of great talents and of great virtues. Both have to blush for many follies and crimes. At first the chances seemed to be decidedly in favour of Protestantism; but the victory remained with the Church of Rome. On every point she was successful. If we overleap another half century, we find her victorious and dominant in France, Belgium, Bavaria, Bohemia, Austria, Poland, and Hungary. Nor has Protestantism, in the course of two 327hundred years been able to reconquer any portion of what was then lost.
It is, moreover, not to be dissembled that this triumph of the Papacy is to be chiefly attributed, not to the force of arms, but to a great reflux in public opinion. During the first half century after the commencement of the Reformation, the current of feeling in the countries on this side of the Alps and of the Pyrenees ran impetuously towards the new doctrines. Then the tide turned, and rushed as fiercely in the opposite direction. Neither during the one period, nor during the other, did much depend upon the event of battles or sieges. The Protestant movement was hardly checked for an instant by the defeat at Muhlberg.
The Catholic reaction went on at full speed in spite of the destruction of the Armada. It is difficult to say whether the violence of the first blow or of the recoil was the greater. Fifty years after the Lutheran separation, Catholicism could scarcely maintain itself on the shores of the Mediterranean. A hundred years after the separation, Protestantism could scarcely maintain itself on the shores of the Baltic. The causes of this memorable turn in human affairs well deserve to be investigated.
The contest between the two parties bore some resemblance to the fencing-match in Shakspeare; “Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes.” The war between Luther and Leo was a war between firm faith and unbelief, between zeal and apathy, between energy and indolence, between seriousness and frivolity, between a pure morality and vice. Very different was the war which degenerate Protestantism had to wage against regenerate Catholicism. To the debauchee, 328the poisoners, the atheists, who had worn the tiara during the generation which preceded the Reformation, had succeeded Popes who, in religious fervour and severe sanctity of manners, might bear a comparison with Cyprian or Ambrose. The order of Jesuits alone could show many men not inferior in sincerity, constancy, courage, and austerity of life, to the apostles of the Reformation. But while danger had thus called forth in the bosoms of the Church of Rome many of the highest qualities of the Reformers, the Reformers had contracted some of the corruptions which had been justly censured in the Church of Rome. They had become lukewarm and worldly. Their great old leaders had been borne to the grave, and had left no successors. Among the Protestant princes there was little or no hearty Protestant feeling. Elizabeth herself was a Protestant rather from policy than from firm conviction. James the First, in order to effect his favourite object of marrying his son into one of the great continental houses, was ready to make immense concessions to Rome, and even to admit a modified primacy in the Pope. Henry the Fourth twice abjured the reformed doctrines from interested motives. The Elector of Saxony, the natural head of the Protestant party in Germany, submitted to become, at the most important crisis of the struggle, a tool in the hands of the Papists. Among the Catholic sovereigns, on the other hand, we find a religious zeal often amounting to fanaticism. Philip the Second was a Papist in a very different sense from that in which Elizabeth was a Protestant. Maximilian of Bavaria, brought up under the teaching of the Jesuits, was a fervent missionary wielding the powers of a prince. The Emperor Ferdinand the Second deliberately put 329his throne to hazard over and over again, rather than make the smallest concession to the spirit of religious innovation. Sigismund of Sweden lost a crown which he might have preserved if he would have renounced the Catholic faith. In short, everywhere on the Protestant side we see languor; everywhere on the Catholic side we see ardour and devotion.
Not only was there, at this time, a much more intense zeal among the
Catholics than among the Protestants; but the whole zeal of the Catholics
was directed against the Protestants, while almost the whole zeal of the
Protestants was directed against each other. Within the Catholic Church
there were no serious disputes on points of doctrine. The decisions of the
Council of Trent were received; and the Jansenian controversy had not yet
arisen. The whole force of Rome was, therefore, effective for the purpose
of carrying on the war against the Reformation. On the other hand, the
force which ought to have fought the battle of the Reformation was
exhausted in civil conflict. While Jesuit preachers, Jesuit confessors,
Jesuit teachers of youth, overspread Europe, eager to expend every faculty
of their minds and every drop of their blood in the cause of their Church,
Protestant doctors were confuting, and Protestant rulers were punishing,
sectaries who were just as good Protestants as themselves.
“Cumque superba foret Babylon spolianda tropaeis,
Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos.”
In the Palatinate, a Calvinistic prince persecuted the Lutherans. In Saxony, a Lutheran prince persecuted the Calvinists. Everybody who objected to any of the articles of the Confession of Augsburg was banished from Sweden. In Scotland, Melville was 330disputing with other Protestants on questions of ecclesiastical government. In England the gaols were filled with men, who, though zealous for the Reformation, did not exactly agree with the Court on all points of discipline and doctrine. Some were persecuted for denying the tenet of reprobation; some for not wearing surplices. The Irish people might at that time have been, in all probability, reclaimed from Popery, at the expense of half the zeal and activity which Whitgift employed in oppressing Puritans, and Martin Marprelate in reviling bishops.
As the Catholics in zeal and in union had a great advantage over the Protestants, so had they also an infinitely superior organization. In truth, Protestantism, for aggressive purposes, had no organization at all. The Reformed Churches, were mere national Churches. The Church of England existed for England alone. It was an institution as purely local as the Court of Common Pleas, and was utterly without any machinery for foreign operations. The Church of Scotland, in the same manner, existed for Scotland alone. The operations of the Catholic Church, on the other hand, took in the whole world. Nobody at Lambeth or at Edinburgh troubled himself about what was doing in Poland or Bavaria. But Cracow and Munich were at Rome objects of as much interest as the purlieus of St. John Lateran. Our island, the head of the Protestant interest, did not send out a single missionary or a single instructor of youth to the scene of the great spiritual war. Not a single seminary was established here for the purpose of furnishing a supply of such persons to foreign countries. On the other hand, Germany, Hungary, and Poland were filled with able and active Catholic emissaries of Spanish or Italian birth; and 331colleges for the instruction of the northern youth were founded at Rome. The spiritual force of Protestantism was a mere local militia, which might be useful in case of an invasion, but could not be sent abroad, and could therefore make no conquests. Rome had such a local militia; but she had also a force disposable at a moment’s notice for foreign service, however dangerous or disagreeable. If it was thought at head-quarters that a Jesuit at Palermo was qualified by his talents and character to withstand the Reformers in Lithuania, the order was instantly given and instantly obeyed. In a month, the faithful servant of the Church was preaching, catechising, confessing, beyond the Niemen.
It is impossible to deny that the polity of the Church of Rome is the very master-piece of human wisdom. In truth, nothing but such a polity could, against such assaults, have borne up such doctrines. The experience of twelve hundred eventful years, the ingenuity and patient care of forty generations of statesmen, have improved that polity to such perfection that, among the contrivances which have been devised for deceiving and oppressing mankind it occupies the highest place. The stronger our conviction that reason and scripture were decidedly on the side of Protestantism, the greater is the reluctant admiration with which we regard that system of tactics against which reason and scripture were employed in vain.
If we went at large into this most interesting subject we should fill volumes. We will, therefore, at present, advert to only one important part of the policy of the Church of Rome. She thoroughly understands, what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts. In some sects, particularly in infant sects, enthusiasm is suffered to be rampant. In other sects, 332particularly in sects long established and richly endowed, it is regarded with aversion. The Catholic Church neither submits to enthusiasm nor proscribes it, but uses it. She considers it as a great moving force which in itself, like the muscular power of a fine horse, is neither good nor evil, but which may be so directed as to produce great good or great evil; and she assumes the direction to herself. It would be absurd to run down a horse like a wolf. It would be still more absurd to let him run wild, breaking fences and trampling down passengers. The rational course is to subjugate his will without impairing his vigour, to teach him to obey the rein and then to urge him to full speed. When once he knows his master, he is valuable in proportion to his strength and spirit. Just such has been the system of the Church of Rome with regard to enthusiasts. She knows that, when religious feelings have obtained the complete’ empire of the mind, they impart a strange energy, that they raise men above the dominion of pain and pleasure, that obloquy becomes glory, that death itself is contemplated only as the beginning of a higher and happier life. She knows that a person in this state is no object of contempt. He may be vulgar, ignorant, visionary, extravagant; but he will do and suffer things which it is for her interest that somebody should do and suffer, yet from which calm and sober-minded men would shrink. She accordingly enlists him in her service, assigns to him some forlorn hope, in which intrepidity and impetuosity are more wanted than judgment and self-command, and sends him forth with her benediction and her applause.
In England it not unfrequently happens that a tinker or coalheaver hears a sermon or falls in with a tract which alarms him about the state of his soul. If he be a 333man of excitable nerves and strong imagination, he thinks himself given over to the Evil Power. He doubts whether he has not committed the unpardonable sin. He imputes every wild fancy that springs up in his mind to the whisper of a fiend. His sleep is broken by dreams of the great judgment seat, the open books, and the unquenchable fire. If, in order to escape from these vexing thoughts, he flies to amusement or to licentious indulgence, the delusive relief only makes his misery darker and more hopeless. At length a turn takes place. He is reconciled to his offended Maker. To borrow the fine imagery of one who had himself been thus tried, he emerges from the Valley of the Shadow of death, from the dark land of gins and snares, of quagmires and precipices, of evil spirits and ravenous beasts. The sunshine is on his path. He ascends the Delectable Mountains, and catches from their summit a distant view of the shining city which is the end of his pilgrimage. Then arises in his mind a natural and surely not a censurable desire, to impart to others the thoughts of which his own heart is full, to warn the careless, to comfort those who are troubled in spirit. The impulse which urges him to devote his whole life to the teaching of religion is a strong passion in the guise of a duty. He exhorts his neighbours; and, if he be a man of strong parts, he often does so with great effect. He pleads as if he were pleading for his life, with tears, and pathetic gestures, and burning words; and he soon finds with delight, not perhaps wholly unmixed with the alloy of human infirmity, that his rude eloquence rouses and melts hearers who sleep very composedly while the rector preaches on the apostolical succession. Zeal for God, love for his fellow-creatures, pleasure in the exercise of his newly discovered powers, 334impel him to become a preacher. He has no quarrel with the establishment, no objection to its formularies, its government, or its vestments. He would gladly be admitted among its humblest ministers. But, admitted or rejected, he feels that his vocation is determined. His orders have come down to him, not through a long and doubtful series of Arian and Popish bishops, but direct from on high. His commission is the same that, on the Mountain of Ascension was given to the Eleven. Nor will he, for lack of human credentials, spare to deliver the glorious message with which he is charged by the true Head of the Church. For a man thus minded, there is within the pale of the establishment no place. He has been at no college; he cannot construe a Greek author or write a Latin theme; and he is told that, if he remains in the communion of the Church, he must do so as a hearer, and that, if he is resolved to be a teacher, he must begin by being a schismatic. His choice is soon made. He harangues on Tower Hill or in Smithfield. A congregation is formed. A license is obtained. A plain brick building, with a desk and benches, is run up, and named Ebenezer or Bethel. In a few weeks the Church has lost for ever a hundred families, not one of which entertained the least scruple about her articles, her liturgy, her government, or her ceremonies.
Far different is the policy of Rome. The ignorant enthusiast whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy, and, whatever the polite and learned may think, a most dangerous enemy, the Catholic Church makes a champion. She bids him nurse his beard, covers him with a gown and hood of coarse dark stuff, ties a rope round his waist, and sends him forth to teach in her name. He costs her nothing. He takes not a ducat 335away from the revenues of her beneficed clergy. He lives by the alms of those who respect his spiritual character, and are grateful for his instructions. He preaches, not exactly in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of uneducated hearers; and all his influence is employed to strengthen the Church of which he is a minister. To that Church he becomes as strongly attached as any of the cardinals whose scarlet carriages and liveries crowd the entrance of the palace on the Quirinal. In this way the Church of Rome unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the strength of dissent. With the utmost pomp of a dominant hierarchy above, she has all the energy of the voluntary system below. It would be easy to mention very recent instances in which the hearts of hundreds of thousands, estranged from her by the selfishness, sloth, and cowardice of the beneficed clergy, have been brought back by the zeal of the begging friars.
Even for female agency there is a place in her system. To devout women she assigns spiritual functions, dignities, and magistracies. In our country, if a noble lady is moved by more than ordinary zeal for the propagation of religion, the chance is that, though she may disapprove of no doctrine or ceremony of the Established Church, she will end by giving her name to a new schism. If a pious and benevolent woman enters the cells of a prison to pray with the most unhappy and degraded of her own sex, she does so without any authority from the Church. No line of action is traced out for her; and it is well if the Ordinary does not complain of her intrusion, and if the Bishop does not shake his head at such irregular benevolence. At Rome, the Countess of Huntingdon would have a place in 336the calendar as St. Selina, and Mrs. Fry would be foundress and first Superior of the Blessed Order of Sisters of the Gaols.
Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. He is certain to become the head of a formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome. He is certain to be the first General of a new society devoted to the interests and honour of the Church. Place St. Theresa in London. Her restless enthusiasm ferments into madness, not untinctured with craft. She becomes the prophetess, the mother of the faithful, holds disputations with the devil, issues sealed pardons to her adorers, and lies in of the Shiloh. Place Joanna Southcote at Rome. She founds an order of barefooted Carmelites, every one of whom is ready to suffer martyrdom for the Church; a solemn service is consecrated to her memory; and her statue, placed over the holy water, strikes the eye of every stranger who enters St. Peter’s.
We have dwelt long on this subject, because we believe that of the many causes to which the Church of Rome owed her safety and her triumph at the close of the sixteenth century, the chief was the profound policy with which she used the fanaticism of such persons as St Ignatius and St. Theresa.
The Protestant party was now indeed vanquished and humbled. In France so strong had been the Catholic reaction that Henry the Fourth found it necessary to choose between his religion and his crown. In spite of his clear hereditary right, in spite of his eminent personal qualities, he saw that, unless he reconciled himself to the Church of Rome, he could not count on the fidelity even of those gallant gentlemen whose impetuous valour had turned the tide of battle at Ivry. In Belgium, Poland, and Southern Germany, Catholicism 337had obtained complete ascendency. The resistance of Bohemia was put down. The Palatinate was conquered. Upper and Lower Saxony were overflowed by Catholic invaders. The King of Denmark stood forth as the Protector of the Reformed Churches: he was defeated, driven out of the empire, and attacked in his own possessions. The armies of the House of Austria pressed on, subjugated Pomerania, and were stopped in their progress only by the ramparts of Stralsund.
And now again the tide turned. Two violent outbreaks of religious feeling in opposite directions had given a character to the history of a whole century. Protestantism had at first driven back Catholicism to the Alps and the Pyrenees. Catholicism had rallied, and had driven back Protestantism even to the German Ocean. Then the great southern reaction began to slacken, as the great northern movement had slackened before. The zeal of the Catholics waxed cool. Their union was dissolved. The paroxysm of religious excitement was over on both sides. One party had degenerated as far from the spirit of Loyola as the other from the spirit of Luther. During three generations religion had been the mainspring of politics. The revolutions and civil wars of France, Scotland, Holland, Sweden, the long struggle between Philip and Elizabeth, the bloody competition for the Bohemian crown, had all originated in theological disputes. But a great change now took place. The contest which was raging in Germany lost its religious character. It was now, on one side, less a contest for the spiritual ascendency of the Church of Rome than for the temporal ascendency of the House of Austria. On the other side, it was less a contest for the reformed doctrines than for 338national independence. Governments began to form themselves into new combinations, in which community of political interest was far more regarded than community of religious belief. Even at Rome the progress of the Catholic arms was observed with mixed feelings. The Supreme Pontiff was a sovereign prince of the second rank, and was anxious about the balance of power as well as about the propagation of truth. It was known that he dreaded the rise of an universal monarchy even more than he desired the prosperity of the Universal Church. At length a great event announced to the world that the war of sects bad ceased, and that the war of states had succeeded. A coalition, including Calvinists, Lutherans, and Catholics, was formed against the House of Austria. At the head of that coalition were the first statesman and the first warrior of the age; the former a prince of the Catholic Church, distinguished by the vigour and success with which he had put down the Huguenots; the latter a Protestant king, who owed his throne to a revolution caused by hatred of Popery. The alliance of Richelieu and Gustavus marks the time at which the great religious struggle terminated. The war which followed was a war for the equilibrium of Europe. When, at length, the peace of Westphalia was concluded, it appeared that the Church of Rome remained in full possession of a vast dominion, which in the middle of the preceding century she seemed to be on the point of losing. No part of Europe remained Protestant, except that part which had become thoroughly Protestant before the generation which heard Luther preach had passed away.
Since that time there has been no religious war between Catholics and Protestants as such. In the time 339of Cromwell, Protestant England was united with Catholic France, then governed by a priest, against Catholic Spain. William the Third, the eminently Protestant hero, was at the head of a coalition which included many Catholic powers, and which was secretly favoured even by Rome, against the Catholic Lewis. In the time of Anne, Protestant England and Protestant Holland joined with Catholic Savoy and Catholic Portugal, for the purpose of transferring the crown of Spain from one bigoted Catholic to another.
The geographical frontier between the two religions has continued to run almost precisely where it ran at the close of the Thirty Years’ War; nor has Protestantism given any proofs of that “expansive power” which has been ascribed to it. But the Protestant boasts, and boasts most justly, that wealth, civilisation, and intelligence, have increased far more on the northern than on the southern side of the boundary, and that countries so little favoured by nature as Scotland and Prussia are now among the most flourishing and best governed portions of the world, while the marble palaces of Genoa are deserted, while banditti infest the beautiful shores of Campania, while the fertile sea-coast of the Pontifical State is abandoned to buffaloes and wild boars. It cannot be doubted that, since the sixteenth century, the Protestant nations have made decidedly greater progress than their neighbours. The progress made by those nations in which Protestantism, though not finally successful, yet maintained a long struggle, and left permanent traces, has generally been considerable. But when we come to the Catholic Land, to the part of Europe in which the first spark of reformation was trodden out as soon as it appeared, and from which proceeded the impulse which drove 340Protestantism back, we find, at best, a very slow progress, and on the whole a retrogression. Compare Denmark and Portugal. When Luther began to preach, the superiority of the Portuguese was unquestionable. At present, the superiority of the Danes is no less so. Compare Edinburgh and Florence. Edinburgh has owed less to climate, to soil, and to the fostering care of rulers than any capital, Protestant or Catholic. In all these respects, Florence has been singularly happy. Yet whoever knows what Florence and Edinburgh were in the generation preceding the Reformation, and what they are now, will acknowledge that some great cause has, during the last three centuries, operated to raise one part of the European family, and to depress the other. Compare the history of England and that of Spain during the last century. In arms, arts, sciences, letters, commerce, agriculture, the contrast is most striking. The distinction is not confined to this side of the Atlantic. The colonies planted by England in America have immeasurably outgrown in power those planted by Spain. Yet we have no reason to believe that, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Castilian was in any respect inferior to the Englishman. Our firm belief is, that the North owes its great civilisation and prosperity chiefly to the moral, effect of the Protestant Reformation, and that the decay of the Southern countries of Europe is to be mainly ascribed to the great Catholic revival.
About a hundred years after the final settlement of the boundary line between Protestantism and Catholicism, began to appear the signs of the fourth great peril of the Church of Rome. The storm which was now rising against her was of a very different kind from those which had preceded it. Those who had formerly 341attacked her had questioned only a part of her doctrines. A school was now growing up which rejected the whole. The Albigenses, the Lollards, the Lutherans, the Calvinists, had a positive religious system, and were strongly attached to it. The creed of the new sectaries was altogether negative. They took one of their premises from the Protestants, and one from the Catholics. From the latter they borrowed the principle, that Catholicism was the only pure and genuine Christianity. With the former, they held that some parts of the Catholic system were contrary to reason. The conclusion was obvious. Two propositions, each of which separately is compatible with the most exalted piety, formed, when held in conjunction, the groundwork of a system of irreligion. The doctrine of Bossuet, that transubstantiation is affirmed in the Gospel, and the doctrine of Tillotson, that transubstantiation is an absurdity, when put together, produced by logical necessity the inferences of Voltaire.
Had the sect which was rising at Paris been a sect of mere scoffers, it is very improbable that it would have left deep traces of its existence in the institutions and manners of Europe. Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action. It inspires no enthusiasm. It has no missionaries, no crusaders, no martyrs. If the Patriarch of the Holy Philosophical Church had contented himself with making jokes about Saul’s asses and David’s wives, and with criticizing the poetry of Ezekiel in the same narrow spirit in which he criticized that of Shakspeare, Rome would have had little to fear. But it is due to him and to his compeers to say that the real secret of their strength lay in the truth which 342was mingled with their errors, and in the generous enthusiasm which was hidden under their flippancy. They were men who, with all their faults, moral and intellectual, sincerely and earnestly desired the improvement of the condition of the human race, whose blood boiled at the sight of cruelty and injustice, who made manful war, with every faculty which they possessed, on what they considered as abuses, and who on many signal occasions placed themselves gallantly between the powerful and the oppressed. While they assailed Christianity with a rancour and an unfairness disgraceful to men who called themselves philosophers, they yet had, in far greater measure than their opponents, that charity towards men of all classes and races which Christianity enjoins. Religious persecution, judicial torture, arbitrary imprisonment, the unnecessary multiplication of capital punishments, the delay and chicanery of tribunals, the exactions of farmers of the revenue, slavery, the slave trade, were the constant subjects of their lively satire and eloquent disquisitions. When an innocent man was broken on the wheel at Toulouse, when a youth, guilty only of an indiscretion, was beheaded at Abbeville, when a brave officer, borne down by public injustice, was dragged, with a gag in his mouth, to die on the Place de Grève, a voice instantly went forth from the banks of Lake Leman, which made itself heard from Moscow to Cadiz, and which sentenced the unjust judges to the contempt and detestation of all Europe. The really efficient weapons with which the philosophers assailed the evangelical faith were borrowed from the evangelical morality. The ethical and dogmatical parts of the Gospel were unhappily turned against each other. On one side was a Church boasting of the purity of a doctrine derived from the Apostles, but disgraced 343by the massacre of St. Bartholomew, by the murder of the best of kings, by the war of Cevennes, by the destruction of Port-Royal. On the other side was a sect laughing at the Scriptures, shooting out the tongue at the sacraments, but ready to encounter principalities and powers in the cause of justice, mercy, and toleration.
Irreligion, accidentally associated with philanthropy, triumphed for a time over religion accidentally associated with political and social abuses. Every thing gave way to the zeal and activity of the new reformers. In France, every man distinguished in letters was found in their ranks. Every year gave birth to works in which the fundamental principles of the Church were attacked with argument, invective, and ridicule. The Church made no defence, except by acts of power. Censures were pronounced: books were seized: insults were offered to the remains of infidel writers; but no Bossuet, no Pascal, came forth to encounter Voltaire. There appeared not a single defence of the Catholic doctrine which produced any considerable effect, or which is now even remembered. A bloody and unsparing persecution, like that which put down the Albigenses, might have put down the philosophers. But the time for De Montforts and Dominies had gone by. The punishments which the priests were still able to inflict were sufficient to irritate, but not sufficient to destroy. The war was between power on one side, and wit on the other; and the power was under far more restraint than the wit. Orthodoxy soon became a synonyme for ignorance and stupidity. It was as necessary to the character of an accomplished man that he should despise the religion of his country, as that he should know his letters. The new doctrines spread 344rapidly through Christendom. Paris was the capital of the whole continent. French was everywhere the language of polite circles. The literary glory of Italy and Spain had departed. That of Germany had not dawned. That of England shone, as yet, for the English alone. The teachers of France were the teachers of Europe. The Parisian opinions spread fast among the educated classes beyond the Alps: nor could the vigilance of the Inquisition prevent the contraband importation of the new heresy into Castile and Portugal. Governments, even arbitrary governments, saw with pleasure the progress of this philosophy. Numerous reforms, generally laudable, sometimes hurried on without sufficient regard to time, to place, and to public feeling, showed the extent of its influence. The rulers of Prussia, of Russia, of Austria, and of many smaller states, were supposed to be among the initiated.
The Church of Rome was still, in outward show, as stately and splendid as ever; but her foundation was undermined. No state had quitted her communion or confiscated her revenues; but the reverence of the people was everywhere departing from her.
The first great warning stroke was the fall of that society which, in the conflict with Protestantism, had saved the Catholic Church from destruction. The order of Jesus had never recovered from the injury received in the struggle with Port-Royal. It was now still more rudely assailed by the philosophers. Its spirit was broken; its reputation was tainted. Insulted by all the men of genius in Europe, condemned by the civil, magistrate, feebly defended by the chiefs of the hierarchy, it fell: and great, was the fall of it.
The movement went on with increasing speed. The first generation of the new sect passed away. The 345doctrines of Voltaire were inherited and exaggerated by successors, who bore to him the same relation which the Anabaptists bore to Luther, or the Fifth-Monarchy men to Pym. At length the Revolution came. Down went the old Church of France, with all its pomp and wealth. Some of its priests purchased a maintenance by separating themselves from Rome, and by becoming the authors of a fresh schism. Some, rejoicing in the new license, flung away their sacred vestments, proclaimed that their whole life had been an imposture, insulted and persecuted the religion of which they had been ministers, and distinguished themselves, even in the Jacobin Club and the Commune of Paris, by the excess of their impudence and ferocity. Others, more faithful to their principles, were butchered by scores without a trial, drowned, shot, hung on lamp-posts. Thousands fled from their country to take sanctuary under the shade of hostile altars. The churches were closed; the bells were silent; the shrines were plundered; the silver crucifixes were melted down. Buffoons, dressed in copes and surplices, came dancing the carmagnole even to the bar of the Convention. The bust of Marat was substituted for the statues of the martyrs of Christianity. A prostitute, seated on a chair of state in the chancel of Nôtre Dame, received the adoration of thousands, who exclaimed that at length, for the first time, those ancient Gothic arches had resounded with the accents of truth. The new unbelief was as intolerant as the old superstition. To show reverence for religion was to incur the suspicion of disaffection. It was not without imminent danger that the priest baptized the infant, joined the hands of lovers, or listened to the confession of the dying. The absurd worship of the Goddess of Reason was, indeed, 346of short duration; but the deism of Robespierre and Lepaux was not less hostile to the Catholic faith than the atheism of Clootz and Chaumette.
Nor were the calamities of the Church confined to France. The revolutionary spirit, attacked by all Europe, beat all Europe back, became conqueror in its turn, and, not satisfied with the Belgian cities and the rich domains of the spiritual electors, went raging over the Rhine and through the passes of the Alps. Throughout the whole of the great war against Protestantism, Italy and Spain had been the base of the Catholic operations. Spain was now the obsequious vassal of the infidels. Italy was subjugated by them. To her ancient principalities succeeded the Cisalpine republic, and the Ligurian republic, and the Parthenopean republic. The shrine of Loretto was stripped of the treasures piled up by the devotion of six hundred years. The convents of Rome were pillaged. The tricoloured flag floated on the top of the Castle of St. Angelo. The successor of St. Peter Was carried away captive by the unbelievers. He died a prisoner in their hands; and even the honours of sepulture were long withheld from his remains.
It is not strange that, in the year 1799, even sagacious observers should have thought that, at length, the hour of the Church of Rome was come. An infidel power ascendant, the Pope dying in captivity, the most illustrious prelates of France living in a foreign country on Protestant alms, the noblest edifices which-the munificence of former ages had consecrated to the worship of God turned into temples of Victory, or into banqueting-houses for political societies, or into Theophilanthropic chapels, such signs might well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of that long domination. 347But the end was not yet. Again doomed to death, the milk-white hind was still fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites had been performed over the ashes of Pius the Sixth, a great reaction had commenced, which, after the lapse of more than forty years, appears to be still in progress. Anarchy had had its day. A new order of things rose out of the confusion, new dynasties, new laws, new titles; and amidst them emerged the ancient religion. The Arabs have a fable that the Great Pyramid was built by antediluvian kings, and alone, of all the works of men, bore the weight of the flood. Such as this was the fate of the Papacy. It had been buried under the great inundation; but its deep foundations had remained unshaken; and, when the waters abated, it appeared alone amidst the ruins of a world which had passed away. The republic of Holland was gone, and the empire of Germany, and the great Council of Venice, and the old Helvetian League, and the House of Bourbon, and the parliaments and aristocracy of France. Europe was full of young creations, a French empire, a kingdom of Italy, a Confederation of the Rhine. Nor had the late events affected only territorial limits and political institutions. The distribution of property, the composition and spirit of society, had, through great part of Catholic Europe, undergone a complete change. But the unchangeable Church was still there.
Some future historian, as able and temperate as Professor Ranke, will, we hope, trace the progress of the Catholic revival of the nineteenth century. We feel that we are drawing too near our own time, and that, if we go on we shall be in danger of saying much which may be supposed to indicate, and which will certainly excite angry feelings. We will, therefore, make only 348one more observation, which, in our opinion, is deserving of serious attention.
During the eighteenth century, the influence of the Church of Rome was constantly on the decline. Unbelief made extensive conquests in all the Catholic countries of Europe, and in some countries obtained a complete ascendency. The Papacy was at length brought so low as to be an object of derision to infidels, and of pity rather than of hatred to Protestants. During the nineteenth century, this fallen Church has been gradually rising from her depressed state and reconquering her old dominion. No person who calmly reflects on what, within the last few years, has passed in Spain, in Italy, in South America, in Ireland, in the Netherlands, in Prussia, even in France, can doubt that the power of this Church over the hearts and minds of men, is now greater far than it was when the Encyclopaedia and the Philosophical Dictionary appeared. It is surely remarkable, that neither the moral revolution of the eighteenth century, nor the moral counter-revolution of the nineteenth, should, in any perceptible degree, have added to the domain of Protestantism. During the former period, whatever was lost to Catholicism was lost also to Christianity; during the latter, whatever was regained by Christianity in Catholic countries was regained also by Catholicism. We should naturally have expected that many minds, on the way from superstition to infidelity, or on the way back from infidelity to superstition, would have stopped at an intermediate point. Between the doctrines taught in the schools of the Jesuits, and those which were maintained at the little supper parties of the Baron Holbach, there is a vast interval, in which the human mind, it should seem, might find for itself some resting-place more satisfactory 349than either of the two extremes. And at the time of the Reformation, millions found such a resting-place. Whole nations then renounced Popery without ceasing to believe in a first cause, in a future life, or in the Divine mission of Jesus. In the last century, on the other hand, when a Catholic renounced his belief in the real presence, it was a thousand to one that he renounced his belief in the Gospel too; and, when the reaction took place, with belief in the Gospel came back belief in the real presence.
We by no means venture to deduce from these phænomena any general law; but we think it a most remarkable fact, that no Christian nation, which did not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end of the sixteenth century, should ever have adopted them. Catholic communities have, since that time, become infidel and become Catholic again; but none has become Protestant.
Here we close this hasty sketch of one of the most important portions of the history of mankind. Our readers will have great reason to feel obliged to us if we have interested them sufficiently to induce them to peruse Professor Ranke’s book. We will only caution them against the French translation, a performance which, in our opinion, is just as discreditable to the moral character of the person from whom it proceeds as a false affidavit or a forged bill of exchange would have been, and advise them to study either the original, or the English version, in which the sense and spirit of the original are admirably preserved.
We 350have a kindness for Mr. Leigh Hunt. We form our judgment of him, indeed, only from events of universal notoriety, from his own works and from the works of other writers, who have generally abused him in the most rancorous manner. But, unless we are greatly mistaken, he is a very clever, a very honest, and a very good-natured man. We can clearly discern, together with many merits, many faults both in his writings and in his conduct. But we really think that there is hardly a man living whose merits have been so grudgingly allowed, and whose faults have been so cruelly expiated.
In some respects Mr. Leigh Hunt is excellently qualified for the task which he has now undertaken. His style, in spite of its mannerism, nay, partly by reason of its mannerism, is well suited for light, garrulous, desultory ana, half critical, half biographical. We do not always agree with his literary judgments; but we find in him what is very rare in our time, the power of justly appreciating and heartily enjoying good things of very different kinds. He can adore Shakspeare and Spenser without denying poetical
(1) The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh,
and Farquhar, with Biographical and Critical Notices. By
Leigh Hunt. 8vo. London: 1840.
351genius to the author of Alexander’s Feast, or fine observation, rich fancy, and exquisite humour to him who imagined Will Honeycomb and Sir Roger de Coverley. He has paid particular attention to the history of the English drama, from the age of Elizabeth down to our own time, and has every right to be heard with respect on that subject.
The plays to which he now acts as introducer are, with few exceptions, such as, in the opinion of many very respectable people, ought not to be reprinted. In this opinion we can by no means concur. We cannot wish that any work or class of works which has exercised a great influence on the human mind, and which illustrates the character of an important epoch in letters, politics and morals, should disappear from the world. If we err in this matter, we err with the gravest men and bodies of men in the empire, and especially with the Church of England, and with the great schools of learning which are connected with her. The whole liberal education of our countrymen is conducted on the principle, that no book which is valuable, either by reason of the excellence of its style, or by reason of the light which it throws on the history, polity, and manners of nations, should be withheld from the student on account of its impurity. The Athenian Comedies, in which there are scarcely a hundred lines together without some passage of which Rochester would have been ashamed, have been reprinted at the Pitt Press, and the Clarendon Press, under the direction of syndics and delegates appointed by the Universities, and have been illustrated with notes by reverend, very reverend, and right reverend commentators. Every year the most distinguished young men in the kingdom are examined 352by bishops and professors of divinity in such works as the Lysistrata of Aristophanes and the Sixth Satire of Juvenal. There is certainly something a little ludicrous in the idea of a conclave of venerable fathers of the church praising and rewarding a lad on account of his intimate acquaintance with writings compared with which the loosest tale in Prior is modest. But, for our own part, we have no doubt that the great societies which direct the education of the English gentry have herein judged wisely. It is unquestionable that an extensive acquaintance with ancient literature enlarges and enriches the mind. It is unquestionable that a man whose mind has been thus enlarged and enriched is likely to be far more useful to the state and to the church than one who is unskilled, or little skilled, in classical learning. On the other hand, we find it difficult to believe that, in a world so full of temptation as this, any gentleman whose life would have been virtuous if he had not read Aristophanes and Juvenal will be made vicious by reading them. A man who, exposed to all the influences of such a state of society as that in which we live, is yet afraid of exposing himself to the influences of a few Greek or Latin verses, acts, we think, much like the felon who begged the sheriffs to let him have an umbrella held over his head from the door of Newgate to the gallows, because it was a drizzling morning, and he was apt to take cold.
The virtue which the world wants is a healthful virtue, mot a valetudinarian virtue, a virtue which can expose itself to the risks inseparable from all spirited exertion, not a virtue which keeps out of the common air for fear of infection, and eschews the common food as too stimulating. It would be indeed absurd to attempt 353to keep men from acquiring those qualifications which fit them to play their part in life with honour to themselves and advantage to their country, for the sake of preserving a delicacy which cannot be preserved, a delicacy which a walk from Westminster to the Temple is sufficient to destroy.
But we should be justly chargeable with gross inconsistency if, while we defend the policy which invites the youth of our country to study such writers as Theocritus and Catullus, we were to set up a cry against a new edition of the Countiy Wife or the Way of the World. The immoral English writers of the seventeenth century are indeed much less excusable than those of Greece and Rome. But the worst English writings of the seventeenth century are decent, compared with much that has been bequeathed to us by Greece and Rome. Plato, we have little doubt, was a much better man than Sir George Etherege. But Plato has written things at which Sir George Etherege would have shuddered. Buckhurst and Sedley, even in those wild orgies at the Cock in Bow Street for which they were pelted by the rabble and fined by the Court of King’s, Bench, would never have dared to hold such discourse as passed between Socrates and Phædrus on that fine summer day under the plane-tree, while the fountain warbled at their feet, and the cicadas chirped overhead. If it be, as we think it is, desirable that an English gentleman should be well informed touching the government and the manners of little commonwealths which both in place and time are far removed from us, whose independence has been more than two thousand years extinguished, whose language has not been spoken for ages, and whose ancient magnificence is attested only by a few broken 354columns and friezes, much more must it be desirable that lie should be intimately acquainted with the history of the public mind of his own country, and with the causes, the nature, and the extent of those revolutions of opinion and feeling which, during the last two centuries, have alternately raised and depressed the standard of our national morality. And knowledge of this sort is to be very sparingly gleaned from Parliamentary debates, from state papers, and from the works of grave historians. It must either not be acquired at all, or it must be acquired by the perusal of the light literature which has at various periods been fashionable. We are therefore by no means disposed to condemn this publication, though we certainly cannot recommend the handsome volume before us as an appropriate Christmas present for young ladies.
We have said that we think the present publication perfectly justifiable. But we can by no means agree with Mr. Leigh Hunt, who seems to hold that there is little or no ground for the charge of immorality so often brought against the literature of the Restoration. We do not blame him for not bringing to the judgment-seat the merciless rigour of Lord Angelo; but we really think that such flagitious and impudent offenders as those who are now at the bar deserved at least the gentle rebuke of Escalus. Mr. Leigh Hunt treats the whole matter a little too much in the easy style of Lucio; and perhaps his exceeding lenity disposes us to be somewhat too severe.
And yet it is not easy to be too severe. For in truth this part of our literature is a disgrace to our language and our national character. It is clever, indeed, and very entertaining; but it is, in the most emphatic sense of the words, “earthly, sensual, devilish.” Its 355indecency, though perpetually such as is condemned not less by the rules of good taste than by those of morality, is not, in our opinion, so disgraceful a fault as its singularly inhuman spirit. We have here Belial, not as when he inspired Ovid and Ariosto, “graceful and humane,” but with the iron eye and cruel sneer of Mephistophiles. We find ourselves in a world, in which the ladies are like very profligate, impudent, and unfeeling men, and in which the men are too bad for any place but Pandæmonium or Norfolk Island. We are surrounded by foreheads of bronze, hearts like the nether millstone, and tongues set on fire of hell.
Dryden defended or excused his own offences and those of his contemporaries by pleading the example of the earlier English dramatists: and Mr. Leigh Hunt seems to think that there is force in the plea. We altogether differ from his opinion. The crime charged is not mere coarseness of expression. The terms which are delicate in one age become gross in the next. The diction of the English version of the Pentateuch is sometimes such as Addison would not have ventured to imitate; and Addison, the standard of moral purity in his own age, used many phrases which are now proscribed. Whether a thing shall be designated by a plain noun substantive or by a circumlocution is mere, matter of fashion. Morality is not at all interested in the question. But morality is deeply interested in this, that what is immoral shall not be presented to the imagination of the young and susceptible in constant connection with what is attractive. For every person who has observed the operation of the law of association in his own mind and in the minds of others knows that whatever is constantly presented to the imagination in connection with what is attractive will itself become attractive. 356There is undoubtedly a great deal of indelicate writing in Fletcher and Massinger, and more than might be wished even in Ben Jonson and Shakspeare, who are comparatively pure. But it is impossible to trace in their plays any systematic attempt to associate vice with those things which men value most and desire most, and virtue with every thing ridiculous and degrading. And such a systematic attempt we find in the whole dramatic literature of the generation which followed the return of Charles the Second. We will take, as an instance of what we mean, a single subject of the highest importance to the happiness of mankind, conjugal fidelity. We can at present hardly call to mind a single English play, written before the civil war, in which the character of a seducer of married women is represented in a favourable light. We remember many plays in which such persons are baffled, exposed, covered with derision, and insulted by triumphant husbands. Such is the fate of Falstaff, with all his wit and knowledge of the world. Such is the fate of Brisac in Fletcher’s Elder Brother, and of Ricardo and Ubaldo in Massinger’s Picture. Sometimes, as in the Fatal Dowry and Love’s Cruelty, the outraged honour of families is repaired by a bloody revenge. If now and then the lover is represented as an accomplished man, and the husband as a person of weak or odious character, this only makes the triumph of female virtue the more signal, as in Jonson’s Celia and Mrs. Fitadottrel, and in Fletcher’s Maria. In general we will venture to say that the dramatists of the age of Elizabeth and James the First either treat the breach of the marriage-vow as a serious crime, or, if they treat it as matter for laughter, turn the laugh against the gallant.
On the contrary, during the forty years which followed 357the Restoration, the whole body of the dramatists invariably represent adultery, we do not say as a peccadillo, we do not say as an error which the violence of passion may excuse, but as the calling of a fine gentleman, as a grace without which his character would be imperfect. It is as essential to his breeding and to his place in society that he should make love to the wives of his neighbours as that he should know French, or that he should have a sword at his side.
In all this there is no passion, and scarcely any thing that can be called preference. The hero intrigues just as he wears a wig; because, if he did not, he would be a queer fellow, a city prig, perhaps a Puritan. All the agreeable qualities are always given to the gallant. All the contempt and aversion are the portion of the unfortunate husband. Take Dryden for example; and compare Woodall with Brainsick, or Lorenzo with Gomez. Take Wycherley; and compare Horner with Pinchwife. Take Vanbrugh; and compare Constant with Sir John Brute. Take Farquhar; and compare Archer with Squire Sullen. Take Congreve; and compare Bellmour with Fondlewife, Careless with Sir Paul Plyant, or Scandal with Foresight. In all these cases, and in many more which might be named, the dramatist evidently does his best to make the person who commits the injury graceful, sensible, and spirited, and the person who suffers it a fool, or a tyrant, or both.
Mr. Charles Lamb, indeed, attempted to set up a defence for this way of writing. The dramatists of the latter part of the seventeenth century are not, according to him, to be tried by the standard of morality which exists, and ought to exist, in real life. Their world is a conventional world. Their heroes and 358heroines belong, not to England, not to Christendom, but to an Utopia of gallantry, to a Fairyland, where the Bible and Burn’s Justice are unknown, where a prank which on this earth would be rewarded with the pillory is merely matter for a peal of elvish laughter. A real Horner, a real Careless, would, it is admitted, be exceedingly bad men. But to predicate morality or immorality of the Homer of Wycherley and the Careless of Congreve is as absurd as it would be to arraign a sleeper for his dreams. “They belong to the regions of pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns. When we are among them we are among a chaotic people. We are not to judge them by our usages. No reverend institutions are insulted by their proceedings, for they have none among them. No peace of families is violated, for no family ties exist among them. There is neither right nor wrong, gratitude or its opposite, claim or duty, paternity or sonship.”
This is, we believe, a fair summary of Mr. Lamb’s doctrine. We are sure that we do not wish to represent him unfairly. For we admire his genius; we love the kind nature which appears in all his writings; and we cherish his memory as much as if we had known him personally. But we must plainly say that his argument, though ingenious, is altogether sophistical.
Of course we perfectly understand that it is possible for a writer to create a conventional world in which things forbidden by the Decalogue and the Statute Book shall be lawful, and yet that the exhibition may be harmless, or even edifying. For example, we suppose that the most austere critics would not accuse Fenelon of impiety and immorality on account of his Telemachus and his Dialogues of the Dead. In Telemachus 359and the Dialogues of the Dead we have a false religion, and consequently a morality which is in some points incorrect. We have a right and a wrong differing from the right and the wrong of real life. It is represented as the first duty of men to pay honour to Jove and Minerva. Philocles, who employs his leisure in making graven images of these deities, is extolled for his piety in a way which contrasts singularly with the expressions of Isaiah on the same subject. The dead are judged by Minos, and rewarded with lasting happiness for actions which Fenelon would have been the first to pronounce splendid sins. The same may be said of Mr. Southey’s Mahommedan and Hindoo heroes and heroines. In Thalaba, to speak hi derogation of the Arabian imposter is blasphemy: to drink wine is a crime: to perform ablutions and to pay honour to the holy cities are works of merit. In the curse of Kehama, Kailyal is commended for her devotion to the statue of Mariataly, the goddess of the poor. But certainly no person will accuse Mr. Southey of having promoted or intended to promote either Islamism or Brahminism.
It is easy to see why the conventional worlds of Fenelon and Mr. Southey are unobjectionable. In the first place, they are utterly unlike the real world in which we live. The state of society, the laws even of the physical world, are so different from those with which we are familiar, that we cannot be shocked at finding the morality also very different. But in truth the morality of these conventional worlds differs from the morality of the real world only in points where there is no danger that the real world will ever go wrong. The generosity and docility of Telemachus, the fortitude, the modesty, the filial tenderness of Kailyal, are virtues of all ages and nations. And there was very 360little danger that the Dauphin would worship Minerva, or that an English damsel would dance, with a bucket on her head, before the statue of Mariataly.
The case is widely different with what Mr. Charles Lamb calls the conventional world of Wycherley and Congreve. Here the garb, the manners, the topics of conversation are those of the real town and of the passing day. The hero is in all superficial accomplishments exactly the fine gentleman whom every youth in the pit would gladly resemble. The heroine is the fine lady whom every youth in the pit would gladly marry. The scene is laid in some place which is as well known to the audience as their own houses, in St. James’s Park, or Hyde Park, or Westminster Hall. The lawyer bustles about with his bag, between the Common Pleas and the Exchequer. The Peer calls for his carriage to go to the House of Lords on a private bill. A hundred little touches are employed to make the fictitious world appear like the actual world. And the immorality is of a sort which never can be out of date, and which all the force of religion, law, and public opinion united can but imperfectly restrain.
In the name of art, as well as in the name of virtue, we protest against the principle that the world of pure comedy is one into which no moral enters. If comedy be an imitation, under whatever conventions, of real life, how is it possible that it can have no reference to the great rule which directs life, and to feelings which are called forth by every incident of life? If what Mr. Charles Lamb says were correct, the inference would be that these dramatists did not in the least understand the very first principles of their craft. Pure landscape-painting into which no light or shade enters, pure portrait-painting into which no expression 361enters, are phrases less at variance with sound criticism than pure comedy into which no moral enters.
But it is not the fact that the world of these dramatists is a world into which no moral enters. Morality constantly enters into that world, a sound morality, and an unsound morality; the sound morality to be insulted, derided, associated with every thing mean and hateful; the unsound morality to be set off to every advantage, and inculcated by all methods, direct and indirect. It is not the fact that none of the inhabitants of this conventional world feel reverence for sacred institutions and family ties. Fondlewife, Pinch wife, every person in short of narrow understanding and disgusting manners, expresses that reverence strongly. The heroes and heroines, too, have a moral code of their own, an exceedingly bad one, but not, as Mr. Charles Lamb seems to think, a code existing only in the imagination of dramatists. It is, on the contrary, a code actually received and obeyed by great numbers of people. We need not go to Utopia or Fairyland to find them.. They are near at hand. Every night some of them cheat at the hells in the Quadrant, and others pace the Piazza in Covent Garden. Without flying to Nephelococcygia or to the Court of Queen Mab, we can meet with sharpers, bullies, hard-hearted impudent debauchees, and women worthy of such paramours. The morality of the Country Wife and the Old Bachelor is the morality, not as Mr. Charles Lamb maintains, of an unreal world, but of a world which is a great deal too real. It is the morality, not of a chaotic people, but of low town-rakes, and of those ladies whom the newspapers call “dashing Cyprians.” And the question is simply this, whether a man of genius who constantly and systematically endeavours to make this 362sort of character attractive, by uniting it with beauty, grace, dignity, spirit, a high social position, popularity, literature, wit, taste, knowledge of the world, brilliant success in every undertaking, does or does not make an ill use of his powers. We own that we are unable to understand how this question can be answered in any way but one.
It must, indeed, be acknowledged, in justice to the writers of whom we have spoken thus severely, that they were, to a great extent, the creatures of their age. And if it be asked why that age encouraged immorality which no other age would have tolerated, we have no hesitation in answering that this great depravation of the national taste was the effect of the prevalence of Puritanism under the Commonwealth.
To punish public outrages on morals and religion is unquestionably within the competence of rulers. But when a government, not content with requiring decency, requires sanctity, it oversteps the bounds which mark its proper functions. And it may be laid down as a universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less. A lawgiver who, in order to protect distressed borrowers, limits the rate of interest, either makes it impossible for the objects of his care to borrow at all, or places them at the mercy of the worst class of usurers. A lawgiver who, from tenderness for labouring men, fixes the hours of their work and the amount of their wages, is certain to make them far more wretched than he found them. And so a government which, not content with repressing scandalous excesses, demands from its subjects fervent and austere piety, will soon discover that, while attempting to render an impossible service to the cause of virtue, it has in truth only promoted vice. 363For what are the means by which a government can effect its ends? Two only, reward and punishment; powerful means, indeed, for influencing the exterior act, but altogether impotent for the purpose of touching the heart. A public functionary who is told that he will be promoted if he is a devout Catholic, and turned out of his place if he is not, will probably go to mass every morning, exclude meat from his table on Fridays, shrive himself regularly, and perhaps let his superiors know that he wears a hair shirt next his skin. Under a Puritan government, a person who is apprised that piety is essential to thriving in the world will be strict in the observance of the Sunday, or, as he will call it, Sabbath, and will avoid a theatre as if it were plague-stricken. Such a show of religion as this the hope of gain and the fear of loss will produce, at a week’s notice, in any abundance which a government may require. But under this show, sensuality, ambition, avarice, and hatred retain unimpaired power, and the seeming convert has only added to the vices of a man of the world all the still darker vices which are engendered by the constant practice of dissimulation. The truth cannot be long concealed. The public discovers that the grave persons who are proposed to it as patterns are more utterly destitute of moral principle and of moral sensibility than avowed libertines. It sees that these Pharisees are farther removed from real goodness than publicans and harlots. And, as usual, it rushes to the extreme opposite to that which it quits. It considers a high religious profession as a sure mark of meanness and depravity. On the very first day on which the restraint of fear is taken away, and on which men can venture to say what they think, a frightful peal of blasphemy 364and ribaldry proclaims that the short-sighted policy which aimed at making a nation of saints has made a nation of scoffers.
It was thus in France about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Lewis the Fourteenth in his old age became religious: he determined that his subjects should be religious too: he shrugged his shoulders and knitted his brows if he observed at his levee or near his dinner-table any gentleman who neglected the duties enjoined by the church, and rewarded piety with blue ribands, invitations to Marli, governments, pensions, and regiments. Forthwith Versailles became, in everything but dress, a convent. The pulpits and confessionals were surrounded by swords and embroidery. The Marshals of France were much in prayer; and there was hardly one among the Dukes and Peers who did not carry good little books in his pocket, fast during Lent, and communicate at Easter. Madame de Main-tenon, who had a great share in the blessed work, boasted that devotion had become quite the fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and like a fashion it passed away. No sooner had the old king been carried to St. Denis than the whole court unmasked. Every man hastened to indemnify himself, by the excess of licentiousness and impudence, for years of mortification. The same persons who, a few months before, with meek voices and demure looks, had consulted divines about the state of their souls, now surrounded the midnight table where, amidst the bounding of champagne corks, a drunken prince, enthroned between Dubois and Madame de Parabère, hiccoughed out atheistical arguments and obscene jests. The early part of the reign of Lewis the Fourteenth had been a time of license; but the most dissolute men of that generation 365would have blushed at the orgies of the Regency.
It was the same with our fathers in the time of the Great Civil War. We are by no means unmindful of the great debt which mankind owes to the Puritans of that time, the deliverers of England, the founders of the American Commonwealths. But in the day of their power, those men committed one great fault, which left deep and lasting traces in the national character and manners. They mistook the end and overrated the force of government. They determined, not merely to protect religion and public morals from insult, an object for which the civil sword, in discreet hands, may be beneficially employed, but to make the people committed to their rule truly devout. Yet, if they had only reflected on events which they had themselves witnessed and in which they had themselves borne a great part, they would have seen what was likely to be the result of their enterprise. They had lived under a government which, during a long course of years, did all that could be done, by lavish bounty and by rigorous punishment, to enforce conformity to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. No person suspected of hostility to that church had the smallest chance of obtaining favour at the court of Charles; dissent was punished by imprisonment, by ignominious exposure, by cruel mutilations, and by ruinous fines. And the event had been that the Church had fallen, and had, in its fall, dragged down with it a monarchy which had stood six hundred years. The Puritan might have learned, if from nothing else, yet from his own recent victory, that governments which attempt things beyond their reach are likely not merely to fail, but to produce an 366effect directly the opposite of that which they contemplate as desirable.
All this was overlooked. The saints were to inherit the earth. The theatres were closed. The fine arts were placed under absurd restraints. Vices which had never before been even misdemeanors were made capital felonies. It was solemnly resolved by Parliament “that no person shall be employed but such as the House shall be satisfied of his real godliness.” The pious assembly had a Bible lying on the table for reference.
If they had consulted it they might have learned that the wheat and the tares grow together inseparably, and must either be spared together, or rooted up together. To know whether a man was really godly was impossible. But it was easy to know whether he had a plain dress, lank hair, no starch in his linen, no gay furniture in his house; whether he talked through his nose, and showed the whites of his eyes; whether he named his children Assurance, Tribulation, and Maher-shalal-hash-baz; whether he avoided Spring Garden when in town, and abstained from hunting and hawking when in the country; whether he expounded hard scriptures to his troops of dragoons, and talked in a committee of ways and means about seeking the Lord. These were tests which could easily be applied. The misfortune was that they were tests which proved nothing. Such as they were, they were employed by the dominant party. And the consequence was that a crowd of impostors, in every walk of life, began to mimic and to caricature what were then regarded as the outward signs of sanctity. The nation was not duped. The restraints of that gloomy time were such as would have been impatiently borne, if imposed by men who were universally believed to be saints. 367Those restraints became altogether insupportable when they were known to be kept up for the profit of hypocrites. It is quite certain that, even if the royal family had never returned, even if Richard Cromwell or Henry Cromwell had been at the head of the administration, there would have been a great relaxation of manners. Before the Restoration many signs indicated that a period of license was at hand. The Restoration crushed for a time the Puritan party, and placed supreme power in the hands of a libertine. The political counter-revolution assisted the moral counter-revolution, and was in turn assisted by it. A period of wild and desperate dissoluteness followed. Even in remote manor-houses and hamlets the change was in some degree felt; but in Loudon the outbreak of debauchery was appalling; and in London the places most deeply infected were the Palace, the quarters inhabited by the aristocracy, and the Inns of Court. It was on the support of these parts of the town that the playhouses depended. The character of the drama became conformed to the character of its patrons. The comic poet was the mouthpiece of the most deeply corrupted part of a corrupted society. And in the plays before us we find, distilled and condensed, the essential spirit of the fashionable world during the Anti-puritan reaction.
The Puritan had affected formality; the comic poet laughed at decorum. The Puritan had frowned at innocent diversions; the comic poet took under his patronage the most flagitious excesses. The Puritan had canted; the comic poet blasphemed. The Puritan had made an affair of gallantry, felony without benefit of clergy; the comic poet represented it as an honourable distinction. The Puritan spoke with disdain of 368the low standard of popular morality; his life was regulated by a far more rigid code; his virtue was sustained by motives unknown to men of the world. Unhappily it had been amply proved in many cases, and might well be suspected in many more, that these high pretensions were unfounded. Accordingly, the fashionable circles, and the comic poets who were the spokesmen of those circles, took up the notion that all professions of piety and integrity were to be construed by the rule of contrary; that it might well be doubted whether there was such a thing as virtue in the world; but that, at all events, a person who affected to be better than his neighbours was sure to be a knave.
In the old drama there had been much that was reprehensible. But whoever compares even the least decorous plays of Fletcher with those contained in the volume before us will see how much the profligacy which follows a period of overstrained austerity goes beyond the profligacy which precedes such a period. The nation resembled the demoniac in the New Testament. The Puritans boasted that the unclean spirit was cast out. The house was empty, swept, and garnished; and for a time the expelled tenant wandered through dry places seeking rest and finding none. But the force of the exorcism was spent. The fiend returned to his abode; and returned not alone. He took to him seven other, spirits more wicked than himself. They entered in, and dwelt together: and the second possession was worse than the first.
We will now, as far as our limits will permit, pass in review the writers
to whom Mr. Leigh Hunt has introduced us. Of the four, Wycherley stands,
we think, last in literary merit, but first in order of time, and first,
beyond all doubt, in immorality.
WILLIAM WYCHERLEY 369was born in
1640. He was the son of a Shropshire gentleman of old family, and of what
was then accounted a good estate. The property was estimated at six
hundred a year, a fortune which, among the fortunes at that time, probably
ranked as a fortune of two thousand a year would rank in our days.
William was an infant when the civil war broke ont; and, while he was still in his rudiments, a Presbyterian hierarchy and a republican government were established on the ruins of the ancient church and throne. Old Mr. Wycherley was attached to the royal cause, and was not disposed to intrust the education of his heir to the solemn Puritans who now ruled the universities and public schools. Accordingly the young gentleman was sent at fifteen to France. He resided some time in the neighbourhood of the Duke of Montausier, chief of one of the noblest families of Touraine. The Duke’s wife, a daughter of the house of Rambouillet, was a finished specimen of those talents and accomplishments for which her race was celebrated. The young foreigner was introduced to the splendid circle which surrounded the duchess, and there he appears to have learned some good and some evil. In a few years he returned to his country a fine gentleman and a Papist. His conversion, it may safely be affirmed, was the effect, not of any strong impression on his understanding or feelings, but partly of intercourse with an agreeable society in which the Church of Rome was the fashion, and partly of that aversion to Calvinistic austerities which was then almost universal among young Englishmen of parts and spirit, and which, at one time, seemed likely to make one half of them Catholics, and the other half Atheists. 370But the Restoration came. The universities were again in loyal hands; and there was reason to hope that there would be again a national church fit for a gentleman. Wycherley became a member of Queen’s College, Oxford, and abjured the errors of the Church of Rome. The somewhat equivocal glory of turning, for a short time, a good-for-nothing Papist into a good-for-nothing Protestant is ascribed to Bishop Barlow.
Wycherley left Oxford without taking a degree, and entered at the Temple, where he lived gaily for some years, observing the humours of the town, enjoying its pleasures, and picking up just as much law as was necessary to make the character of a pettifogging attorney or of a litigious client entertaining in a comedy.
From an early age he had been in the habit of amusing himself by writing. Some wretched lines of his on the Restoration are still extant. Had he devoted himself to the making of verses, he would have been nearly as far below Tate and Blackmore as Tate and Black-more are below Dryden. His only chance for renown would have been that he might have occupied a niche in a satire, between Flecknoe and Settle. There was, however, another kind of composition in which his talents and acquirements qualified him to succeed; and to that he judiciously betook himself.
In his old age he used to say that he wrote Love in a Wood at nineteen, the Gentleman Dancing-Master at twenty-one, the Plain Dealer at twenty-five, and the Country Wife at one or two and thirty. We are incredulous, we own, as to the truth of this story. Nothing that we know of Wycherley leads us to think him incapable of sacrificing truth to vanity. And his memory in the decline of his life played him such strange tricks that we might question the correctness of 371his assertion without throwing any imputation on his veracity. It is certain that none of his plays was acted till 1672, when he gave Love in a Wood to the public. It seems improbable that he should resolve, on so important an occasion as that of a first appearance before the world, to ran his chance with a feeble piece, written before his talents were ripe, before his style was formed, before he had looked abroad into the world; and this when he had actually in his desk two highly finished, plays, the fruit of his matured powers. When we look minutely at the pieces themselves, we find in every part of them reason to suspect the accuracy of Wycherley’s statement. In the first scene of Love in a Wood, to go no further, we find many passages which he could not have written when he was nineteen. There is an allusion to gentlemen’s periwigs, which first came into fashion in 1663; an allusion to guineas, which were first struck in 1683; an allusion to the vests which Charles ordered to be worn at court in 1666; an allusion to the fire of 1666; and several political allusions which must be assigned to times later than the year of the Restoration, to times when the government and the city were opposed to each other, and when the Presbyterian ministers had been driven from the parish churches to the conventicles. But it is needless to dwell on particular expressions. The whole air and spirit of the piece belong to a period subsequent to that mentioned by Wycherley. As to the Plain Dealer, which is said to have been written when he was twenty-five, it contains one scene unquestionably written after 1675, several which are later than 1668, and scarcely a line which can have been composed before the end of 1666.
Whatever may have been the age at which Wycherley 372composed his plays, it is certain that he did not bring them before the public till he was upwards of thirty. In 1672, Love in a Wood was acted with more success than it deserved, and this event produced a great change in the fortunes of the author. The Duchess of Cleveland cast her eyes upon him, and was pleased with his appearance. This abandoned woman, not content with her complaisant husband and her royal keeper, lavished her fondness on a crowd of paramours of all ranks, from dukes to rope-dancers. In the time of the commonwealth she commenced her career of gallantry, and terminated it under Anne, by marrying, when a great-grandmother, that worthless fop, Beau Fielding. It is not strange that she should have regarded Wycherley with favour. His figure was commanding, his countenance strikingly handsome, his look and deportment full of grace and dignity. He had, as Pope said long after, “the true nobleman look,” the look which seems to indicate superior, and a not unbecoming consciousness of superiority. His hair indeed, as he says in one of his poems, was prematurely grey. But in that age of periwigs this misfortune was of little importance. The Duchess admired him, and proceeded to make love to him, after the fashion of the coarse-minded and shameless circle to which she belonged. In the Ring, when the crowd of beauties and fine gentlemen was thickest, she put her head out of her coach-window, and bawled to him, “Sir, you are a rascal; you are a villain;” and, if she is not belied, she added another phrase of abuse which we will not quote, but of which we may say that it might most justly have been applied to her own children. Wycherley called on her Grace the next day, and with great humility begged to know in what way 373he had been so unfortunate as to disoblige her. Thus began an intimacy from which the poet probably expected wealth and honours. Nor were such expectations unreasonable. A handsome young fellow about the court, known by the name of Jack Churchill, was, about the same time, so lucky as to become the object of a short-lived fancy of the Duchess. She had presented him with four thousand five hundred pounds, the price, in all probability, of some title or pardon. The prudent youth had lent the money on high interest, and on landed security; and this judicious investment was the beginning of the most splendid private fortune in Europe. Wycherley was not so lucky. The partiality with which the great lady regarded him was indeed the talk of the whole town; and sixty years later old men who remembered those days told Voltaire that she often stole from the court to her lover’s chambers in the Temple, disguised like a country girl, with a straw-hat on her head, pattens on her feet, and a basket in her hand. The poet was indeed too happy and proud to be discreet. He dedicated to the Duchess the play which had led to their acquaintance, and in the dedication expressed himself in terms which could not but confirm the reports which had gone abroad. But at Whitehall such an affair was regarded in no serious light. The lady was not afraid to bring Wycherley to court, and to introduce him to a splendid society with which, as far as appears, he had never before mixed. The easy king, who allowed to his mistresses the same liberty which he claimed for himself, was pleased with the conversation and manners of his new rival. So high did Wycherley stand in the royal favour that once, when he was confined by a fever to his lodgings in Bow Street, Charles, who, with all his 374faults, was certainly a man of social and affable disposition, called on him, sat by his bed, advised him to try change of air, and gave him a handsome sum of money to defray the expense of a journey. Buckingham, then Master of the Horse, and one of that infamous ministry known by the name of the Cabal, had been one of the Duchess’s innumerable paramours. He at first showed some symptoms of jealousy; but he soon, after his fashion, veered round from anger to fondness, and gave Wycherley a commission in his own regiment and a place in the royal household.
It would be unjust to Wycherley’s memory not to mention here the only good action, as far as we know, of his whole life. He is said to have made great exertions to obtain the patronage of Buckingham for the illustrious author of Hudribas, who was now sinking into an obscure grave, neglected by a nation proud of his genius, and by a court which he had served too well. His Grace consented to see poor Butler; and an appointment was made. But unhappily two pretty women passed by; the volatile Duke ran after them; the opportunity was lost, and could never be regained.
The second Dutch war, the most disgraceful war in the whole history of England, was now raging. It was not in that age considered as by any means necessary that a naval officer should receive a professional education. Young men of rank, who were hardly able to keep their feet in a breeze, served on board of the King’s ships, sometimes with commissions, and sometimes as volunteers. Mulgrave, Dorset, Rochester, and many others, left the playhouses and the Mall for hammocks and salt pork, and, ignorant as they were of the rudiments of naval service, showed, at least, on the day of battle, the courage which is seldom wanting in 375an English gentleman. All good judges of maritime affairs complained that, under this system, the ships were grossly mismanaged, and that the tarpaulins contracted the vices, without acquiring the graces, of the court. But on this subject, as on every other where the interests or whims of favourites were concerned, the government of Charles was deaf to all remonstrances. Wycherley did not choose to be out of the fashion. He embarked, was present at a battle, and celebrated it, on his return, in a copy of verses too had for the bellman. (1)
About the same time, he brought on the stage his second piece, the Gentleman Dancing-Master. The biographers say nothing, as far as we remember, about the fate of this play. There is, however, reason to believe that, though certainly far superior to Love in a Wood, it was not equally successful. It was first tried at the west end of the town, and, as the poet confessed, “would scarce do there.” It was then performed in Salisbury Court, but, as it should seem, with no better event. For, in the prologue to the Country Wife,
(1) Mr. Leigh Hunt supposes that the battle at which
Wycherley was present was that which the Duke of York gained
over Opdam, in 1665. We believe that it was one of the
battles between Rupert and De Ruyter, in 1673.
The point is of no importance; and there cannot be said to
be much evidence either way. We offer, however, to Mr. Leigh
Hunt’s consideration three arguments, of no great weight
certainly, yet such as ought, we think, to prevail in the
absence of better. First, it is not very likely that a young
Templar, quite unknown in the world,—and Wycherley was
such in 1665,—should have quitted his chambers to go to
sea. On the other hand, it would be in the regular course of
things, that, when a courtier and an equerry, he should
offer his services. Secondly, his verses appear to have been
written after a drawn battle, like those of 1673, and not
after a complete victory, like that of 1675. Thirdly, in the
epilogue to the Gentleman Dancing-Master, written in 1673,
he says that “all gentlemen must pack to sea an expression
which makes it probable that he did not himself mean to stay
behind.
Wycherley 376described himself as “the late so baffled scribbler.”
In 1675, the Country Wife was performed with brilliant success, which, in a literary point of view, was not wholly unmerited. For, though one of the most profligate and heartless of human compositions, it is the elaborate production of a mind, not indeed rich, original, or imaginative, but ingenious, observant, quick to seize hints, and patient of the toil of polishing.
The Plain Dealer, equally immoral and equally well written, appeared in 1677. At first this piece pleased the people less than the critics; but after a time its unquestionable merits and the zealous support of Lord Dorset, whose influence in literary and fashionable society was unbounded, established it in the public favour.
The fortune of Wycherley was now in the zenith, and began to decline.’ A long life was still before him. But it was destined to be filled with nothing but shame and wretchedness, domestic dissensions, literary failures, and pecuniary embarrassments.
The King, who was looking about for an accomplished man to conduct the education of his natural son, the young Duke of Richmond, at length fixed on Wycherley. The poet, exulting in his good luck, went down to amuse himself at Tunbridge Wells, looked into a bookseller’s shop on the Pantiles, and, to his great delight, heard a handsome woman ask for the Plain Dealer which had just been published. He made acquaintance with the lady, who proved to be the Countess of Drogheda, a gay young widow, with an ample jointure. She was charmed with his person and his wit, and, after a short flirtation, agreed to become his wife. Wycherley seems to have been apprehensive 377that this connection might not suit well with the King’s plans respecting the Duke of Richmond. He accordingly prevailed on the lady to consent to a private marriage. All came out. Charles thought the conduct of Wycherley both disrespectful and disingenuous. Other causes probably assisted to alienate the sovereign from the subject who had lately been so highly favoured. Buckingham was now in opposition, and had been committed to the Tower; not, as Mr. Leigh Hunt supposes, on a charge of treason, but by an order of the House of Lords for some expressions which he had used in debate. Wycherley wrote some bad lines in praise of his imprisoned patron, which, if they came to the knowledge of the King, would certainly have made his majesty very angry. The favour of the court was completely withdrawn from the poet. An amiable woman with a large fortune might indeed have been an ample compensation for the loss. But Lady Drogheda was ill-tempered, imperious, and extravagantly jealous. She had herself been a maid of honour at Whitehall. She well knew in what estimation conjugal fidelity was held among the fine gentlemen there, and watched her town husband as assiduously as Mr. Pinchwife watched his country wife. The unfortunate wit was, indeed, allowed to meet his friends at a tavern opposite to his own house. But on such occasions the windows were always open, in order that her Ladyship, who was posted on the other side of the street, might be satisfied that no woman was of the party.
The death of Lady Drogheda released the poet from this distress; but a series of disasters, in rapid succession, broke down his health, his spirits, and his fortune. His wife meant to leave him a good property, 378and left him only a lawsuit. His father could not or would not assist him. Wycherley was at length thrown into the Fleet, and languished there during seven years utterly forgotten, as it should seem, by the gay and lively circle of which he had been a distinguished ornament. In the extremity of his distress he implored the publisher who had been enriched by the sale of his works to lend him twenty pounds, and was refused. His comedies, however, still kept possession of the stage, and drew great audiences which troubled themselves little about the situation of the author. At length James the Second, who had now succeeded to the throne, happened to go to the theatre on an evening when the Plain Dealer was acted. He was pleased by the performance, and touched by the fate of the writer, whom he probably remembered as one of the gayest and handsomest of his brother’s courtiers. The King determined to pay Wycherley’s debts, and to settle on the unfortunate poet a pension of two hundred pounds a year. This munificence on the part of a prince who was little in the habit of rewarding literary merit, and whose whole soul was devoted to the interests of his church, raises in us a surmise which Mr. Leigh Hunt will, we fear, pronounce very uncharitable. We cannot help suspecting that it was at this time that Wycherley returned to the communion of the Church of Rome. That he did return to the communion of the Church of Rome is certain. The date of his reconversion, as far as we know, has never been mentioned by any biographer. We believe that, if we place it at this time, we do no injustice to the character either of Wycherley or James.
Not long after, old Mr. Wycherley died; and his son, 379now past the middle of life, came to the family estate. Still, however, he was not at his ease. His embarrassments were great: his property was strictly tied up; and he was on very had terms with the heir-at-law. He appears to have led, during a long course of years, that most wretched life, the life of a vicious old boy about town. Expensive tastes with little money, and licentious appetites with declining vigour, were the just penance for his early irregularities. A severe illness had produced a singular effect on his intellect. His memory played him pranks stranger than almost any that are to be found in the history of that strange faculty. It seemed to be at once preternaturally strong, and preternaturally weak. If a book was read to him before he went to bed, he would wake the next morning with his mind full of the thoughts and expressions which he had heard over night; and he would write them down, without in the least suspecting that they were not his own. In his verses the same ideas, and even the same words, came over and over again several times in a short composition. His fine person bore the marks of age, sickness, and sorrow; and he mourned for his departed beauty with an effeminate regret. He could not look without a sigh at the portrait which Lely had painted of him when he was only twenty-eight, and often murmured, Quantum mutatus ab illo. He was still nervously anxious about his literary reputation, and, not content with the fame which he still possessed as a dramatist, was determined to be renowned as a satirist and an amatory poet. In 1704, after twenty-seven years of silence, he again appeared as an author. He put forth a large folio of miscellaneous verses, which, we believe, has never been reprinted. Some of these pieces had probably circulated through 380the town in manuscript. For, before the volume appeared, the critics at the coffee-houses very confidently predicted that it would be utterly worthless, and were in consequence bitterly reviled by the poet in an ill-written, foolish, and egotistical preface. The book amply vindicated the most unfavourable prophecies that had been hazarded. The style and versification are beneath criticism; the morals are those of Rochester. For Rochester, indeed, there was some excuse. When his offences against decorum were committed, he was a very young man, misled by a prevailing fashion. Wycherley was sixty-four. He had long outlived the times when libertinism was regarded as essential to the character of a wit and a gentleman. Most of the rising poets, Addison, for example, John Phillips, and Rowe, were studious of decency. We can hardly conceive any thing more miserable than the figure which the ribald old man makes in the midst of so many sober and well-conducted youths.
In the very year in which this bulky volume of obscene doggerel was published, Wycherley formed an acquaintance of a very singular kind. A little, pale, crooked, sickly, bright-eyed urchin, just turned of sixteen, had written some copies of verses in which discerning judges could detect the promise of future eminence. There was, indeed, as yet nothing very striking or original in the conceptions of the young poet. But he was already skilled in the art of metrical composition. His diction and his music were not those of the great old masters; but that which his ablest contemporaries were labouring to do, he already did best. His style was not richly poetical; but it was’ always neat, compact, and pointed. His verse wanted variety of pause, of swell, and of cadence, but never grated 381harshly on the ear, or disappointed it by a feeble close. The youth was already free of the company of wits, and was greatly elated at being introduced to the author of the Plain Dealer and the Country Wife.
It is curious to trace the history of the intercourse which took place between Wycherley and Pope, between the representative of the age that was going out, and the representative of the age that was coming in, between the friend of Rochester and Buckingham, and the friend of Lyttelton and Mansfield. At first the boy was enchanted by the kindness and condescension of so eminent a writer, haunted his door, and followed him about like a spaniel from coffee-house to coffeehouse. Letters full of affection, humility, and fulsome flattery were interchanged between the friends. But the first ardour of affection could not last. Pope, though at no time scrupulously delicate in his writings or fastidious as to the morals of his associates, was shocked by the indecency of a rake who, at seventy, was still the representative of the monstrous profligacy of the Restoration. As the youth grew older, as his mind expanded and his fame rose, he appreciated both himself and Wycherley more correctly. He felt a just contempt for the old gentleman’s verses, and was at no great pains to conceal his opinion. Wycherley, on the other hand, though blinded by self-love to the imperfections of what he called his poetry, could not but see that there was an immense difference between his young companion’s rhymes and his own. He was divided between two feelings. He wished to have the assistance of so skilful a hand to polish his lines; and yet he shrank from the humiliation of being beholden for literary assistance to a lad who might have been his grandson. Pope was willing to give assistance, but 382was by no means disposed to give assistance and flattery too. He took the trouble to retouch whole reams of feeble stumbling verses, and inserted many vigorous lines which the least skilful reader will distinguish in an instant. But he thought that by these services he acquired a right to express himself in terms which would not, under ordinary circumstances, become one who was addressing a man of four times his age. In one letter he tells Wycherley that “the worst pieces are such as, to render them very good, would require almost the entire new writing of them.” In another, he gives the following account of his corrections: “Though the whole be as short again as at first, there is not one thought omitted but what is a repetition of something in your first volume, or in this very paper; and the versification throughout is, I believe, such as nobody can be shocked at. The repeated permission you give me of dealing freely with you, will, I hope, excuse what I have done; for, if I have not spared you when I thought severity would do you a kindness, I have not mangled you where there was no absolute need of amputation.” Wycherley continued to return thanks for all this hacking and hewing, which was, indeed, of inestimable service to his compositions. But at last his thanks began to sound very like reproaches. In private, he is said to have described Pope as a person who could not cut out a suit, but who had some skill in turning old coats. In his letters to Pope, while he acknowledged that the versification of the poems had been greatly improved, he spoke of the whole art of versification with scorn, and sneered at those who preferred sound to sense. Pope revenged himself for this outbreak of spleen by return of post. He had in his hands a volume of Wycherley’s rhymes, 383and he wrote to say that this volume was so full of faults that he could not correct it without completely defacing the manuscript. “I am,” he said, “equally afraid of sparing you, and of offending you by too impudent a correction.” This was more than flesh and blood could bear. Wycherley reclaimed his papers, in a letter in which resentment shows itself plainly through the thin disguise of civility. Pope, glad to be rid of a troublesome and inglorious task, sent back the deposit, and, by way of a parting courtesy, advised the old man to turn his poetry into prose, and assured him that the public would like thoughts much better without his versification. Thus ended this memorable correspondence.
Wycherley lived some years after the termination of the strange friendship which we have described. The last scene of his life was, perhaps, the most scandalous. Ten days before his death, at seventy-five, he married a young girl, merely in order to injure his nephew, an act which proves that neither years, nor adversity, nor what he called his philosophy, nor either of the religions which he had at different times professed, had taught him the rudiments of morality. He died in December, 1715, and lies in the vault under the church of St. Paul in Convent-Garden.
His bride soon after married a Captain Shrimpton, who thus became possessed of a large collection of manuscripts. These were sold to a bookseller. They were so full of erasures and interlineations that no printer could decipher them. It was necessary to call in the aid of a professed critic; and Theobald, the editor of Shakspeare, and the hero of the first Dunciad, was employed to ascertain the true reading. In this way a volume of miscellanies in verse and prose was 384got up for the market. The collection derives all its value from the traces of Pope’s hand, which are everywhere discernible.
Of the moral character of Wycherley it can hardly be necessary for us to say more. His fame as a writer rests wholly on his comedies, and chiefly on the last two. Even as a comic writer, he was neither of the best school, nor highest in his school. He was in truth a worse Congreve. His chief merit, like Congreve’s, lies in the style of his dialogue. But the wit which lights up the Plain Dealer and the Country Wife is pale and flickering, when compared with the gorgeous blaze which dazzles us almost to blindness in Love for Love and the Way of the World. Like Congreve, and, indeed, even more than Congreve, Wycherley is ready to sacrifice dramatic propriety to the liveliness of his dialogue. The poet speaks out of the mouths of all his dunces and coxcombs, and makes them describe themselves with a good sense and acuteness which puts them on a level with the wits and heroes. We will give two instances, the first which occur to us, from the Country Wife. There are in the world fools who find the society of old friends insipid, and who are always running after new companions. Such a character is a fair subject for comedy. But nothing can be more absurd than to introduce a man of this sort saying to his comrade, “I can deny you nothing: for though I have known thee a great while, never go if I do not love thee as well as a new acquaintance.” That town-wits, again, have always been rather a heartless class, is true. But none of them, we will answer for it, ever said to a young lady to whom he was making love, “We wits rail and make love often, but to show our parts: as we have no affections, so we have no malice.” 385Wycherley’s plays are said to have been the produce of long and patient labour. The epithet of “slow” was early given to him by Rochester, and was frequently repeated. In truth his mind, unless we are greatly mistaken, was naturally a very meagre soil, and was forced only by great labour and outlay to hear fruit which, after all, was not of the highest flavour. He has scarcely more claim to originality than Terence. It is not too much to say that there is hardly any thing of the least value in his plays of which the hint is not to be found elsewhere. The best scenes in the Gentleman Dancing Master were suggested by Calderon’s Maestro de Danzar, not by any means one of the happiest comedies of the great Castilian poet. The Country Wife is borrowed from the E’cole des Maris and the E’cole des Femmes. The groundwork of the Plain Dealer is taken from the Misanthrope of Molière. One whole scene is almost translated from the Critique de l’E’cole des Femmes. Fidelia is Shakspeare’s Viola stolen, and marred in the stealing; and the Widow Blackacre, beyond comparison Wycherley’s best comic character, is the Countess in Racine’s Plaideurs, talking the jargon of English instead of that of French chicane.
The only thing original about Wycherley, the only thing which he could furnish from his own mind in inexhaustible abundance, was profligacy. It is curious to observe how every thing that he touched, however pure and noble, took in an instant the colour of his own mind. Compare the E’cole des Femmes with the Country Wife. Agnes is a simple and amiable girl, whose heart is indeed full of love, but of love sanctioned by honour, morality, and religion. Her natural talents are great. They have been hidden, and, as it 386might appear, destroyed by an education elaborately bad. But they are called forth into full energy by a virtuous passion. Her lover, while he adores her beauty, is too honest a man to abuse the confiding tenderness of a creature so charming and inexperienced. Wycherley takes this plot into his hands; and forthwith this sweet and graceful courtship becomes a licentious intrigue of the lowest and least sentimental kind, between an impudent London rake and the idiot wife of a country squire. We will not go into details. In truth, Wycherley’s indecency is protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters. It is safe, because it is too filthy to handle, and too noisome even to approach.
It is the same with the Plain Dealer. How careful has Shakspeare been in Twelfth Night to preserve the dignity and delicacy of Viola under her disguise! Even when wearing a page’s doublet and hose, she is never mixed up with any transaction which the most fastidious mind could regard as leaving a stain on her. She is employed by the Duke on an embassy of love to Olivia, but on an embassy of the most honourable kind. Wycherley borrows Viola; and Viola forthwith becomes a pandar of the basest sort. But the character of Manly is the best illustration of our meaning. Moliere exhibited in his misanthrope a pure and noble mind, which had been sorely vexed by the sight of perfidy and malevolence, disguised under the forms of politeness. As every extreme naturally generates its contrary, Alceste adopts a standard of good and evil directly opposed to that of the society which surrounds him. Courtesy seems to him a vice; and those stem virtues which are neglected by the fops and coquettes of Paris become too exclusively the objects of his veneration. 387He is often to blame; he is often ridiculous; but he is always a good man; and the feeling which he inspires is regret that a person so estimable should be so unamiable. Wycherley borrowed Alceste, and turned him,—we quote the words of so lenient a critic as Mr. Leigh Hunt,—into “a ferocious sensualist, who believed himself as great a rascal as he thought everybody else.” The surliness of Moliere’s hero is copied and caricatured. But the most nauseous libertinism and the most dastardly fraud are substituted for the purity and integrity of the original. And, to make the whole complete, Wycherley does not seem to have been aware that he was not drawing the portrait of an eminently honest man. So depraved was his moral taste that, while he firmly believed that he was producing a picture of virtue too exalted for the commerce of this world, he was really delineating the greatest rascal that is to be found, even in his own writings.
We pass a very severe censure on Wycherley, when we say that it is a
relief to turn from him to Congreve. Congreve’s writings, indeed, are by
no means pure; nor was he, as far as we are able to judge, a warm-hearted
or high-minded man. Yet, in coming to him, we feel that the worst is over,
that we are one remove further from the Restoration, that we are past the
Nadir of national taste and morality.
WILLIAM CONGREVE was born
in 1670, at Bardsey, in the neighbourhood of Leeds. His father, a younger
son of a very ancient Staffordshire family, had distinguished himself
among the cavaliers in the civil war, was set down after the Restoration
for the Order of the Royal Oak, and subsequently settled in Ireland, under
the patronage of the Earl of Burlington.
Congreve passed his childhood and youth in Ireland. 388He was sent to school at Kilkenny, and thence went to the University of Dublin. His learning does great honour to his instructors. From his writings it appears, not only that he was well acquainted with Latin literature, but that his knowledge of the Greek poets was such as was not, in his time, common even in a college.
When he, had, completed his academical studies, he was sent to London to study the law, and was entered of the Middle Temple. He troubled himself, however, very little about pleading or conveyancing, and gave himself up to literature and society. Two kinds of ambition early took possession of his mind, and often pulled it in opposite directions. He was conscious of great fertility of thought and power of ingenious combination. His lively conversation, his polished manners, and his highly respectable connections, had obtained for him ready access to the best company. He longed to be a great writer. He longed to be a man of fashion. Either object was within his reach. But could he secure both? Was there not something vulgar in letters, something inconsistent with the easy apathetic graces of a man of the mode? Was it aristocratical to be confounded with creatures who lived in the cocklofts of Grub Street, to bargain with publishers, to hurry printers’ devils and be hurried by them, to squabble with managers, to be applauded or hissed by pit, boxes, and galleries? Could he forego the renown of being the first wit of his age? Could he attain that renown without sullying what he valued quite as much, his character for gentility? The history of his life is the history of a conflict between these two impulses. In his youth the desire of literary fame had the mastery; but soon the meaner ambition overpowered the higher, and obtained supreme dominion over his mind. 389His first work, a novel of no great value, he published under the assumed name of Cleophil. His second was the Old Bachelor, acted in 1693, a play inferior indeed to his other comedies, but, in its own line, inferior to them alone. The plot is equally destitute of interest and of probability. The characters are either not distinguishable, or are distinguished only by peculiarities of the most glaring kind. But the dialogue is resplendent with wit and eloquence, which indeed are so abundant that the fool comes in for an ample share, and yet preserves a certain colloquial air, a certain indescribable ease, of which Wycherley had given no example, and which Sheridan in vain attempted to imitate. The author, divided between pride and shame, pride at having written a good play, and shame at having done an ungentlemanlike thing, pretended that he had merely scribbled a few scenes for his own amusement, and affected to yield unwillingly to the importunities of those who pressed him to try his fortune on the stage. The Old Bachelor was seen in manuscript by Dryden, one of whose best qualities was a hearty and generous admiration for the talents of others. He declared that he had never read such a first play, and lent his services to bring it into a form fit for representation. Nothing was wanted to the success of the piece. It was so cast as to bring into play all the comic talent, and to exhibit on the boards in one view all the beauty, which Drury Lane Theatre, then the only theatre in London, could assemble. The result was a complete triumph; and the author was gratified with rewards more substantial than the applauses of the pit. Montagu, then a lord of the treasury, immediately gave him a place, and, in a short time, added the reversion of another place of much 390greater value, which, however, did not become vacant till many years had elapsed.
In 1694, Congreve brought out the Double Dealer, a comedy in which all the
powers which had produced the Old Bachelor showed themselves, matured by
time and improved by exercise. But the audience was shocked by the
characters of Maskwell and Lady Touchwood. And, indeed, there is something
strangely revolting in the way in which a group that seems to belong to
the house of Laius or of Pelops is introduced into the midst of the
Brisks, Froths, Carlesses, and Plyants. The play was unfavourably
received. Yet, if the praise of distinguished men could compensate an
author for the disapprobation of the multitude, Congreve had no reason to
repine. Dryden, in one of the most ingenious, magnificent, and pathetic
pieces that he ever wrote, extolled the author of the Double Dealer in
terms which now appear extravagantly hyperbolical. Till Congreve came
forth,—so ran this exquisite flattery,—the superiority of the
poets who preceded the civil wars was acknowledged.
“Theirs was the giant race before the flood.”
Since the return of the Royal house, much art and ability had been
exerted, but the old masters had been still unrivalled.
“Our builders were with want of genius curst,
The second temple was not like the first.”
At length a writer had arisen who, just emerging from boyhood, had
surpassed the authors of the Knight of the Burning Pestle and of the
Silent Woman, and who had only one rival left to contend with.
“Heaven that but once was prodigal before,
To Shakspeare gave as much, she could not give him
more."= 391Some
lines near the end of the poem are singularly grave and touching, and sank
deep into the heart of Congreve.
“Already
am I worn with cares and age,
And just
abandoning the ungrateful stage;
But you, whom
every muse and grace adorn
Whom I foresee to
better fortune bom,
Be kind to my remains;
and, oh, defend
Against your judgment your
departed friend.
Let not the insulting foe my
fame pursue,
But guard those laurels which
descend to you.”
The crowd, as usual, gradually came over to the opinion of the men of note; and the Double Dealer was before long quite as much admired, though perhaps never so much liked, as the Old Bachelor.
In 1695 appeared Love for Love, superior both in wit and in scenic effect to either of the preceding plays. It was performed at a new theatre which Betterton and some other actors, disgusted by the treatment which they had received in Drury-Lane, had just opened in a tennis-court near Lincoln’s Inn. Scarcely any comedy within the memory of the oldest man had been equally successful. The actors were so elated that they gave Congreve a share in their theatre; and he promised in return to furnish them with a play every year, if his health would permit. Two years passed, however, before he produced the “Mourning Bride,” a play which, paltry as it is when compared, we do not say, with Lear or Macbeth, but with the best dramas of Massinger and Ford, stands very high among the tragedies of the age in which it was written. To find any thing so good we must go twelve years back to Venice Preserved, or six years forward to the Fair Penitent. The noble passage which Johnson, both in writing and in conversation, extolled above any other in the English drama, has suffered greatly in the public 392estimation from the extravagance of his praise. Had he contented himself with saying that it was finer than any thing in the tragedies of Dryden, Otway, Lee, Rowe, Southern, Hughes, and Addison than any thing, in short, that had been written for the stage since the days of Charles the First, he would not have been in the wrong.
The success of the Mourning Bride was even greater than that of Love for Love. Congreve was now allowed to be the first tragic as well as the first comic dramatist of his time; and all this at twenty-seven. We believe that no English writer except Lord Byron has, at so early an age, stood so high in the estimation of his contemporaries.
At this time took place an event which deserves, in our opinion, a very
different sort of notice from that which has been bestowed on it by Mr.
Leigh Hunt. The nation had now nearly recovered from the demoralising
effect of the Puritan austerity. The gloomy follies of the reign of the
Saints were but faintly remembered. The evils produced by profaneness and
debauchery were recent and glaring. The Court, since the Revolution, had
ceased to patronise licentiousness. Mary was strictly pious; and the vices
of the cold, stern, and silent William, were not obtruded on the public
eye. Discountenanced by the government, and falling in the favour of the
people, the profligacy of the Restoration still maintained its ground in
some parts of society. Its strongholds were the places where men of wit
and fashion congregated, and above all, the theatres. At this conjuncture
arose a great reformer whom, widely as we differ from him in many
important points, we can never mention without respect.
JEREMY
COLLIER 393was
a clergyman of the Church of England, bred at Cambridge. His talents and
attainments were such as might have been expected to raise him to the
highest honours of his profession. He had an extensive knowledge of books;
yet he had mingled much with polite society, and is said not to have
wanted either grace or vivacity in conversation. There were few branches
of literature to which he had not paid some attention. But ecclesiastical
antiquity was his favourite study. In religious opinions he belonged to
that section of the Church of England which lies furtherest from Geneva
and nearest to Rome. His notions touching Episcopal government, holy
orders, the efficacy of the sacraments, the authority of the Fathers, the
guilt of schism, the importance of vestments, ceremonies, and solemn days,
differed little from those which are now held by Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman.
Towards the close of Fis life indeed, Collier took some steps which
brought him still nearer to Popery, mixed water with the wine in the
Eucharist, made the sign of the cross in confirmation, employed oil in the
visitation of the sick, and offered up prayers for the dead. His politics
were of a piece with his divinity. He was a Tory of the highest sort, such
as in the cant of his age was called a Tantivy. Not even the persecution
of the bishops and the spoliation of the universities could shake his
steady loyalty. While the Convention was sitting, he wrote with vehemence
in defence of the fugitive king, and was in consequence arrested. But his
dauntless spirit was not to be so tamed. He refused to take the oaths,
renounced all his preferments, and, in a succession of pamphlets written
with much violence and with some ability, attempted to excite the nation
against 394its
new masters. In 1692 he was again arrested on suspicion of having been
concerned in a treasonable plot. So unbending were his principles that his
friends could hardly persuade him to let them hail him; and he afterwards
expressed his remorse for having been induced thus to acknowledge, by
implication, the authority of an usurping government. He was soon in
trouble again. Sir John Friend and Sir William Parkins were tried and
convicted of high treason for planning the murder of King William. Collier
administered spiritual consolation to them, attended them to Tyburn, and,
just before they were turned off, laid his hands on their heads, and by
the authority which he derived from Christ, solemnly absolved them. This
scene gave indescribable scandal. Tories joined with Whigs in blaming the
conduct of the daring priest. Some acts, it was said, which fall under the
definition of treason are such that a good man may, in troubled times, be
led into them even by his virtues. It may be necessary for the protection
of society to punish such a man. But even in punishing him we consider him
as legally rather than morally guilty, and hope that his honest error,
though it cannot be pardoned here, will not be counted to him for sin
hereafter. But such was not the case of Collier’s penitents. They were
concerned in a plot for waylaying and butchering, in an hour of security,
one who, whether he were or were not their king, was at all events their
fellow-creature. Whether the Jacobite theory about the rights of
governments and the duties of subjects were or were not well founded,
assassination must always be considered as a great crime. It is condemned
even by the maxims of worldly honour and morality. Much more must it be an
object of abhorrence to the pure Spouse of Christ. The Church 395cannot
surely, without the saddest and most mournful forebodings, see one of her
children who has been guilty of this great wickedness pass into eternity
without any sign of repentance. That these traitors had given any sign of
repentance was not alleged. It might be that they had privately declared
their contrition; and, if so, the minister of religion might be justified
in privately assuring them of the Divine forgiveness. But a public
remission ought to have been preceded by a public atonement. The regret of
these men, if expressed at all, had been expressed in secret. The hands of
Collier had been laid on them in the presence of thousands. The inference
which his enemies drew from his conduct was that he did not consider the
conspiracy against the life of William as sinful. But this inference he
very vehemently, and, we doubt not, very sincerely denied.
The storm raged. The bishops put forth a solemn censure of the absolution. The Attorney-General brought the matter before the Court of King’s Bench. Collier had now made up his mind not to give bail for his appearance before any court which derived its authority from the usurper. He accordingly absconded and was outlawed. He survived these events about thirty years. The prosecution was not pressed; and he was soon suffered to resume his literary pursuits in quiet. At a later period, many attempts were made to shake his perverse integrity by offers of wealth and dignity, but in vain. When he died, towards the end of the reign of George the First, he was still under the ban of the law.
We shall not be suspected of regarding either the politics or the theology of Collier with partiality; but we believe him to have been as honest and courageous 396a man as ever lived. We will go further, and say that, though passionate and often wrongheaded, he was a singularly fair controversialist, candid, generous, too high-spirited to take mean advantages even in the most exciting disputes, and pure from all taint of personal malevolence. It must also be admitted that his opinions on ecclesiastical and political affairs, though in themselves absurd and pernicious, eminently qualified him to be the reformer of our lighter literature. The libertinism of the press and of the stage was, as we have said, the effect of a reaction against the Puritan strictness. Profligacy was, like the oak leaf on the twenty-ninth of May, the badge of a cavalier and a high churchman: Decency was associated with conventicles and calves’ heads. Grave prelates were too much disposed to wink at the excesses of a body of zealous and able allies who covered Roundheads and Presbyterians with ridicule. If a Whig raised his voice against the impiety and licentiousness of the fashionable writers, his mouth was instantly stopped by the retort; You are one of those who groan at a light quotation from Scripture, and raise estates out of the plunder of the Church, who shudder at a double entendre, and chop off the heads of kings. A Baxter, a Burnet, even a Tillotson, would have done little to purify our literature. But when a man fanatical in the cause of episcopacy and actually under outlawry for his attachment to hereditary right, came forward as the champion of decency, the battle was already half won.
In 1698, Collier published his Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, a book which threw the whole literary world into commotion, but which is now much less read than it deserves. The faults of the work, indeed, are neither few 397nor small. The dissertations on the Greek and Latin drama do not at all help the argument, and, whatever may have been thought of them by the generation which fancied that Christ Church had refuted Bentley, are such as, in the present day, a scholar of very humble pretensions may venture to pronounce boyish, or rather babyish. The censures are not sufficiently discriminating. The authors whom Collier accused had been guilty of such gross sins against decency, that he was certain to weaken instead of strengthening his case, by introducing into his charge against them any matter about which there could be the smallest dispute. He was, however, so injudicious as to place among the outrageous offences which he justly arraigned, some things which are really quite innocent, and some slight instances of levity which, though not perhaps strictly correct, could easily be paralleled from the works of writers who had rendered great services to morality and religion. Thus he blames Congreve, the number and gravity of whose real transgressions made it quite unnecessary to tax him with any that were not real, for using the words “martyr” and “inspiration” in a light sense; as if an archbishop might not say that a speech was inspired by claret, or that an alderman was a martyr to the gout. Sometimes, again, Collier does not sufficiently distinguish between the dramatist and the persons of the drama. Thus he blames Vanbrugh for putting into Lord Foppington’s mouth some contemptuous expressions respecting the Church service; though it is obvious that Vanbrugh could not better express reverence than by making Lord Foppington express contempt. There is also throughout the Short View too strong a display of professional feeling. Collier is not content with claiming for his order an 398immunity from indiscriminate scurrility; he will not allow that, in any case, any word or act of a divine can be a proper subject for ridicule. Nor does he confine this benefit of clergy to the ministers of the established Church. He extends the privilege to Catholic priests, and, what in him is more surprising, to Dissenting preachers. This, however, is a mere trifle. Imaums, Brahmins, priests of Jupiter, priests of Baal, are all to be held sacred. Dryden is blamed for making the Mufti in Don Sebastian talk nonsense. Lee is called to a severe account for his incivility to Tiresias. But the most curious passage is that in which Collier resents some uncivil reflections thrown by Cassandra, in Dryden’s Cleomenes, on the calf Apis and his hierophants. The words “grass-eating, foddered god,” words which really are much in the style of several passages in the Old Testament, give as much offence to this Christian divine as they could have given to the priests of Memphis.
But, when all deductions have been made, great merit must be allowed to this work. There is hardly any book of that time from which it would be possible to select specimens of writing so excellent and so various. To compare Collier with Pascal would indeed be absurd. Yet we hardly know where, except in the Provincial Letters, we can find mirth so harmoniously and becomingly blended with solemnity as in the Short View. In truth, all the modes of ridicule, from broad fun to polished and antithetical sarcasm, were at Collier’s command. On the other hand, he was complete master of the rhetoric of honest indignation. We scarcely know any volume which contains so many bursts of that peculiar eloquence which comes from the heart and goes to the heart. 399Indeed the spirit of the book is truly heroic. In order to fairly appreciate it, we must remember the situation in which the writer stood. He was under the frown of power. His name was already a mark for the invectives of one half of the writers of the age, when, in the cause of good taste, good sense, and good morals, he gave battle to the other half. Strong as his political prejudices were, he seems on this occasion to have entirely laid them aside. He has forgotten that he is a Jacobite, and remembers only that he is a citizen and a Christian. Some of his sharpest censures are directed against poetry which had been hailed with delight by the Tory party, and had inflicted a deep wound on the Whigs. It is inspiriting to see how gallantly the solitary outlaw advances to attack enemies, formidable separately, and, it might have been thought, irresistible when combined, distributes his swashing blows right and left among Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh, treads the wretched D’Urfey down in the dirt beneath his feet, and strikes with all his strength full at the towering crest of Dryden.
The effect produced by the Short View was immense. The nation was on the
side of Collier. But it could not be doubted that, in the great host which
he had defied, some champion would be found to lift the gauntlet. The
general belief was that Dryden would take the field; and all the wits
anticipated a sharp contest between two well-paired combatants. The great
poet had been singled out in the most marked manner. It was well known
that he was deeply hurt, that much smaller provocations had formerly
roused him to violent resentment, and that there was no literary weapon,
offensive or defensive, of which he was not master. But his conscience
smote him; he 400stood abashed, like the fallen archangel at the rebuke of
Zephon,—
“And felt how awful
goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how
lovely; saw and pined
His loss.”
At a later period he mentioned the Short View in the preface to his Fables. He complained, with some asperity, of the harshness with which he had been treated, and urged some matters in mitigation. But, on the whole, he frankly acknowledged that he had been justly reproved. “If,” said he, “Mr. Collier be my enemy, let him triumph. If he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance.”
It would have been wise in Congreve to follow his master’s example. He was precisely in that situation in which it is madness to attempt a vindication; for his guilt was so clear, that no address or eloquence could obtain an acquittal. On the other hand, there were in his case many extenuating circumstances which, if he had acknowledged his error and promised amendment, would have procured his pardon. The most rigid censor could not but make great allowances for the faults into which so young a man had been seduced by evil example, by the luxuriance of a vigorous fancy, and by the inebriating effect of popular applause. The esteem, as well as the admiration, of the public was still within his reach. He might easily have effaced all memory of his transgressions, and have shared with Addison the glory of showing that the most brilliant wit may be the ally of virtue. But, in any case, prudence should have restrained him from encountering Collier. The nonjuror was a man thoroughly fitted by nature, education, and habit, for polemical dispute. 401Congreve’s mind, though a mind of no common fertility and vigour, was of a different class. No man understood so well the art of polishing epigrams and repartees into the clearest effulgence, and setting them neatly in easy and familiar dialogue. In this sort of jewellery he attained to a mastery unprecedented and inimitable. But he was altogether rude in the art of controversy; and he had a cause to defend which scarcely any art could have rendered victorious.
The event was such as might have been foreseen. Congreve’s answer was a complete failure. He was angry, obscure, and dull. Even the Green Room and Will’s Coffee-House were compelled to acknowledge that in wit, as well as in argument, the parson had a decided advantage over the poet. Not only was Congreve unable to make any show of a case where he was in the wrong; but he succeeded in putting himself completely in the wrong where he was in the right. Collier had taxed him with profaneness for calling a clergyman Mr. Prig, and for introducing a coachman named Jehu, in allusion to the King of Israel, who was known at a distance by his furious driving. Had there been nothing worse in the Old Bachelor and Double Dealer, Congreve might pass for as pure a writer as Cowper himself, who, in poems revised by so austere a censor as John Newton, calls a fox-hunting squire Nimrod, and gives to a chaplain the disrespectful name of Smug. Congreve might with good effect have appealed to the public whether it might not be fairly presumed that, when such frivolous charges were made, there were no very serious charges to make. Instead of doing this, he pretended that he meant no allusion to the Bible by the name of Jehu, and no reflection by the name of Prig. Strange, that a man of 402such parts should, in order to defend himself against imputations which nobody could regard as important, tell untruths which it was certain that nobody would believe!
One of the pleas which Congreve set up for himself and his brethren was
that, though they might be guilty of a little levity here and there, they
were careful to inculcate a moral, packed close into two or three lines,
at the end of every play. Had the fact been as he stated it, the defence
would be worth very little. For no man acquainted with human nature could
think that a sententious couplet would undo all the mischief that five
profligate acts had done. But it would have been wise in Congreve to have
looked again at his own comedies before he used this argument. Collier did
so; and found that the moral of the Old Bachelor, the grave apophthegm
which is to be a set-off against all the libertinism of the piece is
contained in the following triplet:
“What
rugged ways attend the noon of life!
Our sun
declines, and with what anxious strife,
What
pain, we tug that galling load—a wife.”
“Love for Love,” says Collier, “may have a somewhat better farewell, but
it would do a man little service should he remember it to his dying day:”
“The miracle to-day is, that we find
A lover true, not that a woman’s kind.”
Collier’s reply was severe and triumphant. One of his repartees we will quote, not as a favourable specimen of his manner, but because it was called forth by Congreve’s characteristic affectation. The poet spoke of the Old Bachelor as a trifle to which he attached no value, and which had become public by a sort of accident. “I wrote it,” he said, “to amuse myself in a 403slow recovery from a fit of sickness.”
“What his disease was,” replied Collier, “I am not to inquire: but it must be a very ill one to be worse than the remedy.”
All that Congreve gained by coming forward on this occasion was that he completely deprived himself of the excuse which he might with justice have pleaded for his early offences. “Why,” asked Collier, “should the man laugh at the mischief of the boy, and make the disorders of his nonage his own, by an after approbation?”
Congreve was not Collier’s only opponent. Vanbrugh, Dennis, and Settle took the field. And, from a passage in a contemporary satire, we are inclined to think that among the answers to the Short View was one written, or supposed to be written, by Wycherley. The victory remained with Collier. A great and rapid reform in almost all the departments of our lighter literature was the effect of his labours. A new race of wits and poets arose, who generally treated with reverence the great ties which bind society together, and whose very indecencies were decent when compared with those of the school which flourished during the last forty years of the seventeenth century.
This controversy probably prevented Congreve from fulfilling the engagements into which he had entered with the actors. It was not till 1700 that he produced the Way of the World, the most deeply meditated and the most brilliantly written of all his works. It wants, perhaps, the constant movement, the effervescence of animal spirits, which we find in Love for Love. But the hysterical rants of Lady Wishfort, the meeting of Witwould, and his brother, the country knight’s courtship and his subsequent revel, and, above all, the chase and surrender of Millamant, are superior to any thing 404that is to be found in the whole range of English comedy from the civil war downwards. It is quite inexplicable to us that this play should have failed on the stage. Yet so it was; and the author, already sore with the wounds which Collier had inflicted, was galled past endurance by this new stroke. He resolved never again to expose himself to the rudeness of a tasteless audience, and took leave of the theatre forever.
He lived twenty-eight years longer, without adding to the high literary reputation which he had attained. He read much while he retained his eyesight, and now and then wrote a short essay, or put an idle tale into verse; but he appears never to have planned any considerable work. The miscellaneous pieces which he published in 1710 are of little value, and have long been forgotten.
The stock of fame which he had acquired by his comedies was sufficient, assisted by the graces of his manner and conversation, to secure for him a high place in the estimation of the world. During the winter, he lived among the most distinguished and agreeable people in London. His summers were passed at the splendid country-seats of ministers and peers. Literary envy and political faction, which in that age respected nothing else, respected his repose. He professed to be one of the party of which his patron Montagu, now Lord Halifax, was the head. But he had civil words and small good offices for men of every shade of opinion. And men of every shade of opinion spoke well of him in return.
His means were for a long time scanty. The place which he had in
possession barely enabled him to live with comfort. And, when the Tories
came into power, some thought that he would lose even this moderate 405provision.
But Harley, who was by no means disposed to adopt the exterminating policy
of the October club, and who, with all his faults of understanding and
temper, bad a sincere kindness for men of genius, reassured the anxious
poet by quoting very gracefully and happily the lines of Virgil,
“Non obtusa adeo gestamus pectora Poeni,
Nec tam aversus equos Tyria Sol jungit ab urbe.”
The indulgence with which Congreve was treated by the Tories was not purchased by any concession on his part which could justly offend the Whigs. It was his rare good fortune to share the triumph of his friends without having shared their proscription. When the House of Hanover came to the throne, he partook largely of the prosperity of those with whom he was connected. The reversion to which he had been nominated twenty years before fell in. He was made secretary to the island of Jamaica; and his whole income amounted to twelve hundred a year, a fortune which, for a single man, was in that age not only easy but splendid. He continued, however, to practise the frugality which he had learned when he could scarce spare, as Swift tells us, a shilling to pay the chairmen who carried him to Lord Halifax’s. Though he had nobody to save for, he laid up at least as much as he spent.
The infirmities of age came early upon him. His habits had been intemperate; he suffered much from gout; and, when confined to his chamber, he had no longer the solace of literature. Blindness, the most cruel misfortune that can befall the lonely student, made his books useless to him. He was thrown on society for all his amusement; and in society his good breeding and vivacity made him always welcome. 406By the rising men of letters he was considered not as a rival, but as a classic. He had left their arena; he never measured his strength with them; and he was always loud in applause of their exertions. They could, therefore, entertain no jealousy of him, and thought no more of detracting from his fame than of carping at the great men who had been lying a hundred years in Poets’ Corner. Even the inmates of Grub Street, even the heroes of the Dunciad, were for once just to living merit. There can be no stronger illustration of the estimation in which Congreve was held than the fact that the English Iliad, a work which appeared with more splendid auspices than any other in our language, was dedicated to him. There was not a duke in the kingdom who would not have been proud of such a compliment. Dr. Johnson expresses great admiration for the independence of spirit which Pope showed on this occasion. “He passed over peers and statesmen to inscribe his Iliad to Congreve, with a magnanimity of which the praise had been complete, had his friend’s virtue been equal to his wit. Why he was chosen for so great an honour, it is not now possible to know.” It is certainly impossible to know; yet we think it is possible to guess. The translation of the Iliad had been zealously befriended by men of all political opinions. The poet, who, at an early age, should be raised to affluence by the emulous liberality of Whigs and Tories, could not with propriety inscribe to a chief of either party a work which had been munificently patronised by both. It was necessary to find some person who was at once eminent and neutral. It was therefore necessary to pass over peers and statesmen. Congreve had a high name in letters. He had a high name in aristocratic circles. He lived on terms of civility 407with men of all parties. By a courtesy paid to him, neither the ministers nor the leaders of the opposition could be offended.
The singular affectation which had from the first been characteristic of Congreve grew stronger and stronger as he advanced in life. At last it became disagreeable to him to hear his own comedies praised. Voltaire, whose soul was burned up by the raging desire for literary renown, was half puzzled and half disgusted by what he saw, during his visit to England, of this extraordinary whim. Congreve disclaimed the character of a poet, declared that his plays were trifles produced in an idle hour, and begged that Voltaire would consider him merely as a gentleman. “If you had been merely a gentleman,” said Voltaire, “I should not have come to see you.”
Congreve was not a man of warm affections. Domestic ties he had none; and in the temporary connections which he formed with a succession of beauties from the green-room his heart does not appear to have been interested. Of all his attachments that to Mrs. Bracegirdle lasted the longest and was the most celebrated. This charming actress, who was, during many years, the idol of all London, whose face caused the fatal broil in which Mountfort fell, and for which Lord Mohun was tried by the Peers, and to whom the Earl of Scarsdale was said to have made honourable addresses, had conducted herself, in very trying circumstances, with extraordinary discretion. Congreve at length became her confidential friend. They constantly rode out together and dined together. Some people said that she was his mistress, and others that she would soon be his wife. He was at last drawn away from her by the influence of a wealthier and 408haughtier beauty. Henrietta, daughter of the great Marlborough, and Countess of Godolphin, had, on her father’s death, succeeded to his dukedom, and to the greater part of his immense property. Her husband was an insignificant man, of whom Lord Chesterfield said that he came to the House of Peers only to sleep, and that he might as well sleep on the right as on the left of the woolsack. Between the Duchess and Congreve sprang up a most eccentric friendship. He had a seat every day at her table, and assisted in the direction of her concerts. That malignant old beldame, the Dowager Duchess Sarah, who had quarrelled with her daughter as she had quarrelled with everybody else, affected to suspect that there was something wrong. But the world in general appears to have thought that a great lady might, without any imputation on her character, pay marked attention to a man of eminent genius who was near sixty years old, who was still older in appearance and in constitution, who was confined to his chair by gout, and who was unable to read from blindness.
In the summer of 1728, Congreve was ordered to try the Bath waters. During his excursion he was overturned in his chariot, and received some severe internal injury from which he never recovered. He came back to London in a dangerous state, complained constantly of a pain in his side, and continued to sink, till in the following January he expired.
He left ten thousand pounds, saved out of the emoluments of his lucrative places. Johnson says that this money ought to have gone to the Congreve family, which was then in great distress. Doctor Young and Mr. Leigh Hunt, two gentlemen who seldom agree with each other, but with whom, on this occasion, we are 409happy to agree, think that it ought to have gone to Mrs. Bracegirdle. Congreve bequeathed two hundred pounds to Mrs. Bracegirdle, and an equal sum to a certain Mrs. Jellat; but the bulk of his accumulations went to the Duchess of Marlborough, in whose immense wealth such a legacy was as a drop in the bucket. It might have raised the fallen fortunes of a Staffordshire squire; it might have enabled a retired actress to enjoy every comfort, and, in her sense, every luxury: but it was hardly sufficient to defray the Duchess’s establishment for three months.
The great lady buried her friend with a pomp seldom seen at the funerals of poets. The corpse lay in state under the ancient roof of the Jerusalem Chamber, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. The pall was borne by the Duke of Bridgewater, Lord Cobham, the Earl of Wilmington, who had been speaker, and was afterwards First Lord of the Treasury, and other men of high consideration. Her Grace laid out her friend’s bequest in a superb diamond necklace, which she wore in honour of him, and, if report is to be believed, showed her regard in ways much more extraordinary. It is said that a statue of him in ivory, which moved by clockwork, was placed daily at her table, that she had a wax doll made in imitation of him, and that the feet of the doll were regularly blistered and anointed by the doctors, as poor Congreve’s feet had been when he suffered from the gout. A monument was erected to the poet in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription written by the Duchess; and Lord Cobham honoured him with a cenotaph, which seems to us, though that is a bold word, the ugliest and most absurd of the buildings at Stowe. 410We have said that Wycherley was a worse Congreve. There was, indeed, a remarkable analogy between the writings and lives of these two men. Both were gentlemen liberally educated. Both led town lives, and knew human nature only as it appears between Hyde Park and the Tower. Both were men of wit. Neither had much imagination. Both at an early age produced lively and profligate comedies. Both retired from the field while still in early manhood, and owed to their youthful achievements in literature whatever consideration they enjoyed in later life. Both, after they had ceased to write for the stage, published volumes of miscellanies which did little credit either to their talents or to their morals. Both, during their declining years, hung loose upon society; and both in their last moments, made eccentric and unjustifiable dispositions of their estates.
But in every point Congreve maintained his superiority to Wycherley. Wycherley had wit; but the wit of Congreve far outshines that of every comic writer, except Sheridan, who has arisen within the last two centuries. Congreve had not, in a large measure, the poetical faculty; but compared with Wycherley he might be called a great poet. Wycherley had some knowledge of books; but Congreve was a man of real learning. Congreve’s offences against decorum, though highly culpable, were not so gross as those of Wycherley; nor did Congreve, like Wycherley, exhibit to the world the deplorable spectacle of a licentious dotage. Congreve died in the enjoyment of high consideration; Wycherley forgotten or despised. Congreve’s will was absurd and capricious; but Wycherley’s last actions appear to have been prompted by obdurate malignity. 411Here, at least for the present, we must stop. Vanbrugh and Farquhar are not men to be hastily dismissed, and we have not left ourselves space to do them justice.
Many 412reasons make it impossible for us to lay before our readers, at the present moment, a complete view of the character and public career of the late Lord Holland. But we feel that we have already deferred too long the duty of paying some tribute to his memory. We feel that it is more becoming to bring without further delay an offering, though intrinsically of little value, than to leave his tomb longer without some token of our reverence and love.
We shall say very little of the book which lies on our table. And yet it is a book which, even if it had been the work of a less distinguished man, or had appeared under circumstances less interesting, would have well repaid an attentive perusal. It is valuable, both as a record of principles and as a model of composition.
We find in it all the great maxims which, during more than forty years, guided Lord Holland’s public conduct, and the chief reasons on which those maxims rest, condensed into the smallest possible space, and set forth with admirable perspicuity, dignity, and precision. To his opinions on Foreign Policy we for the most part cordially assent; but, now and then we are inclined to
(1) The Opinions of Lord Holland, as recorded in the
Journals of the House of Lords, from 1797 to 1841. Collected
and edited by D. C. Moylan, of Lincoln’s-Inn, Barrister-
at-Law. 8vo. London: 1841.
413think them imprudently generous. We could not have signed the protest against the detention of Napoleon. The protest respecting the course which England pursued at the Congress of Verona, though it contains much that is excellent, contains also positions which, we are inclined to think, Lord Holland would, at a later period, have admitted to be unsound. But to all his doctrines on constitutional questions, we give our hearty approbation; and we firmly believe that no British government has ever deviated from that line of internal policy which he has traced, without detriment to the public.
We will give, as a specimen of this little volume, a single passage, in which a chief article of the political creed of the Whigs is stated and explained, with singular clearness, force, and brevity. Our readers will remember that, in 1825, the Catholic Association raised the cry of emancipation with most formidable effect. The Tories acted after their kind. Instead of removing the grievance they tried to put down the agitation, and brought in a law, apparently sharp and stringent, but in truth utterly impotent, for restraining the right of petition. Lord Holland’s Protest on that occasion is excellent.
“We are,” says he, “well aware that the privileges of the people, the rights of free discussion, and the spirit and letter of our popular institutions, must render,—and they are intended to render,—the continuance of an extensive grievance, and of the dissatisfaction consequent thereupon, dangerous to the tranquillity of the country, and ultimately subversive of the authority of the state. Experience and theory alike forbid us to deny that effect of a free constitution; a sense of justice and a love of liberty equally deter us from lamenting it. But we have always been taught to look for the remedy of such disorders in the redress of the grievances which justify them, and in the removal of the dissatisfaction from which they flow—not in restraints on ancient privileges, 414not in inroads on the right of public discussion, nor in violations of the principles of a free government. If, therefore, the legal method of seeking redress, which has been resorted to by persons labouring under grievous disabilities, be fraught with immediate or remote danger to the state, we draw from that circumstance a conclusion long since foretold by great authority—namely, that the British constitution, and large exclusions, cannot subsist together; that the constitution must destroy them, or they will destroy the constitution.”
It was not, however, of this little book, valuable and interesting as it is, but of the author, that we meant to speak; and we will try to do so with calmness and impartiality.
In order to fully appreciate the character of Lord Holland, it is necessary to go far back into the history of his family; for he had inherited something more than a coronet and an estate. To the House of which he was the head belongs one distinction which we believe to be without a parallel in our annals. During more than a century, there has never been a time at which a Fox has not stood in a prominent station among public men. Scarcely had the chequered career of the first Lord Holland closed, when his son, Charles, rose to the head of the Opposition, and to the first rank among English debaters. And before Charles was borne to Westminster Abbey a third Fox had already become one of the most conspicuous politicians in the kingdom.
It is impossible not to be struck by the strong family likeness which, in spite of diversities arising from education and position, appears in these three distinguished persons. In their faces and figures there was a resemblance, such as is common enough in novels, where one picture is good for ten generations, but such as in real life is seldom found. The ample person, the massy 415and thoughtful forehead, the large eyebrows, the full cheek and lip, the expression, so singularly compounded of sense, humour, courage, openness, a strong will and a sweet temper, were common to all. But the features of the founder of the House, as the pencil of Reynolds and the chisel of Nollekens have handed them down to us, were disagreeably harsh and exaggerated. In his descendants, the aspect was preserved, but it was softened till it became, in the late lord, the most gracious and interesting countenance that was ever lighted up by the mingled lustre of intelligence and benevolence.
As it was with the faces of the men of this noble family, so was it also with their minds. Nature had done much for them all. She had moulded them all of that clay of which she is most sparing. To all she had given strong reason and sharp wit, a quick relish for every physical and intellectual enjoyment, constitutional intrepidity, and that frankness by which constitutional intrepidity is generally accompanied, spirits which nothing could depress, tempers easy, generous, and placable, and that genial courtesy which has its seat in the heart, and of which artificial politeness is only a faint and cold imitation. Such a disposition is the richest inheritance that ever was entailed on any family.
But training and situation greatly modified the fine qualities which nature lavished with such profusion on three generations of the house of Fox. The first Lord Holland was a needy political adventurer. He entered public life at a time when the standard of integrity among statesmen was low. He started as the adherent of a minister who had indeed many titles to respect, who possessed eminent talents both for administration 416and for debate, who understood the public interest well, and who meant fairly by the country, but who had seen so much perfidy and meanness that he had become sceptical as to the existence of probity. Weary of the cant of patriotism, Walpole had learned to talk a cant of a different kind. Disgusted by that sort of hypocrisy which is at least a homage to virtue, he was too much in the habit of practising the less respectable hypocrisy which ostentatiously displays, and sometimes even simulates vice. To Walpole Fox attached himself, politically and personally, with the ardour which belonged to his temperament. And it is not to be denied that in the school of Walpole he contracted faults which destroyed the value of his many great endowments. He raised himself, indeed, to the first consideration in the House of Commons; he became a consummate master of the art of debate; he attained honours and immense wealth; but the public esteem and confidence were withheld from him. His private friends, indeed, justly extolled his generosity and good nature. They maintained that in those parts of his conduct which they could least defend there was nothing sordid, and that, if he was misled, he was misled by amiable feelings, by a desire to serve his friends, and by anxious tenderness for his children. But by the nation he was regarded as a man of insatiable rapacity and desperate ambition; as a man ready to adopt, without scruple, the most immoral and the most unconstitutional manners; as a man perfectly fitted, by all his opinions and feelings, for the work of managing the Parliament by means of secret-service-money, and of keeping down the people with the bayonet. Many of his contemporaries had a morality quite as lax as his: but very few among them had his talents, and none had his hardihood and energy. 417He could not, like Sandys and Doddington, find safety in contempt. He therefore became an object of such general aversion as no statesman since the fall of Strafford has incurred, of such general aversion as was probably never in any country incurred by a man of so kind and cordial a disposition. A weak mind would have sunk under such a load of unpopularity. But that resolute spirit seemed to derive new firmness from the public hatred. The only effect which reproaches appeared to produce on him, was to sour, in some degree, his naturally sweet temper. The last acts of his public life were marked, not only by that audacity which he had derived from nature, not only by that immorality which he had learned in the school of Walpole, but by a harshness which almost amounted to cruelty, and which had never been supposed to belong to his character. His severity increased the unpopularity from which it had sprung. The well-known lampoon of Gray may serve as a specimen of the feeling of the country. All the images are taken from shipwrecks, quicksands, and cormorants. Lord Holland is represented as complaining, that the cowardice of his accomplices had prevented him from putting down the free spirit of the city of London by sword and fire, and as pining for the time when birds of prey should make their nests in Westminster Abbey, and unclean beasts burrow in St. Paul’s.
Within a few months after the death of this remarkable man, his second son Charles appeared at the head of the party opposed to the American War. Charles had inherited the bodily and mental constitution of his father, and had been much, far too much, under his father’s influence. It was indeed impossible that a son of so affectionate and noble a nature should not have 418been warmly attached to a parent who possessed many fine qualities, and who carried his indulgence and liberality towards his children even to a culpable extent. Charles saw that the person to whom he was bound by the strongest ties was, in the highest degree, odious to the nation; and the effect was what might have been expected from the strong passions and constitutional boldness of so high-spirited a youth. He cast in his lot with his father, and took, while still a boy, a deep part in the most unjustifiable and unpopular measures that had been adopted since the reign of James the Second. In the debates on the Middlesex Election, he distinguished himself, not only by his precocious powers of eloquence, but by the vehement and scornful manner in which he bade defiance to public opinion. He was at that time regarded as a man likely to be the most formidable champion of arbitrary government that had appeared since the Revolution, to be a Bute with far greater powers, a Mansfield with far greater courage. Happily his father’s death liberated him early from the pernicious influence by which he had been misled. His mind expanded. His range of observation became wider. His genius broke through early prejudices. His natural benevolence and magnanimity had fail play. In a very short time he appeared in a situation worthy of his understanding and of his heart. From a family whose name was associated in the public mind with tyranny and corruption, from a party of which the theory and the practice were equally servile, from the midst of the Luttrells, the Dysons, the Barringtons, came forth the greatest parliamentary defender of civil and religious liberty.
The late Lord Holland succeeded to the talents and to the fine natural dispositions of his House. But his 419situation was very different from that of the two eminent men of whom we have spoken. In some important respects it was better, and in some it was worse than theirs. He had one great advantage over them. He received a good political education. The first lord was educated by Sir Robert Walpole. Mr. Fox was educated by his father. The late lord was educated by Mr. Fox. The pernicious maxims early imbibed by the first Lord Holland, made his great talents useless, and worse than useless, to the state. The pernicious maxims early imbibed by Mr. Fox led him, at the commencement of his public life, into great faults which, though afterwards nobly expiated, were never forgotten. To the very end of his career, small men, when they had nothing else to say in defence of their own tyranny, bigotry, and imbecility, could always raise a cheer by some paltry taunt about the election of Colonel Luttrell, the imprisonment of the lord mayor, and other measures in which the great Whig leader had borne a part at the age of one or two and twenty. On Lord Holland no such slur could be thrown. Those who most dissent from his opinions must acknowledge that a public life more consistent is not to be found in our annals. Every part of it is in perfect harmony with every other part; and the whole is in perfect harmony with the great principles of toleration and civil freedom. This rare felicity is in a great measure to be attributed to the influence of Mr. Fox. Lord Holland, as was natural in a person of his talents and expectations, began at a very early age to take the keenest interest in politics; and Mr. Fox found the greatest pleasure in forming the mind of so hopeful a pupil. They corresponded largely on political subjects when the young lord was only sixteen; and their 420friendship and mutual confidence continued to the day of that mournful separation at Chiswick. Under such training such a man as Lord Holland was in no danger of falling into those faults which threw a dark shade over the whole career of his grandfather, and from which the youth of his uncle was not wholly free.
On the other hand, the late Lord Holland, as compared with his grandfather and his uncle, laboured under one great disadvantage. They were members of the House of Commons. He became a Peer while still an infant. When he entered public life, the House of Lords was a very small and a very decorous assembly. The minority to which he belonged was scarcely able to muster five or six votes on the most important nights, when eighty or ninety lords were present. Debate had accordingly become a mere form, as it was in the Irish House of Peers before the Union. This was a great misfortune to a man like Lord Holland. It was not by occasionally addressing fifteen or twenty solemn and unfriendly auditors, that his grandfather and his uncle attained their unrivalled parliamentary skill. The former had learned his art in “the great Walpolean battles,” on nights when Onslow was in the chair seventeen hours without intermission, when the thick ranks on both sides kept unbroken order till long after the winter sun had risen upon them, when the blind were led out by the hand into the lobby and the paralytic laid down in their bed-clothes on the benches. The powers of Charles Fox were, from the first, exercised in conflicts not less exciting. The great talents of the late Lord Holland had no such advantage. This was the more unfortunate, because the peculiar species of eloquence which 421belonged to him in common with his family required much practice to develope it. With strong sense, and the greatest readiness of wit, a certain tendency to hesitation was hereditary in the line of Fox. This hesitation arose, not from the poverty, but from the wealth of their vocabulary. They paused, not from the difficulty of finding one expression, but from the difficulty of choosing between several. It was only by slow degrees and constant exercise that the first Lord Holland and his son overcame the defect. Indeed neither of them overcame it completely.
In statement, the late Lord Holland was not successful; his chief excellence lay in reply. He had the quick eye of his house for the unsound parts of an argument, and a great felicity in exposing them. He was decidedly more distinguished in debate than any peer of his time who had not sat in the House of Commons. Nay, to find his equal among persons similarly situated, we must go back eighty years to Earl Granville. For Mansfield, Thurlow, Loughborough, Grey, Grenville, Brougham, Plunkett, and other eminent men, living and dead, whom we will not stop to enumerate, carried to the Upper House an eloquence formed and matured in the Lower. The opinion of the most discerning judges was that Lord Holland’s oratorical performances, though sometimes most successful, afforded no fair measure of his oratorical powers, and that, in an assembly of which the debates were frequent and animated, he would have attained a very high order of excellence. It was, indeed, impossible to listen to his conversation without seeing that he was bom a debater. To him, as to his uncle, the exercise of the mind in discussion was a positive pleasure. With the greatest good nature and 422good breeding, he was the very opposite to an assenter. The word “disputatious” is generally used as a word of reproach; but we can express our meaning only by saying that Lord Holland was most courteously and pleasantly disputatious. In truth, his quickness in discovering and apprehending distinctions and analogies was such as a veteran judge might envy. The lawyers of the Duchy of Lancaster were astonished to find in an unprofessional man so strong a relish for the esoteric parts of their science, and complained that as soon as they had split a hair, Lord Holland proceeded to split the filaments into filaments still finer. In a mind less happily constituted, there might have been a risk that this turn for subtilty would have produced serious evil. But in the heart and understanding of Lord Holland there was ample security against all such danger. He was not a man to be the dupe of his own ingenuity. He put his logic to its proper use; and in him the dialectician was always subordinate to the statesman.
His political life is written in the chronicles of his country. Perhaps, as we have already intimated, his opinions on two or three great questions of foreign policy were open to just objection. Yet even his errors, if he erred, were amiable and respectable. We are not sure that we do not love and admire him the more because he was now and then seduced from what we regard as a wise policy by sympathy with the oppressed, by generosity towards the fallen, by a philanthropy so enlarged that it took in all nations, by love of peace, a love which in him was second only to the love of freedom, and by the magnanimous credulity of a mind which was as incapable of suspecting as of devising mischief. 423To his views on questions of domestic policy the voice of his countrymen does ample justice. They revere the memory of the man who was, during forty years, the constant protector of all oppressed races and persecuted sects, of the man whom neither the prejudices nor the interests belonging to his station could seduce from the path of right, of the noble, who in every great crisis cast in his lot with the commons, of the planter, who made manful war on the slave trade, of the landowner, whose whole heart was in the struggle against the corn-laws.
We have hitherto touched almost exclusively on those parts of Lord
Holland’s character which were open to the observation of millions. How
shall we express the feelings with which his memory is cherished by those
who were honoured with his friendship? Or in what language shall we speak
of that house, once celebrated for its rare attractions to the furthest
ends of the civilised world, and now silent and desolate as the grave? To
that house, a hundred and twenty years ago, a poet addressed those tender
and graceful lines, which have now acquired a new meaning not less sad
than that which they originally bore.
“Thou
hill, whose brow the antique structures grace,
Reared
by bold chiefs of Warwick’s noble race,
Why,
once so loved, whene’er thy bower appears,
O’er
my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears?
How
sweet were once thy prospects fresh and fair,
Thy
sloping walks and unpolluted air!
How sweet
the glooms beneath thine aged trees,
Thy
noon-tide shadow and thine evening breeze!
His
image thy forsaken bowers restore;
Thy walks
and airy prospects charm no more;
No more the
summer in thy glooms allayed,
Thine evening
breezes, and thy noon-day shade.”
Yet a few years, and the shades and structures may 424follow their illustrious masters. The wonderful city which, ancient and gigantic as it is, still continues to grow as fast as a young town of logwood by a water-privilege in Michigan, may soon displace those turrets and gardens which are associated with so much that is interesting and noble, with the courtly magnificence of Rich, with the loves of Ormond, with the counsels of Cromwell, with the death of Addison. The time is coming when, perhaps, a few old men, the last survivors of our generation, will in vain seek, amidst new streets and squares, and railway stations, for the site of that dwelling which was in their youth the favourite resort of wits and beauties, of painters and poets, of scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. They will then remember, with strange tenderness, many objects once familiar to them, the avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paintings, the carving, the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. With peculiar fondness they will recall that venerable chamber, in which all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly blended with all that female grace and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room. They will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded with the varied learning of many lands and many ages, and those portraits in which were preserved the features of the best and wisest Englishmen of two generations. They will recollect how many men who have guided the politics of Europe, who have moved great assemblies by reason and eloquence, who have put life into bronze and canvas, or who have left to posterity things so written that it shall not willingly let them die, were there mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest in the society of the most splendid of capitals. They will remember the peculiar character which belonged to that circle, in 425which every talent and accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They will remember how the last debate was discussed in one corner, and the last comedy of Scribe in another; while Wilkie gazed with modest admiration on Sir Joshua’s Baretti; while Mackintosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation; while Talleyrand related his conversations with Barras at the Luxembourg, or his ride with Lannes over the field of Austerlitz. They will remember, above all, the grace, and the kindness, far more admirable than grace, with which the princely hospitality of that ancient mansion was dispensed. They will remember the venerable and benignant countenance and the cordial voice of him who bade them welcome. They will remember that temper which years of pain, of sickness, of lameness, of confinement, served only to make sweeter and sweeter, and that frank politeness, which at once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest and most timid writer or artist, who found himself for the first time among Ambassadors and Earls. They will remember that constant flow of conversation, so natural, so animated, so various, so rich with observation and anecdote; that wit which never gave a wound; that exquisite mimicry which ennobled, instead of degrading; that goodness of heart which appeared in every look and accent, and gave additional value to every talent and acquirement. They will remember, too, that he whose name they hold in reverence was not less distinguished by the inflexible uprightness of his political conduct than by his loving disposition and his winning manners. They will remember that, in the last lines which he traced, he expressed his joy that he had done nothing unworthy of the friend of Fox and 426Grey; and they will have reason to feel similar joy, if, in looking back on many troubled years, they cannot accuse themselves of having done any thing unworthy of men who were distinguished by the friendship of Lord Holland.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: The 1860 six volume print set had the index for all six volumes at the end to volume six. This PG edition has the complete index for all volumes at the end of each volume.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W XYZ
A.
A priori reasoning, 8 9 10 20 21 59
Abbt and abbot, difference between, 76
Academy, character of its doctrines, 411
Academy, French, (the), 2 3 ; has been of no benefit to literature, 23 ; its treatment of Corneille and Voltaire, 23 21 ; the scene of the fiercest animosities, 23
Academy of the Floral Games, at Toulouse, 136 137 ; Acting, Garrick's, quotation from Fielding illustrative of, i. 332; the true test of excellence in,133
Adam, Robert, court architect to George III., 11
Addington, Henry, speaker of the House of Commons, 282 ; made First Lord of the Treasury, 282 ; his administration, 282 281 ; coolness between him and Pitt, 285 286 ; their quarrel, 287 ; his resignation, 290 112 ; raised to the Peerage, 112 ; raised to the Peerage, 293
Addison, Joseph, review of Miss Aikin's life of, 321 122 ; his character, 323 321 ; sketch of his father's life, 321 325 ; his birth and early life, 325 327 ; appointed to a scholarship in Magdalene College, Oxford, 327 ; his classical attainments, 327 330 ; his Essay on the Evidences of Christianity, 330 ; his Latin poems, 331 332 ; contributes a preface to Dryden's Georgies, 335 ; his intention to take orders frustrated. 335 ; sent by the government to the Continent, 333 ; his introduction to Boileau, 310 ; leaves Paris and proceeds to Venice, 311 315 ; his residence in Italy, 315 350 ; composes his Epistle to Montague (then Lord Halifax), 350 ; his prospects clouded by the death of William III., 351 ; becomes tutor to a young English traveller, 351 ; writes his Treatise on Medals, 351 ; repairs to Holland, 351 ; returns to England, 351 ; his cordial reception and introduction into the Kit Cat Club, 351 ; his pecuniary difficulties, 352 ; engaged by Godolphin to write a poem in honour of Marlborough's exploits, 351 355 ; is appointed to a Commissionership, 355 ; merits of his "Campaign," 356 ; criticism of his Travels in Italy, 329 359 ; his opera of Rosamond, 361 ; is made Undersecretary of State, and accompanies the Earl of Halifax to Hanover, 361 302 ; his election to the House of Commons, 362 ; his failure as a speaker, 362 ; his popularity and talents for conversation, 365 367 ; his timidity and constraint among strangers, 367 ; his favorite associates, 368 371 ; becomes Chief Secretary for Ireland under Wharton, 371 ; origination of the Tatler, 373 371 ; his characteristics as a writer, 373 378 ; compared with Swift and Voltaire as a master of the art of ridicule, 377 379 ; his pecuniary losses, 382 383 ; loss of his Secretaryship, 382 ; resignation of his Fellowship, 383 ; encouragement and disappointment of his advances towards a great lad 383 ; returned to Parliament without a contest, 383 ; his Whig Examiner, 384 ; intercedes with the Tories on behalf of Ambrose Phillipps and Steele, 384 ; his discontinuance of the Tatler and commencement of the Spectator, 384 ; his part in the Spectator, 385 ; his commencement and discontinuance of the Guardian, 389 ; his Cato, 345 390 394 365 366 ; his intercourse with Pope, 394 395 ; his concern for Steele, 396 ; begins a new series of the Spectator, 397 ; appointed secretary to the Lords Justices of the Council on the death of Queen Anne. 397 ; again appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, 399 ; his relations with Swift and Tickell, 399 400 ; removed to the Board of Trade, 401 ; production of his Drummer, 401 ; his Freeholder, 402 ; his estrangement from Pope, 403 404 ; his long courtship of the Countess Dowager of Warwick and union with her, 411 412 ; takes up his abode at Holland House, 412 ; appointed Secretary of State bv Sunderland, 413 ; failure of his health, 413 418 ; resigns his post, 413 ; receives a pension, 414 ; his estrangement from Steele and other friends, 414 415 ; advocates the bill for limiting the number of Peers, 415 ; refutation of a calumny upon him, 417 ; intrusts his works to Tickell, and dedicates them to Greggs, 418 ; sends for Gay on his death-bed to ask his forgiveness, 418 419 ; his death and funeral, 420 ; Tickell's eulogy on his death, 421 ; superb edition of his works, 421 ; his monument in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, 422 ; praised by Dryden, 369
Addison, Dr. Lancelot, sketch of his life, 325 325
Adiaphorists, a sect of German Protestants, 7 8
Adultery, how represented by the Dramatists of the Restoration, 357
Advancement of Learning, by Bacon, its publication, 383
Æschines, his character, 193 194
Æschylus and the Greek Drama, 210 229
Afghanistan, the monarchy of, analogous to that of England in the 10th century, 29 ; bravery of its inhabitants, 23 ; the English the only army in India which could compete with them, 30 ; their devastation in India, 207
Agricultural and manufacturing laborers, comparison of their condition, 145 148
Agitjari, the singer, 256
Aiken, Miss, review of her Life of Addison, 321 422
Aix, its capture, 244
Akenside, his epistle to Curio, 183
Alcibiades, suspected of assisting at a mock celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, 49
Aldrich, Dean, 113
Alexander the Great compared with Clive, 297
Altieri, his greatness, 61 ; influence of Dante upon his style, 61 62 ; comparison between him and Cowper, 350 ; his Rosmunda contrasted with Shakspere's Lady Macbeth, 175 ; influence of Plutarch and the writers of his school upon, i. 401. 401
Allahabad, 27
Allegories of Johnson and Addison, 252
Allegory, difficulty of making it interesting, 252
Allegro and Penseroso, 215
Alphabetical writing, the greatest of human inventions, 453 ; comparative views of its value by Plato and Bacon, 453 454
America, acquisitions of the Catholic Church in, 300 ; its capabilities, 301
American Colonies, British, war with them, 57 59 ; act for imposing stamp duties upon them, 58 65 ; their disaffection, 76 ; revival of the dispute with them, 105 ; progress of their resistance, 106
Anabaptists, their origin, 12
Anacharsis, reputed contriver of the potter's wheel, 438
Analysis, critical not applicable with exactness to poetry, 325 ; but grows more accurate as criticism improves, 321
Anaverdy Khan, governor of tlie Carnatic, 211
Angria, his fortress of Gheriah reduced by Clive, 228
Anne, Queen, her political and religious inclinations, 130 ; changes in her government in 1710, 130 ; relative estimation bv the Whigs and the Tories of her reign, 133 140 ; state of parties at her accession, v. 352, 352 353 ; dismisses the Whigs, 381 382 ; change in the conduct of public affairs consequent on her death, 397 ; touches Johnson for the king's evil, 173 ; her cabinet during the Seven Years' War, 410
Antijacobin Review, (the new), vi. 405; contrasted with the Antijacobin, 400 407
Antioch, Grecian eloquence at, 301
Anytus, 420
Apostolical succession, Mr. Gladstone claims it for the Church of England, 100 ; to 178. 178
Apprentices, negro, in the West Indies, 307 374 370 378 383
Aquinas, Thomas, 478
Arab fable of the Great Pyramid, 347
Arbuthnot's Satirical Works, 377
Archimedes, his slight estimate of his inventions, 450
Archytas, rebuked by Plato, 449
Arcot, Nabob of, his relations with England, 211 219 ; his claims recognized by the English, 213
Areopagitiea, Milton's allusion to, 204
Argyle, Duke of, secedes from Walpole's administration, 204
Arimant, Dryden's, 357
Ariosto, 60
Aristophanes, 352 ; his clouds a true picture of the change in his countrymen's character, 383
Aristotle, his authority impaired by the Reformation, 440 ; the most profound critic of antiquity, 140 141 ; his doctrine in regard to poetry, 40 ; the superstructure of his treatise on poetry not equal to its plan, 140
Arithmetic, comparative estimate of, by Plato and by Bacon, 448
Arlington, Lord, his character, 30 ; his coldness for the Triple Alliance, 37 ; his impeachment, 50
Armies in the middle ages, how constituted, 282 478 ; a powerful restraint on the regal power, 478 ; subsequent change in this respect, 479
Arms, British, successes of, against the French in 1758, 244 247
Army, (the) control of, by Charles I., or by the Parliament, 489 ; its triumph over both, 497 ; danger of a standing army becoming an instrument of despotism, 487
Arne, Dr., set to music Addison's opera of Rosamund, 361
Arragon and Castile, their old institutions favorable to public liberty iii. 80. 80
Arrian, 395
Art of War, Machiavelli's, 306
Arundel, Earl of, iii. 434
Asia, Central, its people, 28
Asiatic Society, commencement of its career under Warren Hastings, 98
Assemblies, deliberative, 2 40
Assembly, National, the French, 46 48 68 71 443 446
Astronomy, comparative estimate of by Socrates and by Bacon, 452
Athenian jurymen, stipend of, 33 ; note; police, name of, i. 34, 34 ; note; magistrates, name of, who took cognisance of offences against religion, i. 53, 139 ; note.; orators, essay on, 139 157 ; oratory unequalled, 145 ; causes of its excellence, 145 ; its quality, 151 153 156
Johnson's ignorance of Athenian character, 146 418 ; intelligence of the populace, and its causes, 140 149 ; books the least part of their education, 147 ; what it consisted in, 148 ; their knowledge necessarily defective, 148 ; and illogical from its conversational character, 149 ; eloquence, history of, 151 153 ; when at its height, 153 154 ; coincidence between their progress in the art of war and the art of oratory, 155 ; steps by which Athenian oratory approached to finished excellence extemporaneous with those by which its character sank, 153 ; causes of this phenomenon, 154 ; orators, in proportion as they became more expert, grew less respectable in general character, 155 ; their vast abilities, 151 ; statesmen, their decline and its causes, 155 ; ostracism, 182 ; comedies, impurity of, 182 2 ; reprinted at the two Universities, 182 ; iii. 2. 2
"Athenian Revels," Scenes from, 30 ; to: 54
Athenians (the) grew more sceptical with the progress of their civilization, 383 ; the causes of their deficiencies in logical accuracy, 383 384
Johnson's opinion of them, 384 418
Athens, the most disreputable part of, i. 31, note ; favorite epithet of, i. 30, 30 ; note; her decline and its characteristics, 153 154 Mr. Clifford's preference of Sparta over, 181 ; contrasted with Sparta, 185 187 ; seditions in, 188 ; effect of slavery in, 181 ; her liturgic system, 190 ; period of minority in, 191 192 ; influence of her genius upon the world, 200 201
Attainder, an act of, warrantable, 471
Atterbury, Francis, life of, vi. 112 131 ; his youth, 112 ; his defence of Luther, 113 ; appointed a royal chaplain, 113 ; his share in the controversy about the Letters of Phalaris, 115 119 110 ; prominent as a high-churchman, 119 120 ; made Dean of Carlisle, 120 ; defends Sacheverell, 121 ; made Dean of Christ Church, 121 ; desires to proclaim James II., 122 ; joins the opposition, 123 ; refuses to declare for the Protestant succession, 123 ; corresponds with the Pretender, 123 124 ; his private life, 124 125 129 ; reads the funeral service over the body of Addison, 124 420 ; imprisoned for his part in the Jacobite conspiracy, 125 ; his trial and sentence, 120 127 ; his exile, 128 129 ; his favor with the Pretender, 129 130 ; vindicates himself from the charge of having garbled Clarendon's history, 130 ; his death and burial, 131
Attila, 300
Attributes of God,subtle speculations touching them imply no high degree of intellectual culture, 303 304 "
Aubrey, his charge of corruption against Bacon, 413
Bacon's decision against him after his present, 430
Augsburg, Confession of, its adoption in Sweden, 329
Augustin, St., iv. 300. 300
Attrungzebe, his policy, 205 206
Austen, Jane, notice of, 307 308
Austin, Sarah, her character as a translator, 299 349
Austria, success of her armies in the Catholic cause, 337
Authors, their present position, 190 ; to: 197
Avignon, the Papal Court transferred from Rome to, 312
B.
Baber, founder of the Mogul empire, 202
Bacon, Lady, mother of Lord Bacon, 349
Bacon, Lord, review of Basil Montagu's new edition of the works of, 336 495 ; his mother distinguished as a linguist, 349 ; his early years, 352 355 ; his services refused by government, 355 356 ; his admission at Gray's Inn, 357 ; his legal attainments, 358 ; sat in Parliament in 1593, 359 ; part he took in politics, 360 ; his friendship with the Earl of Essex, 305 372 ; examination of his conduct to Essex, 373 384 ; influence of King James on his fortunes, 383 ; his servility to Lord Southampton, 384 ; influence his talents had with the public, 386 ; his distinction in Parliament and in the courts of law, 388 ; his literary and philosophical works, 388 ; his "Novum Organum," and the admiration it excited, 388 ; his work of reducing and recompiling the laws of England, 389 ; his tampering with the judges on the trial of Peacham, 389 394 ; attaches himself to Buckingham, 390 ; his appointment as Lord Keeper, 399 ; his share in the vices of the administration, 400 ; his animosity towards Sir Edward Coke, 405 407 ; his town and country residences, 408 409 ; his titles of Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans, report against him of the Committee on the Courts of Justice, 413 ; nature of the charges, 413 414 ; overwhelming evidence to them, 414 410 ; his admission of his guilt, 410 ; his sentence, 417 ; examination of Mr. Montagu's arguments in his defence, 417 430 ; mode in which he spent the last years of his life, 431 432 ; chief peculiarity of his philosophy, 435 447 ; his views compared with those of Plato, 448 455 ; to what his wide and durable fame is chiefly owing, 403 ; his frequent treatment of moral subjects, 407 ; his views as a theologian, 409 ; vulgar notion of him as inventor of the inductive method, 470 ; estimate of his analysis of that method, 471 479 ; union of audacity and sobriety in his temper, 480 ; his amplitude of comprehension, 481 482 ; his freedom from the spirit of controversy, 484 ; his eloquence, wit, and similitudes, 484 ; his disciplined imagination. 487 ; his boldness and originality, 488 ; unusual development in the order of his faculties, 489 ; his resemblance to the mind of Burke, 489 ; specimens of his two styles, 490 491 ; value of his Essays, 491 ; his greatest performance the first book of the Novum Organum, 492 ; contemplation of his life, 492 495 ; his reasoning upon the principle of heat, 90 ; his system generally as opposed to the schoolmen, 78 79 103 ; his objections to the system of education at the Universities, 445
Bacon, Sir Nicholas, his character, 342 448
Baconian philosophy, its chief peculiarity, 435 ; its essential spirit, 439 ; its method and object differed from the ancient, 448 ; comparative views of Bacon and Plato, 448 159 ; its beneficent spirit, 455 458 403 ; its value compared with ancient philosophy, 459 471
Baillie, Gen., destruction of his detachment by Hyder Ali, 72
Balance of power, interest of the Popes in preserving it, 338
Banim, Mr., his defence of James II. as a supporter of toleration, 304
Banking operations of Italy ill the 14 ; century, 270
Baptists, (the) Bunyan's position among, 140 147
Bar (the) its degraded condition in the time of James II., 520
Barbary, work on, by Rev. Dr. Addison, 325
Barbarians, Mitford's preference of Greeks, 190
Barcelona, capture of, by Peterborough, 110
Barère, Bertrand, Memoirs of, reviewed, 423 539 ; opinions of the editors as to his character, 424 ; his real character, 425 427 429 407 ; has hitherto found no apologist, 420 ; compared with Danton and Robespierre, 420 ; his natural disposition, 427 ; character of his memoirs, 429 430 ; their mendacity, 431 430 445 ; their literary value, 430 ; his birth and education, 430 437 ; his marriage, 438 ; first visit to Paris, 439 ; his journal, 439 ; elected a representative of the Third Estate, 440 ; his character as a legislator, 441 ; his oratory, 442 471 472 ; his early political opinions, 442 ; draws a report on the Woods and Forests, 443 ; becomes more republican, 443 ; on the dissolution of the National Assembly he is made a judge, 440 ; chosen to the Convention, 449 ; belongs to the Girondists, 455 ; sides with the Mountain in condemnation of the king, 450 457 ; was really a federalist, 400 ; continues with the Girondists, 401 ; appointed upon the Committee of Public Safety, 403 ; made its Secretary, 403 ; wavers between the Girondists and the Mountain, 404 ; joins with the Mountain, 405 ; remains upon the Committee of Public Safety, 460 ; his relation to the Mountain, 400-408; takes the initiative against the Girondists, 408 409 ; moves the execution of Marie Antoinette, 409 ; speaks against the Girondists, 434 435 474 ; one of the Committee of Safety, 475 ; his part (luring the Reign of Terror. 482 485 487 ; his cruelties, 485, 480 ; life's pleasantries, 487 488 ; his proposition to murder English prisoners, 490 492 ; his murders, 495 497 ; his part in the quarrels of the Committee, 497 590 ; moves that Robespierre be put to death, 499 500 ; cries raised against him, 504 ; a committee appointed to examine into his conduct, 505 ; his defence, 505 50 ; condemned to imprisonment, 507 ; his journey to Orleans and confinement there, 507509; removed to Saintes, 510 ; his escape, 510 ; elected a member of the Council of Five Hundred, 511 ; indignation of the members and annulling of the election, 511 512 ; writes a work on the Liberty of the Seas. 512 ; threatened by the mob, 512 513 ; his relations with Napoleon, 514 518 521 527 ; a journalist and pamphleteer, 523 524 ; his literary style, 525 ; his degradation, 527 ; his treachery, 528 ; becomes a royalist, 529 ; elected to the Chamber of Representatives, 529 ; banished from France, 531 ; his return, 531 ; involved in lawsuits with his family, 531 ; pensioned, 532 ; his death, 532 ; his character, 534 535 537 539 ; his ignorance of England and her his, 530 ; his religious hypocrisy,
Baretti, his admiration for Miss Burney, 271
Barilion, M. his pithy words on the new council proposed by Temple, 7 70
Barlow, Bishop, 370
Barrington, Lord, 13
Harwell, Mr., 35 ; his support of Hastings, 40 54 55 2
Baltic, Burke's declamations on its capture, 113
Bathos, perfect instance of, to be found in Petrarch's 5th sonnet, 93
Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies, Addison's, 331
Bavaria, its contest between Protestantism and Catholicism, 326
Baxter's testimony to Hampden's excellence, 430
Bayle, Peter, 300
Beatrice, Dante's, 1
Beanclerk, Topliam, 204
Beaumarchais, his suit before the parliament of Paris, 430 431
Beckford, Alderman, 90
Bedford, Duke of, 11 ; his views of the policy of Chatham, 20 41 ; presents remonstrance to George II 71
Bedford, Earl of. invited by Charles I. to form an administration, 472
Bedfords (the), 11 ; parallel between them and the Buckinghams, 73 ; their opposition to the Buckingham ministry on the Stamp Act, 79 ; their willingness to break with Grenville on Chatham's accession to office, 89 ; deserted Grenville and admitted to office, 110
Bedford House assailed by a rabble, 70
Begums of Oude, their domains and treasures, 80 ; disturbances in Oude imputed to them, 87 ; their protestations, 88 ; their spoliation charged against Hastings, 121
Belgium, its contest between Protestantism and Catholicism, 326 330
Belial, 355
Bell, Peter, Byron's spleen against, 353
Bellasys, the English general, 107
Bellingham, his malevolence, 309
Belphegor (the), of Machiavelli, 299
Benares, its grandeur, 74 ; its annexation to the British dominions, 84
"Benefits of the death of Christ," 325
Benevolences, Oliver St. John's opposition to, and Bacon's support of, 389
Bengal, its resources, 228
Bentham and his system, 53 54 59 80, 87 91 115 116, 121 122 ; his language on the French revolution, 204 ; his greatness, 38 40
Bentinck, Lord William, his memory cherished by the Hindoos, 298
Bentivoglio, Cardinal, on the state of religion in England in the 16th century, 25
Bentley, Richard, his quarrel with Boyle, and remarks on Temple's Essay on the Letters of Phalaris, 109 111 115 119 ; his edition of Milton, 111 ; his notes on Horace, 111 ; his reconciliation with Boyle and Atterbury, 113 ; his apothegm about criticism, 119 212
Berar, occupied by the Bonslas, 59
Berwick, Duke of, held the Allies in check, 109 ; his retreat before Galway, 119
Bible (the), English, its literary style, 348
Bickell, R. Rev., his work on Slavery in the West Indies, 330
Bickerstaff, Isaac, astrologer, 374
Billaud, 405 475 498 499 501 504 506 508 510
Biographia Britannica, refutation of a calumny on Addison in, 417
Biography, writers of contrasted with historians, 423 ; tenure by which they are bound to their subject, 103
Bishops, claims of those of the Church of England to apostolical succession, 160-174.
Black Hole of Calcutta described, 233 234 ; retribution of the English for its horrors, 235 239 242 245
Blackmore, Sir Richard, his attainments in the ancient languages, 331
Blackstone, 334
Blasphemous publications, policy of Government in respect to, 171
Blenheim, battle of, 354 Addison employed to write a poem in its honor, 355
Blois, Addison's retirement to, 339
"Bloombury Gang," the denomination of the Bedfords, 11
Bodley, Sir Thomas, founder of the Bodleian Library, 388 433
Bohemia, influence of the doctrines of Wickliffe in, 313
Boileau, Addison's intercourse with, 340 341 ; his opinion of modern Latin, 341 ; his literary qualities, 343 ; his resemblance to Dryden, 373
Bolingbroke, Lord, the liberal patron of literature, 400 ; proposed to strengthen the royal prerogative, 171 ; his jest on the occasion of the tirst representation of Cato, 392 Pope's perfidy towards him, 408 ; his remedy for the disease of the state, 23 24
Bombast, Dryden's, 361 362 Shakspeare's, 361
Bombay, its affairs thrown into confusion by the new council at Calcutta, 40
Book of the Church, Southey's, 137
Booth played the hero in Addison's Cato on its tirst representation, 392
Borgia, Cæsar, 301
Boroughs, rotten, the abolition of, a necessary reform in the time of George I., 180
Boswell, James, his character, 391 397 204 205
Boswell's Life of Johnson, by Crocker, review of, 368 426 ; character of the work, 387
Boswellism, 265
Bourbon, the House of, their vicissitudes in Spain, 106 130
Bourne, Vincent, 5 342 ; his Latin verses in celebration of Addison's restoration to health, 413
Boyd, his translation of Dante, 78
Boyer, President, 390-392.
Boyle, Charles, his nominal editorship of the Letters of Phalaris, 108 113 119 ; his book on Greek history and philology, v.331.
Boyle, Rt. Hon. Henry, 355
"Boys" (the) in opposition to Sir R. Walpole, 176
Bracegirdle, Mis., her celebrity as an actress, 407 ; her intimacy with Congreve, 407
Brahmins, 306
"Breakneck Steps," Fleet Street, 157 ; note.
Breda, treaty of, 34
Bribery, foreign, in the time of Charles II., 525
Brihuega, siege of, 128
"Broad Bottom Administration" (the), 220
Brothers, his prophecies as a test of faith, 305 306
Brown, Launcelot, 284
Brown's Estimate, 233
Bruce, his appearance at Mr. Burney's concerts, 257
Brunswick, the House of, 14
Brussels, its importance as the seat of a vice-regal Court, 34
Bridges, Sir Egerton, 303
Buchanan, character of his writings, 447
Buckhurst, 353
Buckingham, Duke of, the "Steenie" of James 1 , 44 Bacon's early discernment of his influence, 330 337 ; his expedition to Spain, 308; his return for Bacon's patronage, 333 ; his corruption, 402 ; his character and position, 402 408 ; his marriage, 411 412 ; his visit to Bacon, and report of his condition, 414
Buckingham, Duke of, one of the Cabal ministry, 374 ; his fondness for Wycherley, 374 ; anecdote of, 374
Budgell Eustace, one of Addison's friends, 308 303 371
Bunyan, John, Life of, 132 150 252 204 ; his birth and early life, 132 ; mistakes of his biographers in regard to his moral character, 133 134 ; enlists in the Parliamentary army, 135 ; his marriage, 135 ; his religious experiences, 130-138; begins to preach, 133 ; his imprisonment, 133 141 ; his early writings, 141 142 ; his liberation and gratitude to Charles II., 142 143 ; his Pilgrim's Progress, 143 140 ; the product of an uneducated genius, 57 343 ; his subsequent writings, 14 ; his position among the Baptists, 140 147 ; his second persecution, and the overtures made to him, 147 148 ; his death and burial-place, 148 ; his fame, 14 143 ; his imitators, 143 150 ; his style, 200 ; his religious enthusiasm and imagery, 333 Southey's edition of his Pilgrim's Progress reviewed, 253 207 ; peculiarities of the work, 200 ; not a perfect allegory, 257 258 ; its publication, and the number of its editions, 145 140
Buonaparte. See Napoleon.
Burgoyne, Gen., chairman of the committee of inquiry on Lord Clive, 232
Burgundy, Louis, Duke of, grandson of Louis XIV., iii. 02, 03.
Burke, Edmund, his characteristics, 133 ; his opinion of the war with Spain on the question of maritime right, 210 ; resembles Bacon, 483 ; effect of his speeches on the House of Commons, 118 ; not the author of the Letters of Junius, 37 ; his charges against Hastings, 104 137 ; his kindness to Alisa Burney, 288 ; her incivility to him at Hastings' trial, 28 ; his early political career, 75 ; his first speech in the House of Commons, 82 ; his opposition to Chatham's measures relating to India, 30 ; his defence of his party against Grenville's attacks, 102 ; his feeling towards Chatham, 103 ; his treatise on "The Sublime," 142 ; his character of the French Republic, 402 ; his views of the French and American revolutions, 51 208 ; his admiration of Pitt's maiden speech, 233 ; his opposition to Fox's India bill, 245 ; in the opposition to Pitt, 247 243 ; deserts Fox, 273
Burleigh and his Times, review of Lev. Dr. Xarea's, 1 30 ; his early life and character, 3 10 ; his death, 10 ; importance of the times in which he lived, 10 ; the great stain on his character, 31 ; character of the class of statesmen he belonged to, 343 ; his conduct towards Bacon, 355 305 ; his apology for having resorted to torture, 333 Bacon's letter to him upon the department of knowledge he had chosen, 483
Burnet, Bishop, 114
Burney, Dr., his social position, 251 255 ; his conduct relative to his daughter's first publication. 207 ; his daughter's engagement at Court, 281
Burney, Frances. See D'Arblay, Madame.
Burns, Robert, 201
Bussy, his eminent merit and conduct in India, 222
Bute, Earl of, his character and education, 13 20 ; appointed Secretary of State, 24 ; opposes the proposal of war with Spain on account of the family compact, 30 ; his unpopularity on Chatham's resignation, 31 ; becomes Prime Minister, 30 ; his first speech in the House of Lords, 33 ; induces the retirement of the Duke of Newcastle, 35 ; becomes first Lord of the Treasury, 35 ; his foreign and domestic policy, 37 52 ; his resignation, 52 ; continues to advise the King privately, 57 70 79 ; pensions Johnson, 198 199
Butler, 350 Addison not inferior to him in wit, 375
Byng, Admiral, his failure at Minorca. 232 ; his trial, 236 ; opinion of his conduct, 236 Chatham's defence of him, 237
Byron, Lord, his epistolary style, 325 ; his character, 326 327 ; his early life, 327 ; his quarrel with, and separation from, his wife, 329331; his expatriation, 332 ; decline of his intellectual powers, 333 ; his attachment to Italy and Greece, 335 ; his sickness and death, 336 ; general grief for his fate, 336 ; remarks on his poetry, 336 ; his admiration of the Hope school of poetry, 337 : his opinion of Wordsworth and Coleridge, 352 ; of Deter Bell, 353 ; his estimate of the poetry of the 18th and 19th centuries, 353 ; his sensitiveness to criticism, 354 ; the interpreter between Wordsworth and the multitude, 356 ; the founder of an exoteric Lake, school, 356 ; remarks on his dramatic works, 357 363 ; his egotism, 365 ; cause of his influence, 336 337
C.
Cabal (the), their proceedings and designs, 46 54 59
Cabinets, in modern times, 65 235
Cadiz, exploit of Essex at the siege of, 107 367 ; its pillage by the English expedition in 170 108
Cæsar Borgia, 307
Cæsar, Claudius, resemblance of James I. to, 440
Cæsar compared with Cromwell, 504 ; his Commentaries an incomparable model for military despatches, 404
Cæsars (the), parallel between them and the Tudors, not applicable, 21
Calcutta, its position on the Hoogley, 230 ; scene of the Black Hole of, 232 233 ; resentment of the English at its fall, 235 ; again threatened by Surajah Dow lab, 239 ; revival of its prosperity, 251 ; its sufferings during the famine, 285 ; its capture, 8 ; its suburbs infested by robbers, 41 ; its festivities on Hastings's marriage, 56
Callicles, 41 ; note.
Calvinism, moderation of Bunyan's, 263 ; held by the Church of England at the end of the 16 ; century, 175 ; many of its doctrines contained in the Paulieian theology, 309
Cambon, 455
Cambridge, University of, favored by George I. and George II., 36 37 ; its superiority to Oxford in intellectual activity, 344 ; disturbances produced in, by the Civil War, 15
Cambyses, story of his punishment of the corrupt judge, 423
Camilla, Madame D'Arblay's, 314
Campaign (the), by Addison, 355
Canada, subjugation of, by the British in 176 244
Canning, Mr., 45 46 286 411 414 419
Cape Breton, reduction of, 244
Carafla, Gian Pietro, afterwards Pope Paul, IV. his zeal and devotion, 318 324
Carlisle, Lady, 478
Carmagnoles, Bariere's, 471 472 490 491 498 499 502 505 529
Carnatic, (the), its resources, 211 212 ; its invasion by Hvder Ali, 71 72
Carnot, Hippolyte, his memoirs of Barrere reviewed, 423 539 ; failed to notice the falsehoods of his author, 430 431 435 557 ; his charitableness to him, 445 485 ; defends his proposition for murdering prisoners, 490 ; blinded by party spirit, 523 ; defends the Jacobin administration, 534 ; his general characteristics, 53 539
Carrier, 404
Carteret, Lord, his ascendency at the fall of Walpole, 184 Sir Horatio Walpole's stories about him, 187 ; his detection from Sir Robert Walpole, 202 ; succeeds Walpole, 210 ; his character as a statesman, 218 220
Carthagena, surrender of the arsenal and ship of, to the Allies, 111
Cary's translation of Dante, 68 78 70
Casiua (the), of Ilautus, 298
Castile. Admiral of, 100
Castile and Arragon, their old institutions favorable to public liberty, 86
Castilians, their character in the 16th century, 81 ; their conduct in the war of the Succession, 121 ; attachment to the faith of their ancestors, 316
Castracani, Castruccio, Life of, by Machiavelli, 317
Cathedral, Lincoln, painted window in, 428
Catholic Association, attempt of the Tories to put it down, 413
Catholic Church. See Church of Home.
Catholicism, causes of its success, 301 307 318, 331 336 ; the most poetical of all religions, 65
Catholics, Roman, Pitt's policy respecting, 280 281
Catholics and dews, the same reasoning employed against both, 312
Catholics and Protestants, their relative numbers in the 16th century, 26
Catholic Queen (a), precautions against, 487
Catholic Question (the), 413 410
Catiline, his conspiracy doubted, 405 ; compared to the Popish Plot, 406
"Cato," Addison's play of, its merits, and the contest it occasioned, 333 ; its first representation, 391 ; its performance at Oxford, 392 ; its deficiencies, 365 366
Cato, the censor, anecdote of, 354
Catullus, his mythology, 75
Cavaliers, their successors in the reign of George I. turned demagogues, 4
Cavendish, Lord, his conduct in the new council of Temple, 96 ; his merits, 73
Cecil. See Burleigh.
Cecil, Robert, his rivalry with Francis Bacon, 356 365 ; his fear and envy of Essex, 362 ; increase of his dislike for Bacon, 365 ; his conversation with Essex, 365 ; his interference to obtain knighthood for Bacon, 384
Cecilia, Madame D'Arblay's, 369 311 ; specimen of its style, 315 316
Censorship, existed in some form from Henry VIII. to the Revolution, 329
Ceres, 54 ; note.
Cervantes, 81 ; his celebrity, 80 the perfection of his art, 328 329 ; fails as a critic, 329
Chalmers, Dr., Mr. Gladstone's opinion of his defence of the Church, 122
Champion, Colonel, commander of the Bengal army, 32
Chandemagore, French settlement, on the Hoogley, 230 ; captured by the English, 239
Charlemagne, imbecility of his successors, 205
Charles, Archduke, his claim to the Spanish crown, 90 ; takes the field in support of it, 10 ; accompanies Peterborough in his expedition, 112 ; his success in the north-east of Spain, 117 ; is proclaimed king at Madrid, 119 ; his reverses and retreat, 123 ; his re-entry into Madrid, 126 ; his unpopularity, 127 ; concludes a peace, 131 ; forms an alliance with Philip of Spain, 138
Charles I., lawfulness of the resistance to, 235 243 Milton's defence of his execution, 246 249 ; his treatment of the Parliament of 164 457 ; his treatment of Stratford, 468 ; estimate of his character, 469 498 500 443 ; his tall, 497 ; his condemnation and its consequences, 500 501 Hampden's opposition to him, and its consequences, 443 459 ; resistance of the Scots to him, 460 ; his increasing difficulties, 461 ; his conduct towards the House of Commons, 477 482 ; his flight, 488 ; review of his conduct and treatment, 484 488 ; reaction in his favor during the Long Parliament, 410 ; effect of the victory over him on the national character, 7 8
Charles I. and Cromwell, choice between, 490
Charles II., character of his reign, 251 ; his foreign subsidies, 528 ; his situation in 1000 contrasted with that of Lewis XVIII., 282 283 ; his character, 290 30 80 ; his position towards the king of France, 290 ; consequences of his levity and apathy, 299 300 ; his court compared with that of his father, 29 ; his extravagance, 34 ; his subserviency to France, 37 44 46 ; his renunciation of the dispensing power, 55 ; his relations with Temple, 58 60 63 97 ; his system of bribery of the Commons, 71 ; his dislike of Halifax, 90 ; his dismissal of Temple, 97 ; his characteristics, 349 ; his influence upon English literature, 349 350 ; compared with Philip of Orleans, Regent of France, 64 65 Banyan's gratitude to him, 143 ; his social disposition, 374
Charles II. of Spain, his unhappy condition, 88 93 100 ; his difficulties in respect to the succession, 88 93
Charles III. of Spain, his hatred of England, 29
Charles VIII., 483
Charles XII., compared with Clive, 297
Charlotte, Queen, obtains the attendance of Miss Burney, 279 ; her partisanship for Hastings, 288 290 ; her treatment of Miss Burney, 298 297
Chateaubriand, his remark about the person of Louis XIV., 58 ; note.
Chatham, Earl of, character of his public life, 196 197 ; his early life, 198 ; his travels, 199 ; enters the army 199 ; obtains a seat in Parliament, 200 ; attaches himself to the Whigs in opposition, 207 ; his qualities as an orator, 211 213 ; dismissed from the army, 215 ; is made Groom of the Bedchamber to the Prince of Wales, 161 ; declaims against the ministers, 218 ; his opposition to Carteret, 219 ; legacy left him by the Duchess of Marlborough, 219 ; supports the Pelham ministry, 220 ; appointed Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, 221 ; overtures made to him by Newcastle, 280 ; made Secretary of State, 235 ; defends Admiral Byng, 237 ; coalesces with the Duke of Newcastle, 230 ; success of his administration, 230-250; his appreciation of Clive, 260 289 ; breach between him and the great Whig connection, 289 ; review of his correspondence, 1 ; in the zenith of prosperity and glory, 221 222 ; his coalition with Newcastle, 7 ; his strength in Parliament, 13 ; jealousies in his cabinet, 25 ; his defects, 26 ; proposes to declare war against Spain oil account of the family compact, 29 ; rejection of his counsel, 30 ; his resignation, 30 ; the king's gracious behavior to him, 30 ; public enthusiasm towards him, 31 ; his conduct in opposition, 33 46 ; his speech against peace with France and Spain, 49 ; his unsuccessful audiences with George III. to form an administration, 58 Sir William Pynsent bequeaths his whole property to him, 63 ; bad state of his health, 64 ; is twice visited by the Duke of Cumberland with propositions from the king, 68 72 ; his condemnation of the American Stamp Act, 77 78 ; is induced by the king to assist in ousting Rockingham, 86 ; morbid state of his mind, 87 88 95 99 ; undertakes to form an administration, 89 ; is created Earl of Chatham, 91 ; failure of his ministerial arrangements, 91 99 ; loss of his popularity, and of his foreign influence, 99 ; his despotic manners, 89 93 ; lays an embargo on the exportation of corn, 95 ; his first speech in the Mouse of Lords, 95 ; his supercilious conduct towards the Peers, 95 ; his retirement from office, 100 ; his policy violated, 101 ; resigns the privy seal, 100 ; stale of parties and of public affairs on his recovery, 100 301 ; his political relations, 101 ; his eloquence not suited to the House of Lords, 104 ; opposed the recognition of the independence of the United States, 107 ; his last appearance in the House of Lords, 108 22 ; his death, 100 230 ; reflections on his fall, 100 ; his funeral in Westminster Abbey, lit.; compared with Mirabeau, 72 73
Chatham, Earl of, (the second), 230 ; made First Lord of the Admiralty, 270
Cherbourg, guns taken from, 245
Chesterfield, Lord, his dismissal by Walpole, 204 ; prospectus of Johnson's Dictionary addressed to him, 187 188 ; pulls it in the World, 194
Cheyte Sing, a vassal of the government of Cennigal, 75 ; his large revenue and suspected treasure, 79 Hastings's policy in desiring to punish him. 80 ; to 85 ; his treatment made the successful charge against Hastings, 118
Chillingworth, his opinion on apostolical succession, 172 ; became a Catholic from conviction, 306
Chinese (the) compared to the Homans under Diocletian, 415 416
Chinsurab, Dutch settlement on the Hoogley, 230 ; its siege by the English and capitulation. 259
Chivalry, its form in Languedoc in the 12th century, 308 309
Cholmondeley, Mrs., 271
Christchurch College. Oxford, its repute after the Revolution, 108 ; issues a new edition of the Letters of Phalaris, 108 116 118 ; its condition under Atterbury, 121 122
Christianity, its alliance with the ancient philosophy, 444 ; light in which it was regarded hv the Italians at the Reformation, 316 ; its effect upon mental activity; 416
Church (the), in the time of James II., 520
Church (the), Southey's Hook of, 137
Church, the English, persecutions in her name, 443 High and Low Church parties, 362 119 120
Church of England, its origin and connection with the state, 452 453 190 ; its condition in the time of Charles 1 , 166 ; endeavor of the leading Whigs at the Revolution to alter its Liturgy and Articles, 321 178 ; its contest with the Scotch nation, 322 Mr. Gladstone's work in defence of it, 116 ; his arguments for its being the pure Catholic Church of Christ, 161 166 ; its claims to apostolical succession discussed, 166 178 ; views respecting its alliance with the state, 183 193 ; contrast of its operations during the two generations succeeding the Reformation, with those of the Church of Rome, 331 332
Church of Rome, its alliance with ancient philosophy, 444 ; causes of its success and vitality, 300 301 ; sketch of its history, 307 349
Churchill, Charles, 519 42 200
Cicero, partiality of Dr. Middleton towards, 340 ; the most eloquent and skilful of advocates, 340 ; his epistles in his banishment, 361 ; his opinion of the study of rhetoric, 472 ; as a critic, 142
Cider, proposal of a tax on, by the Bute administration, 50
Circumstances, effect of, upon character, 322 323 325
"City of the Violet Crown," a favorite epithet of Athens, 36 ; note.
Civil privileges and political power identical, 311
Civil War (the), Cowley and Milton's imaginary conversation about, 112 138 ; its evils the price of our liberty, 243 ; conduct of the Long Parliament in reference to it, 470 495 496
Civilization, only peril to can arise from misgovernment, 41 42 England's progress in, due to the people, 187 ; modern, its influence upon philosophical speculation, 417 418
Clarendon, Lord, his history, 424 ; his character, 521 ; his testimony in favor of Hampden, 448 468 472 41 493 ; his literary merit, 338 ; his position at the head of affairs, 29 31 37 38 ; his faulty style, 50 ; his opposition to the growing power of the Commons, 73 ; his temper, 74 ; the charge against Christ-Churchmen of garbling his history, 130
Clarke, Dr. Samuel, 303
Clarkson, Thomas, 309
Classics, ancient, celebrity of, 139 ; rarely examined on just principles of criticism, 139 ; love of, in Italy in the 14th century, 278
Classical studies, their advantages and defects considered, 347 354
Clavering, General, 35 ; his opposition to Hastings, 40 47 ; his appointment as Governor General, 54 ; his defeat, 56 ; his death, 57
Cleveland, Duchess of, her favor to Wycherly and Churchill, 372 373
Clifford, Lord, his character, 47 ; his retirement, 55 56 ; his talent for debate, 72
Clive, Lord, review of Sir John Malcolm's Life of, 194 298 ; his family and boyhood, 196 197 ; his shipment to India, 198 ; his arrival at Madras and position there, 200 ; obtains an ensign's commission in the Company's service, 203 ; his attack, capture, and defence of Arcot, 215 219 ; his subsequent proceedings, 220 221 223 ; his marriage and return to England,224; his reception, 225 ; enters Parliament, 226 ; return to India, 228 ; his subsequent proceedings, 228 236 ; his conduct towards Ormichund, 238 241 247, 248 ; his pecuniary acquisitions, 251 ; his transactions with Meer Jaffier, 240 246 254 ; appointed Governor of the Company's possessions in Bengal, 255 ; his dispersion of Shah Alum's army, 256 257 ; responsibility of his position, 259 ; his return to England, 260 ; his reception, 260 261 ; his proceedings at the India House, 263 265 269 ; nominated Governor of the British possessions in Bengal. 270 ; his arrival at Calcutta, 270 ; suppresses a conspiracy, 275 276 ; success of his foreign policy, 276 ; his return to England, 279 ; his unpopularity and its causes, 279 285 ; invested with the Grand Cross of the Bath, 292 ; his speech in his defence, and its consequence, 289 290 292 ; his life in retirement, 291 ; reflections on his career, 296 ; failing of his mind, and death by his own hand, 296
Clizia, Machiavelli's, 298
Clodius, extensive bribery at the trial of, 421
"Clouds" (the), of Aristophanes, 383
Coalition of Chatham and Newcastle, 243
Cobham, Lord, his malignity towards Essex, 380
Coke, Sir E., his conduct towards Bacon, 357 406 ; his opposition to Bacon in Peacham's case, 389 390 ; his experience in conducting state prosecutions, 392 ; his removal from the Bench, 406 ; his reconciliation with Buckingham, and agreement to marry his daughter to Buckingham's brother, 406 ; his reconciliation with Bacon, 408 ; his behavior to Bacon at his trial, 427
Coleridge, relative "correctness" of his poetry, 339 Byron's opinion of him, 352 ; his satire upon Pitt, 271
Coligni, Caspar de, reference to, 67
Collier, Teremy, sketch of his life, 393 396 ; his publication on the profaneness of the English stage, 396 399 ; his controversy with Congreve, 401
Colloquies on Society, Southey's, 132 ; plan of the work. 141 142
Collot, D'llerbois, 475 489 49S, 501 504 506 508 510
Colonies, 83 ; question of the competency of Parliament to tax them, 77 78
Comedy (the), of England, effect of the writings of Congreve and Sheridan upon, 295
Comedies, Dryden's, 360
Comic Dramatists of the Restoration, 350-411; how he exercised a great influence on the human mind, 351
Conimes, his testimony to the good government of England, 434
Commerce and manufactures, their extent in Italy in the 14th century, 270 ; condition of, during the war at the latter part of the reign of George II., 247
Committee of Public Safety, the French, 403 475 503
Commons, House of, increase of its power, 532 ; increase of its power by and since the Revolution, 325
Commonwealth, 335
Conceits of Petrarch, 89 90 ; of Shakspeare and the writers of his age, 342 344 347
Coudé, Marshal, compared with Clive, 237
Condensation, had effect of enforced upon composition, 152
Contians, Admiral, his defeat by Hawke, 245
Congreve, his birth and early life, 387 ; sketch of his career at the Temple, 388 ; his "Old Bachelor," 389 "Double Dealer," 39 ; success of his "Love for Love," 391 ; his "Mourning Bride," 392 ; his controversy with Collier, 397 400 403 ; his "Way of the World," 403 ; his later years, 404 405 ; his position among mem of letters, 400 ; his attachment to Mrs. Bracegirdle, 407 ; his friendship with the Duchess of Marlborough, 408 ; hi; death and capricious will, 408 ; his funeral in Westminster Abbey, 409 ; cenotaph to his memory at Stowe, 409 ; analogy between him and Wycherley, 410
Congreve and Sheridan, effect of their works upon the comedy of England, 295 ; contrasted with Shakspeare, 295
Conquests of the British arms in 175 244 245
Constance, council of, put an end to the Wickliffe schism, 313
Constantinople, mental stagnation in, 417
Constitution (the), of England, in the 15th and 18th centuries, compared with those of other European states, 470 477 ; the argument that it would he destroyed by admitting the dews to power, 307, 308 ; its theory in respect to the three branches of the legislature, 25 20 410
Constitutional government, decline of. on the Continent, early in the 17th century, 481
Constitutional History of England, review of llaltam's, 433 543
Constitutional Royalists in the reign of Charles L, 474 483
Convention, the French, 449 475
Conversation, the source of logical inaccuracy, 148 383 384 ; imaginary, between Cowley and Milton touching the great Civil War, 112 138
Conway, Henry, vi. 02; Secretary of State under Lord Rockingham, 74 ; returns to his position under Chatham, 91 95 ; sank into insignificance 100
Conway, Marshal, his character, 200
Cooke, Sir Anthony, his learning, 349
Cooperation, advantages of. 184
Coote, Sir Eyre, 1 ; his character and conduct in council, 62 ; his great victory of Porto Novo, 74
Corah, ceded to the Mogul, 27
Corday, Charlotte, 400
Corneille, his treatment by the French Academy, 23
"Correctness" in the fine arts and in the sciences, 339 343 ; in painting. 343 ; what is meant by it in poetry, 339 343
Corruption, parliamentary, not necessary to the Tudors, 108 ; its extent in the reigns of George I. and II. 21 23
Corsica given up to France, 100
Cossimbazar, its situation and importance, 7
Cottabus, a Greek game, 30 ; note.
Council of York, its abolition, 409
Country Wife of Wycherley, its character and merits, 370 ; whence borrowed, 385
Courtenay, Rt. Hon. T. P., review of his Memoirs of Sir William Temple, 115 ; his concessions to Dr. Lingard in regard to the Triple Alliance, 41 ; his opinion of Temple's proposed new council, 65 ; his error as to Temple's residence, 100
Cousinhood, nickname of the official members of the Temple family, 13
Covenant, the Scotch, 460
Covenanters, (the), their conclusion of treaty with Charles I., 460
Coventry, Lady, 262
Cowley, dictum of Denham concerning him, 203 ; deficient in imagination, 211 ; his wit, 162 375 ; his admiration of Bacon, 492 493 ; imaginary conversation between him and 21 ; about the Civil War, 112 138
Cowper, Earl, keeper of the Great Seal, 361
Cowper, William, 349 ; his praise of Pope, 351 ; his friendship with Warren Hastings, 5 ; neglected, 261
Cox, Archdeacon, his eulogium on Sir Robert Walpole, 173
Coyer, Abbé, his imitation of Voltaire, 377
Crabbe, George, 261
Craggs, Secretary, 227 ; succeeds Addison, 413 Addison dedicates his works to him, 418
Cranmer, Archbishop, estimate of his character, 448 449
Crebillon, the younger, 155
Crisis, Steele's, 403
Crisp, Samuel, his early career, 259 ; his tragedy of Virginia, 261 ; his retirement and seclusion, 264 ; his friendship with the Burneys, 265 ; his gratification at the success of Miss Burney's first work, 269 ; his advice to her upon her comedy, 273 ; his applause of her "Cecilia," 275
Criticism, Literary, principles of, not universally recognized, 21 ; rarely applied to the examination of the ancient classics, 139 ; causes of its failure when so applied, 143 ; success in, of Aristotle, 140 Dionysius, 141 Quintilian, 141 142 Longinus, 142 143 Cicero, 142 ; ludicrous instance of French criticism, 144 ; ill success of classical scholars who have risen above verbal criticism, 144 ; their lack of taste and judgment, 144 ; manner in which criticism is to be exercised upon oratorical efforts, 149 151 ; criticism upon Dante, 55 79 Petrarch, 80-99; a rude state of society, favorable to genius, but not to criticism, 57 58 325 ; great writers are bad critics, 76 328 ; effect of upon poetry, 338 ; its earlier stages, 338 339 ; remarks on Johnson's code of, 417
Critics professional, their influence over the reading public, 196
Croker, Mr., his edition of Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson, reviewed, 368 426
Cromwell and Charles, choice between, 496
Cromwell and Napoleon, remarks on Mr. Hallam's parallel between, 504 510
Cromwell, Henry, description of, 17
Cromwell, Oliver, his elevation to power, 502 ; his character as a legislator, 504 ; as a general, 504 ; his administration and its results, 509 510 ; embarked with Hampden for America, but not suffered to proceed, 459 ; his qualities, 496 ; his administration, 286 292 ; treatment of his remains, 289 ; his ability displayed in Ireland, 25 27 ; anecdote of his sitting for his portrait, 2
Cromwell, Richard, 15
Crown (the) veto by, on Acts of Parliament, 487 488 ; its control over the army, 489 ; its power in the 16th century, 15 ; curtailment of its prerogatives, 169 171 ; its power predominant at beginning of the 17th century, 70 ; decline of its power during the Pensionary Parliament, 71 ; its long contest with the Parliament put an end to by the Revolution, 78 ; see also Prerogative.
Crusades (the), their beneficial effect upon Italy, 275
Crusoe, Robinson, the work of an uneducated genius, 57 ; its effect upon the imaginations of children, 331
Culpeper, Mr., 474
Cumberland, the dramatist, his manner of acknowledging literary merit, 270
Cumberland, Duke of, 260 ; the confidential friend rif Henry Fox, 44 ; confided in by George II., 67 ; his character, * 67 ; mediated between the King and the Whigs, 68
D.
Dacier, Madame, 338
D'Alembert, 23 Horace Walpole's opinion of him, 156
Dallas, Chief Justice, one of the counsel for Hastings on his trial, 27
Dauby, Earl, His connection with Temple, abilities and character, 57 ; impeached and sent to the Tower; owed his office and dukedom to his talent in debate, 72
Danger, public, a certain amount of, will warrant a retrospective law, 470
Dante, criticism upon, 55 79 ; the earliest and greatest writer of his country, 55 ; first to attempt composition in the Italian language, 56 ; admired in his own and the following age, 58 ; but without due appreciation, 59 329 330 ; unable to appreciate himself, 58 Simon's remark about him, 58 ; his own age unable to comprehend the Divine Comedy, 59 ; bad consequence to Italian literature of the neglect of his style down to the time of Alfieri, 60 61 ; period of his birth, 62 ; characteristics of his native city, 63 64 ; his relations to his age, 66 ; his personal history, 60 ; his religious fervor, his gloomy temperament, 67 ; his Divine Comedy, 67 220 277 ; his description of Heaven inferior to those of Hell or Purgatory, 67 ; his reality, the source of his power, 68 69 ; compared with Milton, 68 69 220 ; his metaphors and comparisons, 70 72 ; little impressed by the forms of the external world, 72 74 ; dealt mostly with the sterner passions, 74 ; his use of the ancient mythology, 75 76 ; ignorant of the Greek language, 76 ; his style, 77 78 ; his translators, 78 ; his admiration of writers inferior to himself, 329 ; of Virgil, 329 "correctness," of his poetry, 338 ; story from, 3
Danton, compared with Barere, 426 ; his death, 481 482
D'Arblay, Madame, review of her Diary and Letters, 248 320 ; wide celebrity of her name, 248 ; her Diary, 250 ; her family, 250 251 ; her birth and education, 252 254 ; her father's social position, 254- 257 ; her first literary efforts, 258 ; her friendship with Mr. Crisp, 259 265 ; publication of her "Evelina," 266 268 ; her comedy, "The Witlings," 273 274 ; her second novel, "Cecilia," 275 ; death of her friends Crisp and Johnson, 275 276 ; her regard for Mrs. Dernny. 276 ; her interview with the king and queen, 277 278 ; accepts the situation of keeper of the robes, 279 ; sketch of her life in this position, 279 287 ; attends at Warren Hastings' trial, 288 ; her espousal of the cause of Hastings, 288 ; her incivility to Windham and Burke, 288 289 ; her sufferings during her keepership, 290 294 300 ; her marriage, and close of the Diary, 301 ; publication of "Camilla," 302 ; subsequent events in her life, 302 303 ; publication of "The Wanderer," 303 ; her death, 303 ; character of her writings, 303 318 ; change in her style, 311 314 ; specimens of her three styles, 315 316 ; failure of her later works, 318 ; service she rendered to the English novel, 319 320
Dashwood, Sir Francis, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Bute, 36 ; his inefficiency, 51
David, d'Angers, his memoirs of Barère reviewed, 423 539
Davies, Tom, 384
Davila, one of Hampden's favorite authors, 450
Davlesford, site of the estate of the Hastings family, 5 ; its purchase and adornment by Hastings, 142
De Angmentis Scientiarium, by Bacon, 388 433
Debates in Parliament, effects of their publication, 538
Debt, the national, effect of its abrogation, 153 England's capabilities in respect to it, 186
Declaration of Bight, 317 "Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert Earl of Essex," by Lord Macon, 373
Dedications, literary, more honest than formerly, 191
Defoe, Daniel, 57
De. Guignes, 256
Delany, Dr., his connection with Swift, 276 ; his widow, and her favor with the royal family, 276 277
Delhi, its splendor during the Mogul empire, 204
Delium. battle of, 21
Demerville, 521
Democracy, violence in its advocates induces reaction, 11 ; pure, characteristics of, 513 514
Democritus the reputed inventor of the arch, 438 Macon's estimate of him, 439
Demosthenes, Johnson's remark, that he spoke to a people of brutes, 146 ; transcribed Thucydides six times, 147 ; he and his contemporary orators compared to the Italian Condottieri, 156 Mitford's misrepresentation of him, 191 193 195 197; perfection of his speeches, 376 ; his remark about bribery, 428
Denham, dictum of, concerning Cowley, 203 ; illustration from, 61
Denmark, contrast of its progress to the retrogression of Portugal, 340
Dennis, John, his attack upon Addison's "Plato", 393 Pope's narrative of his Frenzy, 394 395
"Deserted Village" (the), Goldsmith's, 162 163
Desmoulin's Camille, 483
Devonshire, Duchess of, 126
Devonshire, Duke of, forms an administration after the resignation of Newcastle, 235 Lord Chamberlain under Bute, 38 ; dismissed from his lord-lieutenancy, 47 ; his son invited to court by the king, 71
Dewey, Dr., his views upon slavery in the West Indies, 393 401
Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay, reviewed, 248 320
Dice, 13 ; note.
Dionvsius, of Halicarnassus, 141 413
Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, 178 143
Discussion, free, its tendency, 167
Dissent, its extent in the time of Charles I., 168 ; cause of, in England, 333 ; avoidance of in the Church of Rome, 334 ; see also Church of England.
Dissenters (the), examination of the reasoning of Mr. Gladstone for their exclusion from civil offices, 147 155
Disturbances, public, during Grenville's administration, 70
Divine Right, 236
Division of labor, its necessity, 123 ; illustration of the effects of disregarding it, 123
Dodington, Mubb, 13 ; his kindness to Johnson, 191
Donne, John, comparison of his wit with Horace Walpole's, 163
Dorset, the Earl of, 350 ; the patron of literature in the reign of Charles IL, 400 376
Double Dealer, by Congreve, its reception, 390 ; his defence of its profaneness, 401
Dougan, John, his report on the captured negroes, 362 ; his humanity, 363 ; his return home and death, 363 Major Morly's charges against him.
Dover, Lord, review of his edition of Horace Walpole's Letters to Sir Horace Maim, 143 193 ; see Walpole, Sir Horace.
Dowdeswell, Mr., Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Rockingham, 74
Drama (the), its origin in Greece, 216 ; causes of its dissolute character soon after the Restoration, 366 ; changes of style which it requires, 365
Dramas, Greek, compared with the English plays of the age of Elizabeth, 339
Dramatic art, the unities violated in all the great masterpieces of, 341
Dramatic literature shows the state of contemporary religious opinion, 29
Dramatic Works (the), of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, review of Leigh Hunt's edition of, 350, 411
Dramatists of the Elizabethan age, characteristics of, 344 346 ; manner in which they treat religious subjects, 211
Drogheda, Countess of, her character, acquaintance with Wycherley, and marriage, 370 ; its consequences, 377
Dryden, John, review of his works, 321 370 ; his rank among poets, 321 ; highest in the second rank of poets, 317; his characteristics, 821 ; his relations to his times, 321 322 351 ; greatest of the critical poets, 351 317 ; characteristics of the different stages in his literary career, 352 ; the year 1078 the date of the change in his manner, 352 ; his Annus Mirabilis, 353 355 ; he resembles Lucan. 355 ; characteristics of his rhyming plays, 355 301 308; his comic characters, 350 ; the women of his comedies, 350 ; of his tragedies, 357 358; his tragic characters, 350 357 ; his violations of historical propriety, 358 ; and of nature, 351 ; his tragicomedies, 351 ; his skill in the management of the heroic couplets, 300 ; his comedies, 300 ; his tragedies, 300 301; his bombast, 301 302 ; his imitations of the earlier dramatists unsuccessful, 302 304 ; his Song of the Fairies. 304 ; his second manner, 305 307 ; the improvement in his plays, 305 ; his power of reasoning in verse, 300 308 ; ceased to write for the stage, 307 ; after his death English literature retrograded, 307 ; his command of language, 307 ; excellences of his style, 308 ; his appreciation of his contemporaries, 309 ; and others, 381 ; of Addison and of Milton, 309 370 ; his dedications, 309 370 ; his taste, 370 371 ; his carelessness, 371 ; the Hind and the Panther, 371 372 Absalom and Ahithophel, 372 83 85 ; his resemblance to Juvenal and to Boileau, 372 373 ; his part in the political disputes of his times, 373 ; the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, 374 ; general characteristics of his style, 374 375 ; his merits not adequately appreciated in his own day, 191 ; alleged improvement in English poetry since his time, 347 ; the connecting link of the literary schools of James I. and Anne, 355 ; his excuse for the indecency and immorality of his writings, 355 ; his friendship for Congreve and lines upon his Double Dealer, 390 ; censured by Collier, 398 400 Addison's complimentary verses to him, 322 ; and critical preface to his translation of the Georgies, 335 ; the original of his Father Dominic, 290
Dublin, Archbishop of, his work on Logic, 477
Dumont, 51 , his Recollections of Mirabeau reviewed, 37 74 ; his general characteristics, 37 41 ; his view's upon the French Revolution, 41 43 44 40 ; his services in it, 47 ; his personal character, 74 ; his style, 73 74 ; his opinion that Burke's work on the French Revolution had saved Europe, 44 204 ; as the interpreter of Ilentham, 38 40 153
Dundas, Sir., his character, and hostility to Hastings, 108 120 ; eulogizes Pitt, 234 ; becomes his most useful assistant in the House of Commons, 247 ; patronizes Burns, 231
"Duodecim Seriptre," a Roman game, 4 ; note.
Dupleix, governor of Pondicherry, his gigantic schemes for establishing French influence in India, 202 209 212 220 222 228 ; his death, 228 294
Duroc, 522
E.
East India Companv, its absolute authority in India, 240 ; its condition when Clive lirst went to India, 198 200 ; its war with the French East India Companv, 202 ; increase of its power, 220 ; its factories in Bengal, 230 ; fortunes made by its servants in Bengal, 205 200 ; its servants transferred into diplomatists and generals, 8 ; nature of its government and power, 10 17 ; rights of the Nabob of Oude over Benares ceded to it 75 ; its financial embarrassments, 80 Fox's proposed alteration in its charter, 244 247
Ecclesiastical commission (the), 100
Ecclesiastics, fondness of the old dramatists for the character of, 29
Eden, pictures of, in old Bibles, 343 ; painting of, by a gifted master, 343
Edinburgh, comparison of with Florence, 340
Education in England in the 18th century, 354 ; duty of the government in promoting it, 182 183 ; principles of should be progressive, 343 344 ; characteristics of in the Universities, 344 345 355 300 ; classical, its advantages and defects discussed, 340 ; to: 354
Education in Italy in the 14th century, 277
Egerton, his charge of corruption against Bacon, 413 Bacon's decision against him after receiving his present, 430
Egotism, why so unpopular in conversation, and so popular in writing, 81 82 305
Elephants, use of, in war in India, 218
Eleusinian mysteries, 49 54 Alcibiades suspected of having assisted at a mock celebration of, 49 ; note; crier and torch-bearer important functionaries at celebration of, 53 ; note.
"Eleven" (the), police of Athens, 34 ; note.
Eliot, Sir John, 440-448; his treatise oil Government, 449 ; died a martyr to liberty, 451
Elizabeth (Queen), fallacy entertained respecting the persecutions under her, 439 441 ; her penal laws, 441 ; arguments in favor of, on the head of persecution, apply with more force to Mary, 450 ; to: 452 ; condition of the working classes in her reign, 175 437 ; her rapid advance of Cecil, 8 ; character of her government, 10 18 22 32 ; a persecutor though herself indifferent, 31 32 ; her early notice of Lord Bacon, 353 ; her favor towards Essex, 301 ; factions at the close of her reign, 302 363 382 ; her pride and temper, 370 397 ; and death, 383 ; progress ill knowledge since her days, 302 ; her Protestantism, 328 29
Ellenborough, Lord, one of the counsel for Hastings on his trial, 127 ; his proclamations, 472
Ellis, W., 235
Elphinstone, Lord, 298
Elwood, Milton's Quaker friend, allusion to, 205
Emigration of Puritans to America, 459
Emigration from England to Ireland under Cromwell, 20
Empires, extensive, often more flourishing alter a little pruning, 83
England, her progress in civilization due to the people, 190 ; her physical and moral condition in the 15th century, 434 435 ; never so rich and powerful as since the loss of her American colonies, 83 ; conduct of, in reference to the Spanish succession, 103 104 ; successive steps of her progress, 279 281 ; influence of her revolution on the human race, 281 321 ; her situation at the Restoration compared with France at the restoration of Louis XVIII., 282 284 ; her early situation, 290 293 301 ; character of her public men at the latter part of the 17th century, 11 ; difference in her situation under Charles II., and under the Protectorate, 32 ; her fertility in heroes and statesmen, 170 ; how her history should be written by a perfect historian, 428 432 ; characteristics of her liberty, 399 ; her strength contrasted with that of France, 24 ; condition of her middle classes, 423 424
English (the), in the 10th century a free people, 18 19 ; their character, 292 300
English language, 308
English literature of that age, 341 342 ; effect of foreign influences upon, 349 350
English plays of the ago of Elizabeth, 344 340 339 "Englishman," Steele's, 403
Enlightenment, its increase in the world not necessarily unfavorable to Catholicism, 301
Enthusiasts, dealings of the Church of Rome and the Church of England with them, 331 330
Epicureans, their peculiar doctrines, 443
Epicurus, the lines on his pedestal, 444
Epistles, Petrarch's, i. 08, 99 ; addressed to the dead and the unborn, 99
Epitaphs, Latin, 417
Epithets, use of by Homer, 354 ; by the old ballad-writers, 354
Ereilla, Alonzo de, a soldier as well as a poet, 81
Essay on Government, by Sir William Temple, 50 ; by James Mills, 5 51
Essays, Bacon's, value of them, 311 7 388 433 481 491
Essex, Earl of, 30 ; his character, popularity and favor with Elizabeth, 301 304 373 ; his political conduct, 304 ; his friendship for Bacon, 305 300 373 397 ; his conversation with Robert Cecil, 305 ; pleads for Bacon's marriage with Lady Hatton, 308 400 ; his expedition to Spain, 307 ; his faults, 308 309 397 ; decline of his fortunes, 308 ; his administration in Ireland, 309 Bacon's faithlessness to him, 309 371 ; his trial and execution, 371 373 ; ingratitude of Bacon towards him, 309 380 398 ; feeling of King James towards him, 384 ; his resemblance to Buckingham, 397
Essex, Earl of, (Ch. I.,) 489 491
Etherege. Sir George, 353
Eugene of Savoy, 143
Euripides, his mother an herb-woman, 45 ; note; his lost plays, 45 ; quotation from, 50 51 ; attacked for the immorality of one of his verses, 51 ; note; his mythology, 75 Quintilian's admiration of him, 141 Milton's, 217 ; emendation of a passage of, 381 ; note; his characteristics, 352
Europe, state of, at the peace of Utrecht, 135 ; want of union in, to arrest the designs of Lewis XIX., 35 ; the distractions of, suspended for a short time by the treaty of Nimeguen, 60 ; its progress during the last seven centuries, 307
Evelina, Madame D'Arblay's, specimen of her style from, 315 310
Evils, natural and national, 158
Exchequer, fraud of the Cabal ministry in closing it, 53
Exclusiveness of the Greeks, 411 412 ; of the Romans, 413 410
F.
Fable (a), of Pilpay, 188
Fairfax, reserved for him and Cromwell to terminate the civil war, 491
Falkland, Lord, his conduct in respect to the bill of attainder against Strafford, 400 ; his character as a politician, 483 ; at the head of the constitutional Royalists, 474
Family Compact (the), between France and Spain, 138 29
Fanaticism, not altogether evil, 64
Faust, 303
Favorites, royal, always odious, 38
Female Quixote (the), 319
Fenelon, the nature of and standard of morality in his Telemachus, 359
Ferdinand II., his devotion to Catholicism, 329
Ferdinand VII., resemblance between him and Charles I. of England, 488
Fictions, literary, 267
Fidelity, touching instance of, in the Sepoys towards Clive, 210
Fielding, his contempt for Richardson, 201 ; case from his "Amelia," analogous to Addison's treatment of Steele, 370 ; quotation from, illustrative of the effect of Garrick's acting, 332
Filieaja Vincenzio, 300
Finance, Southev's theory of, 150- 155
Finch, Chief Justice to Charles I., 450 ; tied to Holland, 409
Fine Arts (the), encouragement of, in Italy, in the 14th century, 277 ; causes of their decline in England after the civil war, 157 ; government should promote them, 184
Fletcher, the dramatist, 350 308 352
Florence, 63 64 ; difference between a soldier of, and one belonging to a standing army, 61 ; state of, in the 14th century, 276-277; its History, by Maehiavelli, 317 ; compared with Edinburgh, 340
Fluxions, 324
Foote, Charles, his stage character of an Anglo-Indian grandee, 282 ; his mimicry, 305 ; his inferiority to Garrick, 306
Fox, Henry, sketch of his political character, 224 229 415 ; directed to form an administration in concert with Chatham, 235 ; applied to by Bute to manage the House of Commons, 43 44 ; his private and public qualities, 45 ; became leader of the House of Commons, 46 ; obtains his promised peerage, 54 ; his unpopularity, 417
Fox, Charles James, comparison of his History of James II. with Mackintosh's History of the Revolution, 252 ; his style, 254 ; characteristic of his oratory, 25G; contrasted with that of Pitt, 25G; his bodily and mental constitution, 415 417 232 ; his championship of arbitrary measures, and defiance of public opinion, 418 ; his change after the death of his father, 418 ; clamor raised against his India Bill, and his defence of it, 107 244 246; his alliance with Burke, and call for peace with the American republic, 110 ; his powerful party, 114 ; his conflicts with Pitt, 115 ; his motion on the charge against Hastings respecting his treatment of Cheyte Sing, 117 ; his appearance on the trial of Hastings, 127 128 ; his rupture with Burke, 136 ; introduces Pitt, when a youth, in the House of Lords, and is struck with his precocity, 229 ; his admiration of Pitt's maiden speech, 233 ; puts up his name at Brookes's, 233 ; becomes Secretary of State, 235 ; resigns, 237 ; forms a coalition with North, 238 241 Secretary of State, but in reality Prime Minister, 241 ; loses popularity, 243 ; resigns, 246 ; leads the opposition, 247 ; maintains the constitutional doctrine in regard to impeachments, 269, 270 ; fails to lead his party to favor the French Revolution, 273 ; his retirement from political life, 278 284 ; opposes Pitt in regard to declaring war against France, 288 ; combines with him against Addington, 290 ; the king refuses to take him as a minister, 291 ; his generous feeling towards Pitt, 296 ; opposes the motion for a public funeral to Pitt, 297
Fragments of a Roman 'Pale, 1 19
France, her history from the time of Louis XIV. to the Revolution, 63 68 ; from the dissolution of the National Assembly to the meeting of the Convention, 446 449 ; from the meeting of the Convention to the Reign of Terror, 449475; during the Reign of Terror, 475 500 ; from the Revolution of the ninth of Thermidor to the Consulate, 500-513; under Napoleon, 513 528 ; illustration from her history since the revolution, 514 ; her condition in 1712 and 183 134 ; her state at the restoration of Louis XVIII., 283 ; enters into a compact with Spain against England, 29 ; recognizes the independence of the United States, 105 ; her strength contrasted with that of England, 24 ; her history during the hundred days, 529 530 ; after the Restoration, 429
Francis, Sir Philip, councillor under the Regulating Act for India, 35 ; his character and talents, 35 36; probability of his being the author of the Letters of Junius, 36 ; to: 39 ; his opposition to Hastings, 40 56 ; his patriotic feeling, and reconciliation with Hastings, 62 ; his opposition to the arrangement with Sir Elijah Impey, 69 ; renewal of his quarrel with Hastings, 69 ; duel with Hastings, 70 ; his return to England, 74 ; his entrance into the House of Commons and character there, 109 117 ; his speech on Mr. Fox's motion relating to Cheyte Sing, 118 ; his exclusion from the committee on the impeachment of Hastings, 123 124
Francis, the Emperor, 14
Franklin, Benjamin, Dr., his admiration for Miss Burney, 211
Franks, rapid fall after the death of Charlemagne, 205 200
Frederic I., 150
Frederic II., iv. 011.
Frederic the Great, review of his Life and Times, by Thomas Campbell, 148 248 ; notice of the House of Brandenburgh, 140 ; birth of Frederic, 152 ; his lather's conduct to him, 153 ; his taste for music, 153 ; his desertion from his regiment. 155 ; his imprisonment, 155 ; his release, 155 ; his favorite abode, 150 ; his amusements, 150 ; his education, 157 ; his exclusive admiration for French writers, 158 ; his veneration for the genius of Voltaire, 100 ; his correspondence with Voltaire, 101 ; his accession to the throne, 102 ; his character little understood, 103 ; his true character, 103 104 ; he determines to invade Silesia, 100 ; prepares for war, 108 ; commences hostilities, 108 105 ; his perfidy, 109 ; occupies Silesia, 171 ; his first battle, 171 ; his change of policy, 174 ; gains the battle of Chotusitz, 174 Silesia ceded to him, 175 ; his whimsical conferences with Voltaire, 170 ; recommences hostilities, 177 ; his retreat from Bohemia, 177 ; his victory at Hohenlfiedberg, 178 ; his part in the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 179 ; public opinion respecting his political character, 179 ; his application to business, 179 ; his bodily exertions, 180 181 ; general principles of his government, 182 ; his economy, 183 ; his character as an administrator, 184 ; his labors to secure to his people cheap and speedy justice, 185 ; religious persecution unknown under his government, 180 ; vices of his administration, 180 ; his commercial policy, 187 ; his passion for directing and regulating, 187 ; his contempt for the German language, 188 ; his associates at Potsdam, 189 190 ; his talent for sarcasm, 192 ; invites Voltaire to Berlin, 190 ; their singular friendship, 197 ; seq.; union of France, Vustna and Saxony, against him, 212 ; he anticipates his ruin, 213 ; extent of his peril, 217 ; he occupies Saxony, 217 ; defeats Marshal Bruwn at Lowositz, 218 ; gains the battle of Prague, 219 ; loses the battle of Kolin, 220 ; his victory, 229 ; its effects, 231 ; his subsequent victories, 232 248
Frederic William I., 150 ; his character, 150 ; his ill-regululated mind, 151 ; his ambition to form a brigade of giants, 151 ; his feeling about his troops, 152 ; his hard and savage temper, 152 ; his conduct to his son Frederic, 153 155 ; his illness and death, 102
Free inquiry, right of, in religious matters, 102 103
French Academy (the), 23 ; seq.
French Republic, Burke's character of, 402
French Revolution (the). See Revolution, the French.
Funds, national. See National Debt.
G.
Gabrielli, the singer, 256
Galileo, 305
Galway, Lord, commander of the allies in Spain in 170 109 119 ; defeated by the Bourbons at Almanza, 124
Game, (a) Roman, 4 ; noie; (a) Greek, 30 ; note.
Ganges, the chief highway of Eastern commerce, 229
Garden of Eden, pictures of, in oil Bibles, 343 ; painting of, by a gifted master, 343
Garrick, David, a pupil of Johnson, 179 ; their relations to each other, 189 190 203 398 ; his power of amusing children, 255 ; his friendship lor Crisp, 261 202 ; his advice as to Crisp's tragedy of Virginia, 202 ; his power of imitation, 300 ; quotation from Fielding illustrative of the effect of his acting, 332
Garth, his epilogue to Cato, 392 ; his verses upon the controversy in regard to the Letters of Phalaris, 118
Gay, sent for by Addison on his death-bed to ask his forgiveness, 418
Generalization, superiority in, of modern to ancient historians, 410 414
Geneva, Addison's visit to, 350
Genius, creative, a rude state of society favorable to, 57 325 ; requires discipline to enable it to perfect anything. 334 335
Genoa, its decay owing to Catholicism, 330 Addison's admiration of, 345
Gensonnd, his ability, 452 ; his impeachment, 409 ; his defence, 473 ; his death, 474
"Gentleman Dancing-Master," its production on the stage, 375 ; its best scenes suggested by Calderon, 385
"Gentleman's Magazine" (the), 182 184
Geologist, Bishop Watson's comparison of, 425
Geometry, comparative estimate of, by Plato and by Bacon, 450
George I., his accession, 136
George II., political state of the nation in his time. 533 ; his resentment against Chatham for his opposition to the payment of Hanoverian troops, 220 ; compelled to admit him to office, 221 ; his efforts for the protection of Hanover, 230 ; his relations towards his ministers, 241 244 ; reconciled to Chatham's possession of power, 14 ; his death, 14 ; his character, 16
George III., his accession the commencement of a new historic era, 532 ; cause of the discontents in the early part of his reign, 534 ; his partiality to Clive, 292 ; bright prospects at his accession, 58 1 ; his interview with Miss Burney, 277 ; his opinions of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Shakespeare, 277 278 ; his partisanship for Hastings, 291 ; his illness, and the view taken of it in the palace, 291 292 ; the history of the first ten years of his reign but imperfectly known, 1 ; his characteristics, 16 17 ; his favor to Lord Bute, 19 ; his notions of government, 21 ; slighted for Chatham at the Lord Mayor's dinner, 31 ; receives the resignation of Bute, and appoints George Grenville his successor, 54 ; his treatment by Grenville, 59 ; increase of his aversion to his ministers, 62 63 ; his illness, 06; disputes between him and his ministry on the regency question, 66 ; inclined to enforce the American Stamp Act by the sword, 76 ; the faction of the "King's friends," 79 89 ; his unwilling consent to the repeal of the Stamp Act, 82 ; dismisses Rockingham, and appoints Chatham, 88 ; his character and late popularity, 263 265 ; his insanity and the question of the regency, 265 267 ; his opposition to Catholic emancipation, 281 282 ; his opposition to Fox, 291 293
Georgies (the), Addison's translation of a portion of, 332 333
Germany, the literature of, little known in England sixty or seventy years ago, 340 341
Germany and Switzerland, Addison's ramble in, 351
Ghizni, peculiarity of the campaign of, 29
Ghosts, Johnson's belief in, 410
Gibbon, his alleged conversion to Mahommedanism, 375 ; his success as a historian, 252 ; his presence at Westminster Hall at the trial of Hastings, 126 ; unlearned his native English during his exile, 314 260
Gibraltar, capture of, by Sir George Booke, 110
Gittard, Lady, sister of Sir William Temple, 35 39 101 ; her death, 113
Gifford, Byron's admiration of, 352
Girondists, Barère's share in their destruction, 434 435 468 469 474 ; description of their party and principles, 452 454 ; at first in the majority, 455 ; their intentions towards the king, 455 456 ; their contest with the Mountain, 458 459 460 ; their trial, 473 ; and death, 474 475 ; their character, 474
Gladstone, W. E., review of "The State in its Relations with the Church," 110 ; quality of his mind, 111 120 ; grounds on which he rests his case for the defence of the Church, 122 ; his doctrine that the duties of government are paternal, 125 ; specimen of his arguments, 127 129 ; his argument that the profession of a national religion is imperative, 120 131 135 ; inconsequence of his reasoning, 138 ; to: 148
Gleig, Kev. review of his Life of Warren Hastings, 114
Godfrey, Sir E., 297
Godolphin, Lord, his conversion to Whiggism, 130 ; engages Addison to write a poem on the battle of Illenheim, 355
Godolphin and Marlborough, their policy soon after the accession of Queen Anne, 353
Goëzman, his bribery as a member of the parliament of Lewis by Betmarchais, 430 431
Goldsmith, Oliver, Life of, 151 171 ; his birth and parentage, 151 ; his school days, 152 153 ; enters Trinity College, Dublin, 153 ; his university life, 154 ; his autograph upon a pane of glass, 154 ; note; his recklessness and instability, 154 155 ; his travels, 155 ; his carelessness of the truth, 150 ; his life in London, 156 157 ; his residence, 157 ; note; his hack writings, 157 158 ; his style, 158 ; becomes known to literary men, 158 ; one of the original members of The Club, 159 Johnson's friendship for him, 159 170 ; his "Vicar of Wakefield," 159 161 ; his "Traveller." 160 ; his comedies. 161 163 ; his "Deserted Village," 162 163 ; his histories, 164 ; his amusing blunders, 164 ; his literary merits, 165, 170 ; his social position, 165 ; his inferiority in conversation, 165 166, 393 ; his "Retaliation," 170 ; his character, 167 168 407 ; his prodigality, 168 ; his sickness and death, 169 ; his burial and cenotaph in Westminster Abbey, 169 170 ; his biographers, 171
Goordas, son of Nuneomar, his appointment as treasurer of the household, 24
Gorhamlery, the country residence of Lord Bacon, 409
Government, doctrines of Southey on the duties and ends of, stated and examined, 157 168 ; its eon-duet in relation to infidel publications, 170 ; various forms of, 413 414 ; changes in its form sometimes not felt till long alter, 86 ; the science of, experimental and progressive, 132 272 273 ; examination of Mr. Gladstone's treatise on the Philosophy of, 116 176 ; its proper functions, 362 ; different forms of, 108 111 ; their advantages, 179 181 Mr. Hill's Essay on, reviewed, 5 51
Grace Abounding, Runyan's, 259
Grafton, Duke of, Secretary of State under Lord Rockingham, 74 ; first Lord of the Treasury under Chatham, 91 ; joined the Bedfords, 100
Granby, Marquis of, his character, 261
Grand Alliance (the), against the Bourbons, 103
Grand Remonstrance, debate on, and passing of it, 475
Granville, Lord. See Carteret, Lord. Gray, his want of appreciation of Johnson, 261 ; his Latin verses, 342 ; his unsuccessful application for a professorship, 41 ; his injudicious plagiarisms from Dante, 72 ; note.
"Great Commoner." the designation of Lord Chatham, 250 10
Greece, its history compared with that of Italy, 281 ; its degradation and rise in modern times, 334 ; instances of the corruption of judges in the ancient commonwealths of, 420 ; its literature, 547 340 349 352 ; history of, by Mitford, reviewed, 172 201 ; historians of, modern, their characteristics, 174 177 ; civil convulsions in, contrasted with those in Rome, 189 190
Greek Drama, its origin, 216 ; compared with the English plays of the age of Elizabeth, 338
Greeks, difference between them and the Romans, 237 ; in their treatment of woman. 83 84 ; their social condition compared with that of the Italians of the middle ages, 312 ; their position and character in the 12th century, 300 ; their exclusiveness, 411 412
Gregory XI., his austerity and zeal, 324
Grenvilles (the), 11 Richard Lord Temple at their head, 11
Grenville, George, his character, 27 23 ; intrusted with the lead in the Commons under the Bute administration, 33 ; his support of the proposed tax on cider, 51 ; his nickname of "Gentle Shepherd," 51 ; appointed prime minister, 54 ; his opinions, 54 55 ; character of his public acts, 55 50 ; his treatment of the king, 59 ; his deprivation of Henry Conway of his regiment, 62 ; proposed the imposition of stamp duties on the North American colonies, 05; his embarrassment on the question of a regency; his triumph over the king, 70 ; superseded by Lord Rockingham and his friends, 74 ; popular demonstration against him on the repeal of the Stamp Act, 83 ; deserted by the Bedfords, 109 ; his pamphlet against the Rocking-hams, 102 ; his reconciliation with Chatham, 103 ; his death, 104
Greville, Eulke, patron of Dr. Burney, his character, 251
Grey, Lady Jane, her high classical acquirements, 349
"Grievances," popular, on occasion of Walpole's fall, 181
Grub Street, 405
Guadaloupe, of, 244
Guardian (the), its birth, 389 390 ; its discontinuance, 390
Guelfs (the), their success greatly promoted by the ecclesiastical power, 273
Guicciardini, 2
Guiciwar, its interpretation, 59
Guise, Henry, Duke of, his conduct on the day of the barricades at Paris, 372 ; his resemblance to Essex. 372
Gunpowder, its inventor and the date of its discovery unknown, 444
Gustavus Adolphus, 338
Gypsies (the), 380
H.
Hale, Sir Matthew, his integrity, u. 490 391
Halifax, Lord, a trimmer both by intellect and by constitution, 87 ; compared with Shaftesbury, 87 ; his political tracts, 88 ; his oratorical powers, 89 90 ; the king's dislike to him, 90 ; his recommendation of Addison to Godolphin, 354 355 ; sworn of the Privy Council of Queen Anne, 301
Hallam, Mr., review of his Constitutional History of England, 433 543; his qualifications as an historian, 435 ; his style, 435 430 ; character of his Constitutional History, 430 ; his impartiality, 430 439 512 ; his description of the proceedings of the third parliament of Charles I., and the measures which followed its dissolution, 450 457 ; his remarks on tlie impeachment of Stratford, 458 405 ; on the proceedings of the Long Parliament, and on the question of the justice of the civil war, 409 495 ; his opinion on the nineteen propositions of the Long Parliament, 480 ; on the veto of the crown on acts of parliament, 487 ; on the control over tlie army, 489 ; on the treatment of Laud, and on his correspondence with Strafford, 492 493 ; on tlie execution of Charles I., 497 ; his parallel between Cromwell and Napoleon, 504 510 ; his character of Clarendon, 522
Hamilton, Gerard, his celebrated single speech, 231 ; his effective speaking in the Irish Parliament, 372
Hammond, Henry, uncle of Sir William Temple, his designation by the new Oxonian sectaries, 14
Hampden, John, his conduct in tlie ship-money attender approved by the Royalists, effect of his loss on the Parliamentary cause, 496 ; review of Lord Nugent's Memorial of him, 427 ; his public and private character, 428 429 Baxtor's testimony to his excellence, his origin and early history, 431 ; took his seat in the House of Commons, 432 ; joined the opposition to the Court; his first appearance as a public man, 441 ; his first stand for the fundamentals of the Constitution, 444 ; committed to prison. 444 ; set at liberty, and reelected for Wendover, 445 ; his retirement, 445 ; his remembrance of his persecuted friends, 447 ; his letters to Sir John Eliot, 447 Clarendon's character of him as a debater, 447 ; letter from him to Sir John Eliot, 448 ; his acquirements, 228 450 ; death of his wife, 451 ; his resistance to the assessment for ship-money, 458 Stratford's hatred of him, 458 ; his intention to leave England, 458 ; his return tor Buckinghamshire in the fifth parliament of Charles I., 401 ; his motion on the subject of the king's message, 403 ; his election by two constituencies to the Long Parliament, 407 ; character of his speaking, 407 408 ; his opinion on the bill for the attainder of Strafford, 471 Lord Clarendon's testimony to his moderation, 472 ; his mission to Scotland, 472 ; his conduct in the House of Commons on the passing of the Grand Remonstrance, 475 ; his impeachment ordered by the king, 477 483 ; returns in triumph to the House, 482 ; his resolution, 489 ; raised a regiment in Buckinghamshire, 48 1; contrasted with Essex, 491 ; his encounter with Rupert at Chalgrove, 493 ; his death and burial, 494 495 ; effect of his death on his party, 490
Hanover, Chatham's invective against the favor shown to, by George II., 219
Harcourt, French ambassador to the Court of Charles II. of Spain, 94
Hardwicke, Earl of, 13 ; his views of the policy of Chatham, 20 High Steward of the University of Cambridge, 37
Harley, Robert, 400 ; his accession to power, 130 ; censure on him by Lord Mahon, 132 ; his kindness for men of genius, 405 ; his unsuccessful attempt to rally the Tories in 170 3 ; his advice to the queen to dismiss the Whigs, 381
Harrison, on the condition of the working classes in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 175
Hastings, Warren, review of Mr. Greig's Memoirs of his Life, 114 7 ; his pedigree, 2 ; his birth, and the death of his father and mother, 3 ; taken charge of by his uncle and sent to Westminster school, 5 ; sent as a writer to Bengal, his position there, 7 ; events which originated his greatness, 8 ; becomes a member of council at Calcutta, 9 ; his character in pecuniary transactions, 11 101 ; his return to England, generosity to his relations, and loss of his moderate fortune, 11 ; his plan for the cultivation of Persian literature at Oxford, 12 ; his interview with Johnson, 12 ; his appointment as member of council at Madras, and voyage to India, 13 ; his attachment to the Baroness Imhoff, 13 ; his judgment and vigor at-Madras, 15 ; his nomination to the head of the government at Bengal, 15 ; his relation with Nucomar, 19 22 24 ; his embarrassed finances and means to relieve them, 25 74 ; his principle of dealing with his neighbors and the excuse for him, 25 ; his proceedings towards the Nabob and the Great Mogul, 27 ; his sale of territory to the Nabob of Oude, 28 ; his refusal to interfere to stop the barbarities of Sujah Dowlah, 33 ; his great talents for administration, 34 ; his disputes with the members of the new council, 40 ; his measures reversed, and the powers of government taken from him, 40 ; charges preferred against him, 42 43 ; his painful situation, and appeal to England, 44 ; examination of his conduct, 49 51 ; his letter to Dr. Johnson, 52 ; his condemnation by the directors, 52 ; his resignation tendered by his agent and accepted, 54 ; his marriage and reappointment, 50 ; his importance to England at that conjuncture, 57 70 ; his duel with Francis, 70 ; his great influence, 73 74 ; his financial embarrassment and designs for relief, 74 ; his transactions with and measures against Cheyte Sing, 71 ; seq.: his perilous situation in Benares, 82 83 ; his treatment of the Nabob vizier, 85 80 ; his treatment of the Begums, 8792; close of his administration, 93 ; remarks on his system, 93 102 ; his reception in England, 103 ; preparations for his impeachment, 104 110 ; his defence at the bar of the House, 110 ; brought to the bar of the Peers, 123 ; scq.; his appearance on his trial, his counsel and his accusers, 120 ; his arraignment by Burke, 129 130 ; narrative of the proceedings against him, 131 139 ; expenses of his trial, 139 ; his last interference in politics, 141 142 ; his pursuits and amusements at Daylesford, 142 ; his appearance and reception at the bar of the House of Commons, 144 ; his reception at Oxford. 145 ; sworn of the Privy Council and gracious reception by the Prince Regent, 145 ; his presentation to the Emperor of Russia and King of Prussia, 145 ; his death, 145 ; summary of his character, 145 147
Hatton, Lady, 308 ; her manners and temper, 308 ; her marriage with Sir Edward Coke, 368
Havanna, capture of, 32
Hawk, Admiral, his victory over the French fleet under Conflans, 245
Hayley, William, 223 ; his translation of Dante, 78
Hayti, its cultivation, 305 306 ; its history and improvement, 390 400 ; its production,395, 398 ; emigration to, from the United States, 398 401
Heat, the principle of, Bacon's reasoning upon, 90
"Heathens" (the), of Cromwell's time, 258
Heathfield, Lord, 125
Hebrew writers (the), resemblance of Æschylus to, 210 ; neglect of, by the Romans, 414
Hebrides (the), Johnson's visit to, 420 ; his letters from, 423
Hecatare, its derivation and definition, 281
Hector, Homer's description of, 303
Hedges, Sir Charles, Secretary of State, 302
Helvetius, allusion to, 208
Henry IV. of France, 139 ; twice abjured Protestantism from interested motives, 328
Henry VIII., 452 ; his position between the Catholic and Protestant parties, 27
Hephzibah, an allegory so called, 203
Herodotus, his characteristics, 377 382; his naivete, 378 ; his imaginative coloring of facts, 378 379 420 ; his faults, 379 ; his style adapted to his times, 380 ; his history read at the Olympian festival, 381 ; its vividness, 381 382 ; contrasted with Thucydides, 385 ; with Xenophon, 394 ; with Tacitus, 408 ; the speeches introduced into his narrative, 388 ; his anecdote about Mæandrius of Samos, 132 ; tragedy on the fall of Miletus, 333
Heroic couplet (the), Drvden's unrivalled management of, 300 ; its mechanical nature, 333 334 ; specimen from Ben Jonson, 334 ; from Hoole, 334 ; its rarity before the time of Pope, 334
Heron, Robert, 208
Hesiod, his complaint of the corruption of the judges of Asera, 420
Hesse Darmstadt, Prince of, commanded the land forces sent against Gibraltar in 170 110 ; accompanies Peterborough on his expedition, 112 ; his death at the capture of Monjuieh, 110
High Commission Court, its abolition, 409
Highgate, death of Lord Bacon at, 434
Hindoo Mythology, 306
Hindoos, their character compared with other nations, 19 20 ; their position and feeling towards the people of Central Asia, 28 ; their mendacity and perjury, 42 ; their view of forgery, 47 ; importance attached by them to ceremonial practices, 47 ; their poverty compared with the people of England, 64 ; their feelings against English law, 65 67
Historical romance, as distinguished from true history, 444 445
History, Essay upon, 470 442; in what spirit it should be written, 197 199 ; true sources of, 100 ; complete success in, achieved by no one. 470 ; province of, 470 477 ; its uses, 422 ; writer of a perfect, 377 427 442 2 52, 2 50, 201 ; begins in romance, and ends in essay, 377 400 Herodotus, as a writer of, 377 482 ; grows more sceptical with the progress of civilization, 385; writers of, contrast between, and writers of fiction, 38 5 480 38 300 444 44 ; comparison of, with portrait-painting, 380 488 Thucydides, as a writer of, 385 303 Xenophon, as a writer of, 304 304 Eulybius and Arrian, as writers of, 355; Plutarch and his school, as writers of, 305 402 Livy, as a writer of, 402 404 404 400 Tacitus, as a writer of, 400 ; writers of, contrast between, and the dramatists, 40 ; writers of, modern, superior to the ancient in truthfulness, 400 410 ; and in philosophic generalizations, 410 411 410 ; how affected by the discovery of printing, 411 ; writers of, ancient, how Directed by their national exclusiveness, 410 ; modern, how affected by the triumph of Christianity, 410 417 ; by the Northern invasions, 417 ; by the modern civilization, 417 418 ; their faults, 410 ; to: 421 ; their straining of facts to suit theories; their misrepresentations, 420 ; their ill success in writing ancient history, 421 ; their distortions of truth not unfavorable to correct views in political science, 422 ; but destructive to history proper, 423 ; contracted with biographers, 423 ; their contempt for the writers of memoirs, 423 ; the majesty of, nothing too trivial for, 424 192 2 ; what circumstantial details of the life of the people history needs, 424 428 ; most writers of, look only on the surface of affairs, 426 ; their errors in consequence, 420 ; reading of history compared in its effects with foreign travel, 420 427 ; writer of, a truly great, will exhibit the spirit of the age in miniature, 427 428 ; must possess an intimate knowledge of domestic history of nations, 432 Johnson's contempt for it, 421
History of the Popes of Rome during the 16th and 17th centuries, review of Ranke's, 299 350
History of Greece, Clifford's, reviewed, 172 201
Hobbes, Thomas, his influence on the two Succeeding generations, 409 Malbranche's opinion of him, 340
Hohenfriedberg, victory of, 178
Hohenlohe, Prince, 301
Holbach, Baron, his supper parties, 348
Holderness, Earl of, his resignation of office, 24
Holkar, origin of the House of, 59
Holland, allusion to the rise of, 87 ; governed with almost regal power by John de Witt, 32 ; its apprehensions of the designs of France, 35 ; its defensive alliance with England and Sweden, 40 44
Holland House, beautiful lines addressed to it by Tickell, 423 ; its interesting associations, Addison's abode and death there, 424 412
Holland, Lord, review of his opinions as recorded in the journals of the House of Lords, 412 426 ; his family, 414 417 419 ; his public life, 419 422 ; his philanthropy, 64 65 422 423 ; feelings with which his memory is cherished, 423 ; his hospitality at Holland House, 425 ; his winning manners and uprightness, 425 ; his last lines, 425 426
Hollis, Mr., committed to prison by Charles I., 447 ; his impeachment, 477
Hollwell, Mr., his presence of mind in the Black Hole, 233 ; cruelty of the Nabob towards him, 234
Home, John, patronage of by Bute, 41
Homer, difference between his poetry and Milton's, 213 ; one of the most "correct" poets, 338 Pope's translation of his description of a moonlight night, 331 ; his descriptions of war. 356 358 ; his egotism, 82 ; his oratorical power, 141 ; his use of epithets, 354 ; his description of Hector, 363
Hooker, his faulty style, 50
Hoole, specimen of his heroic couplets, 334
Horace, Bentley's notes on, 111 ; compared poems to paintings whose effect varies as the spectator changes his stand, 141 ; his comparison of the imitators of Pindar, 362 ; his philosophy, 125
Hosein, son of Ali, festival to his memory, 217 ; legend of his death, 218
Hospitals, objects for which they are built, 183
Hotspur, character of, 326
Hough, Bishop, 338
House of Commons (the), increase of its power, 532 536 540 ; change in public feeling in respect to its privileges, 537 ; its responsibility, 531 ; commencement of the practice of buying votes in, 168 ; corruption in, not necessary to the Tudors, 168 ; increase of its influence after the Devolution, 170 ; how to be kept in order, 170
Hume, David, his characteristics as a historian, 420 ; his description of the violence of parties before the Devolution, 328
Humor, that of Addison compared with that of Swift and Voltaire, 377 378
Hungarians, their incursions into Lombardy, 206
Hunt, Leigh, review of his edition of the Dramatic works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Karquhar, 350-411; his merits and faults, 350 351 ; his qualifications as an editor, 350 ; his appreciation of Shakspeare, Spenser, Dryden, and Addison, 351
Huntingdon, Countess of, 336
Huntingdon, William, 285
Hutchinson, Mrs., 24
Hyde, Mr., his conduct in the House of Commons, 463 ; voted for Strafford's attainder, 471 ; at the head of the Constitutional Loyalists, 474 ; see also Clarendon, Lord.
Hyder Ali, his origin and character, 71 ; his invasion of the Carnatic, and triumphant success, 71 ; his progress arrested by Sir Eyre Coote, 74
I.
Iconoclast, Milton's allusion to, 264
"Idler" (the), 105
Idolatry, 225 Illiad (the), Pope's and Tickell's translations, 405 408
Bunyan and Milton by Martin, Illustrations of 251 Imagination, effect upon, of works of art, 80 333 334 ; difference in this respect between the English and the Italians, 80 ; its strength in childhood, 331 ; in a barbarous age, 335 336 ; works of, early, their effect, 336 ; highest quality of, 37 ; master-pieces of, products of an uncritical age, 325 ; or of uncultivated minds, 343 ; hostility of Puritans to works of, 346 347 ; great strength of Milton's, 213 ; and power of Bunyan's, 256 267
Imhotf, Baron, his position and circumstances, 13 ; character and attractions of his wife and attachment between her and Hastings, 14 15 56 102
Impeachment of Lord Kimbolton, Hampden, Pym and Hollis, 477 ; of Hastings, 116 ; of Melville, 202 ; constitutional doctrine in regard to, 260 270
Impey, Sir Elijah, 6 Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at Calcutta, 30 ; his hostility to the Council, 45 ; remarks on his trial of Nuncomar, 45 40 66 ; dissolution of his friendship with Hastings, 67 ; his interference in the proceedings against the Begums, 91 ; ignorance of the native dialects, 91 ; condemnation in Parliament of the arrangement made with him by Hastings, 92
Impostors, fertile in a reforming age, 340
Indemnity, bill of, to protect witnesses against Walpole, 218
India, foundation of the English empire in, 24 248
Indies, the West. West Indies.
Induction, method of, not invented by Bacon, 470 ; utility of its analysis greatly overrated by Bacon, 471 ; example of its leading to absurdity, 471 ; contrasted with it priori reasoning, 8 9 ; the only true method of reasoning upon political questions, 481 70 74 72 70 ; to: 78
Indulgences, 814
Infidelity, on the treatment of, 171 ; its powerlessness to disturb the peace of the world, 341
Informer, character of, 519
Inquisition, instituted on the suppression of the Albigensian heresy, 310 ; armed with powers to suppress the Reformation, 323
Interest, effect of attempts by government to limit the rate of, 352
Intolerance, religious, effects of, 170
Ireland, rebellion in, in 164 473 ; in 175 280 Essex's administration in its condition under Cromwell's government, 25 27 ; its state contrasted with that of Scotland, 101 ; its union with England compared with the Persian table of King Zolmk, 101 ; reason of its not joining in favor of the Reformation, 314 330 ; danger to England from its discontents, Pitt's admirable policy towards, 280 281
Isocrates, 103
Italian Language, Dante the first to compose in, 50 ; its characteristics, 50
Italian Masque (the), 218
Italians, their character in the middle ages, 287 ; their social condition compared with that of the ancient Greeks, 312
Italy, state of, in the dark ages, 272 ; progress of civilization and refinement in, 274 275 ; seq; its condition under Cæsar Borgia, 303 ; its temper at the Reformation, 315 ; seq; its slow progress owing to Catholicism, 340 ; its subjugation, 345 ; revival of the power of the Church in, 347
J.
"Jackboot," a popular pun on Bute's name, 41 151
Jacobins, their origin, 11 ; their policy, 458 450 ; had effects of their administration, 532 534
Jacobin Club, its excesses, 345 402 400 473 475 481 488 401 ; its suppression, 502 ; its final struggle for ascendency, 500
James I. 455 ; his folly and weakness, 431 ; resembled Claudius Caesar, 440 ; court paid to him by the English courtiers before the death of Elizabeth, 382 ; his twofold character, 383 ; his favorable reception of Bacon, 383 380 ; his anxiety for the union of England and Scotland, 387 ; his employment of Bacon in perverting the laws, 538 ; his favors and attachment to Buckingham, 396 308 ; absoluteness of his government, 404 ; his summons of a Parliament, 410 ; his political blunders, 410 411 ; his message to the Commons on the misconduct of Bacon, 414 ; his readiness to make concessions to Rome, 328
James II., the cause of his expulsion, 237 ; administration of the law in his time, 520 Vareist's portrait of him, 251 ; his death, and acknowledgment by Louis XIV. of his son as his successor, 102 ; favor towards him of the High Church party, 303 122 ; his misgovernment, 304 ; his claims as a supporter of toleration, 304 308 ; his conduct towards Lord Rochester, 307 ; lus union with Lewis XI V., 303 ; his confidential advisers, 301 ; his kindness and munificence to Wycherley, 378
Jardine,.Mr., his work on the use of torture in England, 304 ; note.
Jeffreys, Judge, his cruelty, 303
Jenyns, Soanie, his notion of happiness in heaven, 378 ; his work on the "Origin of Evil" reviewed by Johnson, 270 152 195
Jerningham, Mr. his verses, 271
Jesuitism, its theory and practice towards heretics, 310 ; its rise, 320 ; destruction, 343 ; its fall and consequences', 344 ; its doctrines, 348 340
Jesuits, order of, instituted by Loyola, 320 ; their character, 320 321 ; their policy and proceedings, 322 323 ; their doctrines, 321 322 ; their conduct in the confessional, 322 ; their missionary activity, 322
Jews (the), review of the Civil Disabilities of, 307 323 ; argument that the Constitution would be destroyed by admitting them to power, 307 310 ; the argument that they are aliens, 313 ; inconsistency of the law in respect to them, 309 313 ; their exclusive spirit a natural consequence of their treatment, 315 ; argument against them, that they look forward to their restoration to their own country, 317 323
Job, the Book of, 216
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, life of, 172 220; review of Croker's edition of Boswell's life of, 368 425 ; his birth and parentage, 172 ; his physical and mental peculiarities, 172 173 170 307 408 ; his youth, 173 174 253 ; entered at Pembroke College, Oxford, 174 ; his life there, 175 ; translates Pope's "Messiah" into Latin verse, 175 ; quits the university without a degree, 175 ; his religious sentiments, 177 411 ; his early struggles, 177 178 ; his marriage, 178 ; opens a school and has Garrick for a pupil, 179 ; settles in London, 179 ; condition of men of letters at that time, 179 180 398 404 ; his privations, 404 181 ; his manners, 181 271 ; his connection with the "Gentleman's Magazine," 182 ; his political bigotry, 183 184 213 412 413 333 ; his "London," 184 185 ; his associates, 185 180 ; his life of Savage, 187 214 ; undertakes the Dictionary, 187 ; completes it, 193 194 ; his "Vanity of Human Wishes," 188 189 ; his "Irene," 179 190 ; his "Tatler," 190-192; Mrs. Johnson dies, 193 ; his poverty, 195 ; his review of Jenyns' "Nature and Origin of Evil," 195 270 ; his "Idler," 195 ; his "Basselas," 190 197 ; his elevation and pension, 198 405 ; his edition of Shakspeare, 199 202 ; made Doctor of Laws, 202 ; his conversational powers, 202 ; his "Chib," 203 200 425 ; his connection with the Thrales, 200 207 270 ; broken by Mrs. Thrale's marriage with Piozzi, 210 217; his benevolence, 207 208 271 ; his visit to the Hebrides, 209 210 420 ; his literary style, 187 192 211 213 215 219 423 313 ; his "Taxation no Tyranny," 212 ; his Lives of the Poets, 213 215 219 ; his want of financial skill, 215 ; peculiarity of his intellect, 408 ; his credulity, 409 200 ; narrowness of his views of society, 140 418 ; his ignorance of the Athenian character, 140 ; his contempt for history, 421 ; his judgments on books, 414 410 ; his objection to Juvenal's Satires, 379 ; his definitions of Excise and Pensioner, 333 198 ; his admiration of the Pilgrim's Progress, 253 ; his friendship for Goldsmith, 159 170 ; comparison of his political writings with those of Swift, 102 ; his language about Clive, 284 ; his praise of Congreve's "Mourning Bride," 391 392 400 ; his interview with Hastings, 12 ; his friendship with Dr. Burney, 254 ; his ignorance of music, 255 ; his want of appreciation of Gray, 201 214 ; his fondness for Miss Burney and approbation of her book. 271 219 ; his injustice to Fielding, 271 ; his sickness and death, 275 218 219 ; his character, 219 220 ; singularity of his destiny, 426 ; neglected by Pitt's administration in his illness and old age, 218 200
Jones, Inigo, 318
Jones, Sir William, 383
Jonson, Ben, 299 ; his "Hermogenes," 358 ; his description of Lord Bacon's eloquence, 859 ; his verses on the celebration of Bacon's sixtieth year, 408 409 ; his tribute to Bacon, 433 ; his description of humors in character, 303 ; specimen of his heroic couplets, 334
Joseph II., his reforms, 344
Judges (the), condition of their tenure of office, 480 ; formerly accustomed to receive gifts from suitors, 420 425; how their corruption is generally detected, 430 ; integrity required from them, 50
Judgment, private, Milton's defence of the right of, 262
Judicial arguments, nature of, 422 ; bench, its character in the time of James II., 520
Junius, Letters of, arguments in favor of their having been written by Sir Philip Francis, 36 ; seq.; their effects, 101
Jurymen, Athenian, 33 ; note.
Juvenal's Satires, Johnson's objection to them, 379 ; their impurity, 352 ; his resemblance to lin'd en, 372 ; quotes the Pentateuch, 414 ; quotation from, applied to Louis XIV., 59
K.
Keith, Marshall, 235
Kenrick, William, 269
Kimbolton, Lord, his impeachment, 477
King, the name of an Athenian magistrate, 53 ; note.
"King's Friends," the faction of the, 79 82
Kit-Cat Club, Addison's introduction to the, 351
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, Addison's lines to him, 375
"Knights," comedy of the. 21
Kniperdoling and Robespierre, analogy between their followers, 12
Knowledge, advancement of society in, 390 391 132
L.
Labor, division of, 123 ; effect of attempts by government to limit the hours of, 362 Major Moody's new philosophy of, and its refutation, 373 398
Laboring classes (the), their condition in England and on the Continent, 178 ; in the United States, 180
Labourdonnais, his talents, 202 ; his treatment by the French government, 294
Laedaunon. See Sparta.
La Fontaine, allusion to, 393
Lalla Kookli, 485
Lally, Governor, his treatment by the French government, 294
Lamb, Charles, his defence cf the dramatists of the Restoration, 357 ; his kind nature, 358
Lampoons, Pope's, 408
Lancaster, Dr., his patronage of Addison, 326
Langton, Mr., his friendship with Johnson, 204 219 ; his admiration of Miss Burney, 271
Language, Drvden's command of, 367 ; effect of its cultivation upon poetry, 337 338 Latin, its decadence, 55 ; its characteristics, 55 Italian, Dante the first to compose in, 56
Languedoc, description of it in the twelfth century, 308 309 ; destruction of its prosperity and literature by the Normans, 310
Lansdowne, Lord, his friendship for Hastings, 106
Latimer, Hugh, his popularity in London, 423 428
Latin poems, excellence of Milton's, 211 Boileau's praise of, 342 343 Petrarch's, 96 ; language, its character and literature, 347 349
Latinity, Croker's criticisms on, 381
Laud, Archbishop, his treatment by the Parliament, 492 493 ; his correspondence with Strafford, 492 ; his character, 452 453 ; his diary, 453 ; his impeachment and imprisonment, 468 ; his rigor against the Puritans, and tenderness towards the Catholics, 473
Lauderdale, Lord, 417
Law, its administration in the time of James II., 520 ; its monstrous grievances in India, 64 69
Lawrence, Major, his early notice of Clive, 203, 241, ; his abilities, 203
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 305
Laws, penal, of Elizabeth, 439 440
Lawsuit, imaginary, between the parishes of St. Dennis and St. George-in-the-water, 100, 111
Lawyers, their inconsistencies as advocates and legislators, 414 415
Learning in Italy, revival of, 275 ; causes of its decline, 278
Legerdemain, 353
Legge, Et. lion. H. B., 230 ; his return to the Exchequer, 38 13 ; his dismissal, 28
Legislation, comparative views on, by Plato and by Bacon, 456
Legitimacy, 237
Leibnitz, 324
Lemon, Mr., his discovery of Milton's Treatise on Christian Doctrine, 202
Lennox, Charlotte, 24
Leo X., his character, 324 ; nature of the war between him and Luther, 327 328
Lessing, 341
Letters of Phalaris, controversy between Sir William Temple and Christ Church College and Bentley upon their merits and genuineness, 108 112 114 119
Libels on the court of George III., in Bute's time, 42
Libertinism in the time of Charles II., 517
Liberty, public, Milton's support of, 246 ; its rise and progress in Italy, 274 ; its real nature, 395 397 ; characteristics of English, 399 68 71 ; of the Seas, Barrere's work upon, 512
Life, human, increase in the time of, 177
Lincoln Cathedral, painted window in, 428
Lingard, Dr., his account of the conduct of James II. towards Lord Rochester, 307 ; his ability as a historian, 41 ; his strictures on the Triple Alliance, 42
Literary men more independent than formerly, 190-192; their influence, 193 194 ; abjectness of their condition during the reign of George IL, 400 401 ; their importance to contending parties in the reign of Queen Anne, 304 ; encouragement afforded to, by the Revolution, 336 ; see also Criticism, literary.
Literature of the Roundheads, 234 ; of the Royalists, 234 ; of the Elizabethan age, 341 346 ; of Spain in the 16th century, 80 ; splendid patronage of, at the close of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries, 98 ; discouragement of, on the accession of the House of Hanover, 98 ; importance of classical in the 16th century, 350 Petrarch, its votary, 86 ; what its history displays in all languages 340 341 ; not benefited by the French Academy, 23
Literature, German, little known in England sixty or seventy years ago, 341
Literature, Italian, unfavorable influence of Petrarch upon, 59 60 ; characteristics of, in the 14th century, 278 ; and generally, down to Alfieri, 60
Literature, Royal Society of, 202, 9
"Little Dickey," a nickname for Norris, the actor, 417
Livy, Discourses on, by Machiavelli, 309 ; compared with Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, 313 314 ; his characteristics as an historian, 402 403 ; meaning of the expression lactece ubertus, as applied to him, 403
Logan, Mr., his ability in defending Hastings, 139
Lollardism in England, 27
London, in the 17th century, 479 ; devoted to the national cause, 480 481 ; its public spirit, 18 ; its prosperity during the ministry of Lord Chatham, 247 ; conduct of, at the Restoration, 289 ; effects of the Great Plague upon, 32 ; its excitement on occasion of the tax on cider proposed by Bute's ministry, 50 University of, see University.
Long Parliament (the), controversy on its merits, 239 240 ; its first meeting, 457 ; ii.406; its early proceedings, 469 470 ; its conduct in reference to the civil war, 471 ; its nineteen propositions, 486 ; its faults, 490 494 ; censured by Mr. Hallam, 491 ; its errors in the conduct of the war, 494 ; treatment of it by the army, 497 ; recapitulation of its acts, 408 ; its attainder of Stratford defended, 471 ; sent Hampden to Edinburgh to watch the king, 479 ; refuses to surrender the members ordered to be impeached, 477 ; openly denies the king, 489 ; its conditions of reconciliation, 480
Lope, his distinction as a writer and a soldier, 81
Lords, the House of, its position previous to the Restoration, 287 ; its condition as a debating assembly in 177 420
Lorenzo de Medici, state of Italy in his time, 278
Lorenzo de Medici (the younger), dedication of Machiavelli's Prince to him, 309
Loretto, plunder of, 346
Louis XI., his conduct in respect to the Spanish succession, 80 99 ; his acknowledgment, on the death of James II., of the Prince of Wales as King of England, and its consequences, 102 ; sent an army into Spain to the assistance of his grandson, 109 ; his proceedings in support of his grandson Philip, 109 127 ; his reverses in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, 129 ; his policy, 309 ; character of his government, 308 311 ; his military exploits, 5 ; his projects and affected moderation, 36 ; his ill-humor at the Triple Alliance, 41 ; his conquest of Franche Comte, 42 ; his treaty with Charles, 53 ; the early part of his reign a time of license, 364 ; his devotion, 339 ; his late regret for his extravagance, 39 ; his character and person, 576 ; his injurious influence upon religion, 64
Louis XV., his government, 646 6 293
Louis XVI., 441 ; to: 449 455 150 67
Louis XVIII., restoration of, compared with that of Charles II., 282 ; seq.
Louisburg, fall of, 244
L'Ouverture, Toussaint, 366 390 392
Love, superiority of the. Romans over the Greeks in their delineations of, 83 ; change in the nature of the passion of, 84 ; earned by the introduction of the Northern element, 83
"Love for Love," by Congreve, 392 ; its moral, 402
"Love in a Wood," when acted, 371
Lucan, Dryden's resemblance to, 355
Lucian, 387
Luther, his declaration against the ancient philosophy, 446 ; sketch of the contest which began with his preaching against the Indulgences and terminated with the treaty of Westphalia, 314 338 ; was the product of his age, 323 ; defence of, by Atterbury, 113
Lysurgus, 185
Lysias, anecdote by Plutarch of his "speech for the Athenian tribunals," 117
Lyttleton, Lord, 54
M.
Maebomey, original name of the Burney family, 250 Machiavelli, his works, by Périer, 267 ; general odiousness of his name and works, 268 269 ; suffered for public liberty, 269 ; his elevated sentiments and just views, 270 ; held in high estimation by his contemporaries. 271 ; state of moral feeling ill Italy in his time, 272 ; his character as a man, 291 ; as a poet, 293 ; as a dramatist, 296 ; as a statesman, 291 300 309 313 309 ; excellence of his precepts, 311 ; his candor, 313 ; comparison between him and Montesquieu, 314 ; his style, 314 ; his levity, 316 ; his historical works, 316 ; lived to witness the last struggle for Florentine liberty, 319 ; his works and character misrepresented, 319 ; his remains dishonored till long after his death, 319 ; monument erected to his memory by an English nobleman, 319
Mackenzie, Henry, his ridicule of the Nabob class, 283
Mackenzie, Mr., his dismissal insisted on by Grenville, 70
Mackintosh, Sir James, review of his History of the Revolution in England, 251 335 ; comparison with Fox's History of James II., 252 ; character of his oratory, 253 ; his conversational powers, 256 ; his qualities as an historian, 250 ; his vindication from the imputations of the editor, 262 270-278; change in his opinions produced by the French Revolution, 263 ; his moderation, 268 270 ; his historical justice, 277 278 ; remembrance of him at Holland House, 425
Macleane, Colonel, agent in England for Warren Hastings, 44 53
Macpherson, James, 77 331 210 ; a favorite author with Napoleon, 515 ; despised by Johnson, 116
Madras, description of it, 199 ; its capitulation to the French, 202 ; restored to the English, 203
Maand, capture of, by the English army in 470 119
Mæandnus, of Samos, 132
Magazine, delightful invention for a very idle or a very busy man, 156 ; resembles the little angels of the Rabbinical tradition, 156 157
Magdalen College, treatment of, by James II., 413 Addison's connection with it, 327
Mahon, Lord, Review of his History of the War of the Succession in Spain, 75 142 ; his qualities as an historian, 75 77 ; his explanation of the financial condition of Spain, 85 ; his opinions on the Partition Treaty, 90-92; his representations of Cardinal Porto Carrero, 104 ; his opinion of the peace on the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, 131 ; his censure of Harley, 132 ; and view of the resemblance of the Tories of the present day to the Whigs of the Revolution, 132 135
Mahrattas, sketch of their history, 207 58 ; expedition against them, 60
Malaga, naval battle near, in 170 110
Malcolm, Sir John, review of his Life of Lord Clive, 194 299 ; value of his work, 190 ; his partiality for Clive, 237 ; his defence of Clive's conduct towards Ornichaud, 248
Mallet, David, patronage of by Bute, 41
Malthus, Mr., his theory of population, and Sadler's objections to it, 217 218 222 223 228 244 271 272
Manchester, Countess of, 339
Manchester, Earl of, his patronage of Addison, 338 350
Mandeville, his metaphysical powers, 208
Mandragola (the), of Maehiavelli, 293
Manilla, capitulation of, 32
Mannerism of Johnson, ii 423
Mansfield, Lord, his character and talents, 223 ; his rejection of the overtures of Newcastle, 234 ; his elevation, 234 12 ; his friendship for Hastings, 106 ; character of his speeches, 104
Manso, Milton's Epistle to, 212
Manufactures and commerce of Italy in the 14th century, 275 277
Manufacturing and agricultural laborers, comparison of their condition, 147 149
Manufacturing system (the), Southey's opinion upon, 145 ; its effect on the health, 147
Marat, his bust substituted for the statues of the Martyrs of Christianity, 345 ; his language about Barère, 458 466 ; his bust torn down, 502
Mareet, Mrs., her Dialogues on Political Economy, 207
March, Lord, one of the persecutors of Wilkes, 60
Maria Theresa, her accession to the throne, 164 ; her situation and personal qualities, 165 166 ; her unbroken spirit, 173 ; gives birth to the future emperor, Joseph II., 173 ; her coronation, 173 ; enthusiastic loyalty and war-cry of Hungary, 174 ; her brother-in-law, Prince Charles of Lorraine, defeated by Frederic the Great, at Chotusitz, 174 ; she cedes Silesia, 175 ; her husband, Francis, raised to the Imperial Throne, 179 ; she resolves to humble Frederic, 200 ; succeeds in obtaining the adhesion of Russia, 200 ; her letter to Madame Pompadour, 211 ; signs the peace of Hubertsburg, 245
Marie Antoinette, Barère's share in her death, 401 434 409 470
Marino, San, visited by Addison, 340
Marlborough, Duchess of, her friendship with Congreve, 408 ; her inscription on his monument, 409
Marlborough, Duke of, 259 ; his conversion to Whiggism, 129 ; his acquaintance with the Duchess of Cleveland,-and commencement of his splendid fortune, 373 ; notice of Addison's poem in his honor, 358
Marlborough and Godolphin, their policy, 353
Maroons (the), of Surinam, 386 ; to: 388
Marsh, Bishop, his opposition to Calvinistic doctrine, 170
Martinique, capture of, 32
Martin's illustrations of the Pilgrim's Progress, and of Paradise Lost, 251
Marvel, Andrew, 333
Mary, Queen, 31
Masque, the Italian, 218
Massinger, allusion to his "Virgin Martyr," 220 ; his fondness for the Roman Catholic Church, 30 ; indelicate writing in his dramas, 356
Mathematical reasoning, 103 ; studies, their advantages and defects, 346
Mathematics, comparative estimate of, by Plato and by Bacon, 451
Maximilian of Bavaria, 328
Maxims, general, their uselessness, 310
Maynooth, Mr. Gladstone's objections to the vote of money for, 179
Mecca, 301
Medals, Addison's Treatise on, 329 351
Medici, Lorenzo de. See Lorenzo de Medici.
Medicine, comparative estimate of the science of, by Plato and by Bacon, 454 456
Meer Cossim, his talents, 260 ; his deposition and revenge, 266
Meer Jatlier, his conspiracy, 240 ; his conduct during the battle of Plassey, 243 240 ; his pecuniary transactions with Clive, 251 ; his proceedings on being threatened by the Great Mogul, 250 ; his fears of the English, and intrigues with the Dutch, 258 ; deposed and reseated by the English, 266 ; his death, 270 ; his large bequest to Lord Clive, 279
Melanethon, 7
Melville, Lord, his impeachment, 292
Meinmius, compared to Sir Wm. Temple, 112
Memoirs of Sir "William Temple, review of, 1 115 ; wanting in selection and compression, 2
Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, review of, 1 148
Memoirs, writers of, neglected by historians, 423
Memory, comparative views of the importance of, by Plato and by Bacon, 454
Menander, the lost comedies of, 375
Mendaeium, different species of, 430
Mendoza, Hurtado de, 81
Mercenaries, employment of, in Italy, 283 ; its political consequences, 284 ; and moral effects, 285
Messiah, Pope's, translated into Latin verse by Johnson, 175
Metals, the precious, production of, 351
Metaphysical accuracy incompatible with successful poetry, 225
Metcalfe, Sir Charles, his ability and disinterestedness, 298
Methodists, their rise unnoticed by some writers of the history of England under George II., 426 ; their early object, 318
Mexico, exactions of the Spanish viceroys in, exceeded by the English agents in Bengal, 266
Miehell, Sir Francis, 401
Middle ages, inconsistency in the schoolmen of the, 415
Middlesex election, the constitutional question in relation to it, 101 104
Middleton, Dr., remarks on his Life of Cicero, 340 341 ; his controversies with Bentley, 112
Midias, Demosthenes' speech against, 102
"Midsummer Night's Dream," sense in which the word "translated" is therein used, 180
Milan, Addison's visit to, 345
Military science, studied by Machiavelli, 306
Military service, relative adaptation of different classes for, 280
Militia (the), control of, by Charles I. or by the Parliament, 488
Mill, James, his merits as a historian, 277 278 ; defects of his History of British India, 195 196 ; his unfairness towards Clive's character, 237 ; his Essay on Government reviewed, 5 51 ; his theory and method of reasoning, 6 8 10 12 18 20 46 48 ; his style. 8 ; his erroneous definition of the end of government, 11 ; his objections to a Democracy only practical ones, 12 ; attempts to demonstrate that a purely aristocratic form of government is necessarily bad, 12 13 ; so also an absolute monarchy, 13 14 ; refutation of these arguments, 15 16 18 ; his inconsistencies, 16 17 96 97 121; his narrow views, 19 20 ; his logical deficiencies, 95 ; his want of precision in the use of terms, 103 108 ; attempts to prove that no combination of the simple forms of government can exist, 21 22 ; refutation of this argument., 22 29 ; his ideas upon the representative system. 29 30 ; objections to them, 30-32; his views upon the qualifications of voters, 32 36 ; objections to them, 36 38 41 42 ; confounds the interests of the present generation with those of the human race, 38 39 ; attempts to prove that the people understand their own interest, 42 ; refutation of this argument, 43 ; general objections to his theory, 44 47 122 ; defended by the Westminster Review, 529 ; inconsistencies between him and the reviewer, 56 58 ; the reviewer mistakes the points at issue, 58 60 61 65 70 77 114 ; and misrepresents arguments, 62 73 74 ; refutation of his positions. 63 64 66 74 76 122 127 ; the reviewer shifts the issue, 68 127 128 ; fails to strengthen Mill's positions, 71 ; and manifests great disingenuousness, 115 118 129 130
Millar, Lady, her vase for verses, 271
Milton, review of his Treatise on Christian Doctrine, Mr. Lemon's discovery of the MS. of it, 202 ; his style, "202; his theological opinions, 204 ; his poetry his great passport to general remembrance, 205 211 ; power of his imagination, 211 ; the most striking characteristic of his poetry, 213 375 ; his Allegro and Penseroso, 215 ; his Cornus and Samson Agonistes, 215 ; his minor poems, 219 ; appreciated the literature of modern Italy, 219 ; his Paradise Regained, 219 ; parallel between him and Dante, 17 18 ; his Sonnets most exhibit his peculiar character, 232 ; his public conduct, 233 ; his defence of the execution of Charles L, 246 ; his refutation of Salmasius, 248 ; his conduct under the Protector, 249 ; peculiarities which distinguished him from his contemporaries, 253 ; noblest qualities of every party combined in him, 260 ; his defence of the freedom of the press, and the right of private judgment, 262 ; his boldness in the maintenance of his opinions, 263 ; recapitulation of his literary merits, 264 ; one of the most "correct" poets, 338 ; his egotism, 82 ; effect of his blindness upon his genius, 351 Dryden's admiration of, 369 370
Milton and Cowley, an imaginary conversation between, touching the great Civil War, 112 138
Milton and Shakspeare,character of, Johnson's observations on, 417
Minden, battle of, 247
Minds, great, the product of their times, 323 325
Mines, Spanish-American, 85 351
Ministers, veto by Parliament on their appointment, 487 ; their responsibility lessened by the Revolution, 531
Minorca, capture of, by the French, 232
Minority, period of, at Athens, 191 192
"Minute guns!" Diaries Townshend's exclamation on hearing Bute's maiden speech, 33
Mirabeau, Dumont's recollections of, 71 74 ; his habit of giving compound nicknames, 72 ; compared with Wilkes, 72 ; with Chatham, 72 73
Missionaries, Catholic, their zeal and spirit, 300
Mittford, Mr., his History of Greece reviewed, 172 201 ; its popularity greater than its merits, 172 ; his characteristics, 173 174 177 420-422; his scepticism and political prejudices, 178 188 ; his admiration of an oligarchy, and preference of Sparta to Athens, 181 183 ; his views in regard to Lyeurgus, 185 ; reprobates the liturgic system of Athens, 190 ; his unfairness, 191 422; his misrepresentation of Demosthenes, 191 193 195 197 ; his partiality for Æschines, 193 194 ; his admiration of monarchies, 195 ; his general preference of the Barbarians to the Greeks, 190 ; his deficiencies as an historian, 190 197; his indifference for literature and literary pursuits, 197 199
Modern history, the period of its commencement, 532
Mogul, the Great, 27 ; plundered by Hastings, 74
Mohammed Heza Khan, his character, 18 ; selected by Clive, 21 ; his capture, confinement at Calcutta and release, 25
Molière, 385
Molwitz, battle of, 171
Mompesson, Sir Giles, conduct of Bacon in regard to his patent, 401 402 ; abandoned to the vengeance of the Commons, 412
Monarch, absolute, establishment of, in continental states, 481 Mitford's admiration of, 195
Monarchy, the English, in the l6th century, 15 20
Monjuieh, capture of the fort of, by Peterborough, 115
Monmouth, Duke of, 300 ; his supplication for life, 99
Monopolies, English, during the latter end of Elizabeth's reign, multiplied under James, 304 401 ; connived at by Bacon, 402
Monson, Mr., one of the new councillors under the Regulating Act for India, his opposition to Hastings, 40 ; his death and its important consequences, 54
Montagu, Basil, review of his edition of Lord Bacon's works, 330 ; character of his work, 330 ; his explanation of Lord Burleigh's conduct towards Bacon, 350 ; his views and arguments in defence of Bacon's conduct towards Essex, 373 379 ; his excuses for Bacon's use of torture, and his tampering with the judges, 391 394 ; his reductions on Bacon's admonitions to Buckingham, 403 ; his complaints against James for not interposing to save Bacon, 415 ; and for advising him to plead guilty, 410 ; his defence of Bacon, 417 430
Montagu, Charles, notice of him, 338 ; obtains permission for Addison to retain his fellowship during his travels, 338 Addison's Epistle to him, 350 ; see also Halifax, Lord.
Montague, Lord, 399
Montague, Marv, her testimony to Addison's colloquial powers, 300
Montague, Mrs., 126
Mont Cenis, 349
Monttesquieu, his style, 314 304 365 Horace Walpole's opinion of him, 155 ; ought to have styled his work L'esprit sur les Lois, 142
Montesquieu and Machiavelli, comparison between, 314
Montgomery, Mr. Robert, his Omnipresence of the Deity reviewed, 199 ; character of his poetry, 200 212
Montreal, capture of, by the British, 170 245
Moody, Major Thomas, his reports on the captured negroes reviewed, 361 404 ; his character, 302 303 404 ; characteristics of his report, 304 402; its reception, 304 ; its literary style, 305 ; his principle of an instinctive antipathy between the White and the Black races, 365 ; its refutation, 306 367 ; his new philosophy of labor, 373 374 ; his charges against Mr. Dougal, 376 ; his inconsistencies, 377 ; and erroneous deductions, 379 380 391 ; his arrogance and bad grammar, 394 ; his disgraceful carelessness in quoting documents, 399
Moore, Mr., extract from his "Zelnco," 420
Moore's Life of Lord Byron, review of, 324 367 ; its style and matter, 324 ; similes in his "Lalla Rookh," 485
Moorshedabad, its situation and importance, 7
Moral feeling, state of, in Italy in the time of Machiavelli, 271
Morality of Plutarch, and the historians of his school, political, low standard of, after the Restoration, 398 515
Moses, Bacon compared to, by Cowley, 493
"Mountain" (the), their principles, 454 455 ; their intentions towards the King, 450 457 ; its contests with the Girondists, 458 459 402 460 ; its triumph, 473
"Mountain of Light," 145
Mourad Bey, his astonishment at Buonaparte's diminutive figure, 357
"Mourning Bride," by Congreve, its high standing as a tragic drama, 391
Moylan, Mr., review of his Collection of the Opinions of Lord Holland as recorded in the Journals of the House of Lords, 412 420
Mucius, the famous Roman lawyer, 4 ; note.
Munro, Sir Hector, 72
Munro, Sir Thomas, 298
Munster, Bishop of, 32
Murphy, Mr., his knowledge of stage effect, 273 ; his opinion of "The Witlings," 273
Mussulmans, their resistance to the practices of English law, 5
Mysore, 71 ; its fierce horsemen, 72
Mythology, Dante's use of, 75 76
N.
Nabobs, class of Englishmen to whom the name was applied, 280 283.
Names, in Milton, their significance, 214 ; proper, correct spelling of, 173
Naples, 347
Napoleon, his policy and actions as first Consul, 513 514 525 283 280 ; his treatment of Barer, 514 516 518 522 520 ; his literary style, 515 ; his opinion of Barère's abilities, 524 525 ; his military genius, 293 294 ; his early proof of talents for war, 297 ; his hold on the affections of his subjects, 14 ; devotion of his Old Guard surpassed by that of the garrison of Arcot to Clive, 210 Mr. Hallam's parallel between him and Cromwell, 504 ; compared with Philip II. of Spain, 78 ; protest of Lord Holland against his detention, 213 ; threatens to invade England, 287 ; anecdotes respecting, 236 237 357 495 408
Nares, Rev. Dr., review of his Burleigh and his Times, 1 30
National Assembly. See Assembly.
National Debt, Southey's notions of, 153 155 ; effect of its abrogation, 154 England's capabilities in respect to it, 180
National feeling, low state of, after the Restoration, 525
Natural history, a body of, commenced by Bacon, 433
Nature, Dryden's violations of, 359 ; external, Dante's insensibility to, 72 74 ; feeling of the present age for, 73 ; not the source of the highest poetical inspiration, 73 74
Navy, its mismanagement in the reign of Charles II., 375
Negroes, their legal condition in the West Indies, 307 310 ; their religious condition, 311 313 ; their social and industrial capacities, 301 402 Major Moody s theory of an instinctive antipathy between them and the Whites, and its refutation, 305 307 ; prejudices against them in the United States, 368 361 ; amalgamation between them and the Whites, 370 373 ; their capacity and inclination for labor, 383 385 387 391 ; the Maroons of Surinam, 380 ; to: 388 ; inhabitants of Hayti, 390 ; to: 400 ; their probable fate, 404
Nelson, Southey's Life of, 136
"New Atalantis" of Bacon, remarkable passages in, 488
Newbery, Mr., allusion to his pasteboard pictures, 215
Newcastle, Duke of, his relation to Walpole, 178 191 ; his character, 191 ; his appointment as head of the administration, 226 ; his negotiations with Fox, 227 228 ; attacked in Parliament by Chatham, 229 ; his intrigues, 234 ; his resignation of office, 235 ; sent for by the king on Chatham's dismissal", leader of the Whig aristocracy, 239 ; motives for his coalition with Chatham, 240 ; his perfidy towards the king, 242 ; his jealousy of Fox, 242 ; his strong government with Chatham, 243 244 ; his character and borough influence, 472 ; his contests with Henry Fox, 472 ; his power and patronage, 7 8 ; his unpopularity after the resignation of Chatham, 34 35 ; he quits office, 35
Newdigate, Sir Roger, a great critic, 342
Newton, John, his connection with the slave-trade, 421 ; his attachment to the doctrines of predestination, 176
Newton, Sir Isaac, 207 ; his residence in Leicester Square, 252 Malbranche's admiration of him, 340 ; invented the method of fluxions simultaneously with Leibnitz, 324
"New Zealander" (the), 301 160 162 201 41 42
Niagara, conquest of, 244
Ninleguen, congress at, 59 ; hollow and unsatisfactory treaty of, 60
Nizam, originally a deputy of the Mogul sovereign, 59
Nizam al Mulk, Viceroy of the Deecan, his death, 211
Nonconformity. See Dissent in the Church of England.
Normandy, 77
Normans, their warfare against the Albigenses, 310
Norris, Henry, the nickname "Little Dickey" applied to him by Addison, 417
North, Lord, his change in the constitution of the Indian government, 35 ; his desire to obtain the removal of Hastings, 53 ; change in his designs, and its cause, 57 ; his sense, tact, and urbanity, 128 ; his weight in the ministry, 13 Chancellor of the Exchequer, 100 ; at the head of the ministry, 232 ; resigns, 235 ; forms a coalition with Fox, 239 ; the recognized heads of the Tory party, 243
Northern and Southern countries, difference of moral feeling in, 285 286
Novels, popular, character of those which preceded Miss Burney's Evelina, 319
November, fifth of, 247
Novum Organum, admiration excited by it before it was published, 388 ; and afterwards, 409 ; contrast between its doctrine and the ancient philosophy, 438 448 405 ; its first book the greatest performance of Bacon, 492
Nov, Attorney-General to Charles I, 456
Nugent, Lord, review of his Memorials of John Hampden and his Party, 427
Nugent. Robert Craggs, 13
Nuncomar, his part in the revolutions in Bengal, 19 20 ; his services dispensed with by Hastings, 24 ; his rancor against Mahommed Reza Khan, 25 ; his alliance with the majority of the new council, 42 43; his committal for felony, trial, and sentence, 45 40 ; his death, 48 49
O.
Oates, Titus, remarks on his plot, 295 300
Oc, language of Provence and neighboring countries, its beauty and richness, 308
Ochino Bernardo, 349 ; his sermons on fate and free-will translated by Lady Bacon, 349
Odd (the), the peculiar province of Horace Walpole, 161
"Old Bachelor," Congreve's, 389
Old Sarum, its cause pleaded by Junius, 38
Old Whig, Addison's, 417
Oleron, 509
Oligarchy, characteristics of, 181 183.
Olympic games, Herodotus' history read at, 331
Oniai. his appearance at Dr. Burney's concerts, 257 ; anecdote about, 59
Oinichund, his position in India, 238 ; his treachery towards Clive, 241 249
Omnipresence of the Deity, Robert Montgomery's reviewed, 199
Opinion, public, its power, 169
Opposition, parliamentary, when it began to take a regular form, 433
Orange, the Prince of, 46 ; the only hope of his country, 51 ; his success against the French. 52 ; his marriage with the Lady Mary, 60
Orators, Athenian, essay on, 139 157; in what spirit "their works should be read, 149 ; causes of their greatness found in their education, 149 ; modern orators address themselves less to the audience than to the reporters, 151
Oratory, how to be criticised, 149 ; to be estimated on principles different from those applied to other productions, 150 ; its object not truth but persuasion, 150 ; little of it left in modern days, 151 ; effect of the freedom of the press upon it, 151 ; practice and discipline give superiority in, as in the art of war, 155 ; effect of the division of labor upon, 154 ; those desirous of success in, should study Dante next to Demosthenes, 78 ; its necessity to an English statesman, 96 97 363 364 251 253
Orestes, the Athenian highwayman, 34 ; note.
Doloff, Count, his appearance at Dr. Burney's concert, 256
Orme, merits and defects of his work on India, 195
Orsiui, the Princess, 105
Orthodoxy, at one time a synonyme for ignorance and stupidity, 343
Osborne, Sir Peter, incident of Temple with the son and daughter of, 16 23
Osborne, Thomas, the bookseller, 131
Oswald, James, 13
Otway, 191
Ovid, Addison's Notes to the 2d and 3d hooks of his Metamorphoses, 328
Owen, Mr. Robert, 140
Oxford, 287
Oxford, Earl of. See Harley, Robert. Oxford, University of, its inferiority to Cambridge in intellectual activity, 343 344 ; its disaffection to the House of Hanover, 402 36 ; rose into favor with the government under Bute, 36
P.
Painting, correctness in, 343 ; causes of its decline in England after the civil wars, 157
Paley, Archdeacon, 261 Mr. Gladstone's opinion of his defence of the Church, 122 ; his reasoning the same as that by which Socrates confuted Aristodemus, 303 ; his views on "the origin of evil," 273 276
Pallas, the birthplace of Goldsmith, 151
Paoli, his admiration of Miss Burney, 271
Papacy, its influence, 314 ; effect of Luther's public renunciation of communion with it, 315
Paper currency, Southey's notions of, 151 152
Papists, line of demarcation between them and Protestants, 362 Papists and Puritans, persecution of, by Elizabeth, 439
Paradise, picture of, in old Bibles, 343 ; painting of, by a gifted master, 343
Paradise Regained, its excellence, 219
Paris, influence of its opinions among the educated classes in Italy, 144
Parker, Archbishop, 31 Parliaments of the 15th century, their condition, 479
Parliament, the, sketch of its proceedings, 470 540 Parliament of James I., 440 441 Charles I., his first, 443 444 ; his second, 444 445 ; its dissolution, 446 ; his fifth, 401
Parliament, effect of the publication of its proceedings, 180 Parliament, Long. See Long Parliament.
Parliamentary government, 251 253.
Parliamentary opposition, its origin, 433
Parliamentary reform, 131 21 22 233 237 239 241 410 425
Parr, Dr., 120
Milton, Parties, state of, in the time of Milton, 257 ; in England, 171 130 ; analogy in the state of, 1704 and 182 353 ; mixture of, at George II.'s first levee after Walpole's resignation, 5
Partridge, his wrangle with Swift, 374
Party, power of, during the Reformation and the French Revolution, 11 14 ; illustrations of the use and the abuse of it, 73
Pascal, Blaise, 105 300 ; was the product of his age, 323 Patronage of literary men, 190 ; less necessary than formerly, 191 352 ; its injurious effects upon style, 352 353
"Patriots" (the), in opposition to Sir R. Walpole, 170 179 ; their remedies for state evils, 181 183 Patriotism, genuine, 396
Paul IV., Pope, his zeal and devotion, 318 324
Paulet, Sir Amias, 354
Paulieian theology, its doctrines and prevalence among the Albigenses, 309 ; in Bohemia and the Lower Danube, 313
Pauson, the Greek painter, 30 ; note.
Peacham, Rev. Mr., his treatment by Bacon, 389 390
Peers, new creations of, 486 ; impolicy of limiting the number of, 415 410
Pelham, Henry, his character, 189 ; his death. 225
Pelhams (the), their ascendency, 188 ; their accession to power, 220 221 ; feebleness of the opposition to them, 222 ; see also Newcastle, Duke of.
Pembroke College, Oxford, Johnson entered at, 174 175
Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, Pitt entered at, 225
Péner, M.. translator of the works of Machiavelli, 207
Peninsular War, Southey's, 137
Penseroso and Allegro, Milton's, 215
Pentathlete (a), 154
People (the), comparison of their condition in the 10th and 19th centuries, 173 ; their welfare not considered in partition treaties, 91 92
Pepys, his praise of the Triple Alliance, 44 ; note.
Pericles, his distribution of gratuities among the members of the Athenian tribunals, 420 ; the substance but not the manner of his speeches transmitted by Thucydides, 152
Persecution, religious, in the reign of Elizabeth, 439 440 ; its reactionary effect upon churches and thrones, 456 ; in England during the progress of the Reformation, 14
Personation, Johnson's want of talent for, 423
Personification, Robert Montgomery's penchant for, 207
Persuasion, not truth, the object of oratory, 150
Peshwa, authority and origin of, 59
Peterborough, Earl of, his expedition to Spain, 110 ; his character, 110 123 124 ; his successes on the northeast coast of Spain, 112 119 ; his retirement to Valencia thwarted, 123 ; returns to Valencia as a volunteer, 123 ; his recall to England, 123
Petition of Right, its enactment, 445 ; violation of it, 445
Petrarch, characteristics of his writings, 56 57 88 90-96, 211 ; his influence upon Italian literature to Altieri's time unfavorable, 59 ; criticism upon, 80-99; his wide celebrity. 80 ; besides Cervantes the only modern writer who has attained an European reputation, 80 ; the source of his popularity to be found in his egotism, 81 82 ; and the universal interest felt in his theme, 82 85 365 ; the first eminent poet wholly devoted to the celebration of love, 85 ; the Provençal poets his masters, 85 ; his fame increased by the inferiority of his imitators, 86 ; but injured by their repetitions of his topics, 94 ; lived the votary of literature, 86 ; and died its martyr, 87 ; his crowning on the Capitol, 86 87 ; his private history, 87 ; his inability to present sensible objects to the imagination, 89 ; his genius, and his perversion of it by his conceits, 90 ; paucity of his thoughts, 90 ; his energy of style when lie abandoned amatory composition, 91 ; the defect of his writings, their excessive brilliancy, and want of relief, 92 ; his sonnets, 93 95 ; their effect upon the reader's mind, 93 ; the fifth sonnet the perfection of bathos, 93 ; his Latin writings over-estimated by himself and his contemporaries, 95 96 413 ; his philosophical essays, 97 ; his epistles, 98 ; addressed to the dead and the unborn, 99 ; the first restorer of polite letters into Italy, 277
Petty, Henry, Lord, 296
Phalaris, Letters of, controversy upon their merits and genuineness, 108 112 114 119
Philarehus for Phylarehus, 381
Philip II. of Spain, extent and splendor of his empire, 77
Philip III. of Spain, his accession, 98 ; his character, 98 104 ; his choice of a wife, 105 ; is obliged to fly from Madrid, 118 ; surrender of his arsenal and ships at Carthagena, 119 ; defeated at Alinenara, and again driven from Madrid, 126 ; forms a close alliance with his late competitor, 138 ; quarrels with France, 138 ; value of his renunciation of the crown of France. 139
Philip le Bel, 312
Philip, Duke of Orleans, regent of France, 63 66 ; compared with Charles II. of England, 64 65
Philippeaux, Abbe, his account of Addison's mode of life at Blois, 339
Philips, John, author of the Splendid Shilling, 386 ; specimen of his poetry in honor of Marlborough, 386 ; the poet of the English vintage, 50
Philips, Sir Robert, 413
Phillipps, Ambrose, 369
Philological studies, tendency of, 143 ; unfavorable to elevated criticism, 143
Philosophy, ancient, its characteristics, 436 ; its stationary character, 441 459 ; its alliance with Christianity, 443 445 ; its fall, 445 446 ; its merits compared with the Baconian, 461 462 ; reason of its barrenness, 478 479
Philosophy, moral, its relation to the Baconian system, 467
Philosophy, natural, the light in which it was viewed by the ancients, 436 443 ; chief peculiarity of Bacon's, 435
Phrarnichus, 133
Pilgrim's Progress, review of Southey's edition of the, 250 ; see also Bunyan.
Pilpav, Fables of, 188
Pindar and the Greek drama, 216 Horace's comparison of his imitators, 362
Pineus (the), 31 ; note.
Pisistratus, Bacon's comparison of Essex to him, 372
Pitt, William, (the first). (See Chatham, Earl of.)
Pitt, William, (the second.) his birth, 221 ; his precocity, 223 ; his feeble health, 224 ; his early training, 224 225 ; entered at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, 225 ; his life and studies there, 225 229 ; his oratorical exercises, 228 229 ; accompanies his father in his last attendance in the House of Peers, 223 230 ; called to the bar, 230 ; enters Parliament, 230 ; his first speech, 233 ; his forensic ability, 2 14 ; declines any post that did not entitle him to a seat in the Cabinet, * 235 ; courts the Ultra-Whigs, 236 ; made Chancellor of the Exchequer, 247 ; denounces the coalition between Fox and North, 240 ; resigns and declines a place at the Treasury Hoard, 241 ; makes a second motion in favor of Parliamentary Reform, 241 ; visits the Continent, 242 ; his great popularity, 244 244 ; made First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, 240 ; his contest with the opposition, 247 ; his increasing popularity in the nation, 248 ; his pecuniary disinterestedness, 249 257 208 ; reelected to Parliament, 24 ; the greatest subject that England had seen for many generations, 250 ; his peculiar talents, 250-257; his oratory, 254 255 128 ; the correctness of his private life, 258 ; his failure to patronize men of letters and artists, 259 202 ; his administration can be divided into equal parts, 202 ; his lirst eight years, 202 271 ; his struggle upon the question of the Regency, 205 207 ; his popularity, 207 208 ; his feelings towards France, 270 272 ; his change of views in the latter part of his administration not unnatural, 272 274 45 ; failure of his administration of military affairs, vi.275, 277 ; his undiminished popularity, 277 278 ; his domestic policy, 27S, 274 ; his admirable policy respecting Ireland and the Catholic Question, 289 281 ; his resignation, 281 ; supports Addington's administration. 284 ; grows cold in his support, 285 ; his quarrel with Addington. 287 ; his great debate with Fox upon the war question, 288 ; his coalition with Fox, 236 ; to: 242 410 191 ; his second administration, 292 ; his failing health, 294 ; his ill-success in the coalition against Napoleon, 294 295 ; his illness increases, 295 250 ; his death, 297 ; his funeral, 298 ; his debts paid from the public treasury, 298 ; his neglect of his private finances, 298 249 ; his character, 299 300 410 411 ; his admiration for Hastings, 107 110 117 ; his asperity towards Francis, 104 ; his speech in support of Fox's motion against Hastings, 117 ; his motive, 119 ; his position upon the question of Parliamentary Reform, 410
Pius V., his bigotry, 185 ; his austerity and zeal, 424
Pius VI., his captivity and death, 440 ; his funeral rites long withheld, 440
Plagiarism, effect of, on the reader's mind, 94 ; instances of R. Montgomery's, 199 202
"Plain Dealer," Wycherley's, its appearance and merit, 370 384 ; its libertinism, 480
Plassey, battle of, 243 246 ; its effect in England, 254
Plato, comparison of his views with those of Racon, 448 404 ; excelled in the art of dialogue, 105
Plautus, his Casina, 248
Plays, English, of the age of Elizabeth, 448 ; rhyme introduced into, to please Charles II., 349 ; characteristics of Dryden's rhyming, 355 301
Plebeian, Steele's, 4
Plomer, Sir T., one of the counsel for Hastings on his trial, 127
Plutarch and the historians of his school, 395 402 ; their mental characteristics, 395 ; their ignorance of the nature of real liberty, 590 ; and of true patriotism, 397 ; their injurious influence, 348 ; their bad morality, 398 ; their effect upon Englishmen, 400 ; upon Europeans and especially the French, 400 402 70 71 ; contrasted with Tacitus, 409 ; his evidence of gifts being given to judges in Athens, 420 ; his anecdote of Lysias's speech before the Athenian tribunals, 117
Poem, imaginary epic, entitled "The Wellingtoniad," 158
Poetry, definition of, 210 ; incapable of analysis, 325 327 ; character of Southey's, 139 ; character of Robert Montgomery's, 199 213 ; wherein that of our tunes differs from that of the last century, 337 ; laws of, 340 ; to: 347 ; unities in, 338 ; its end, 338 ; alleged improvements in since the time of Dryden, 348 ; the interest excited by Byron's, 383 Dr. Johnson's standard of, 416 Addison's opinion of Tuscan, 361 ; what excellence in, depends upon, 384 335 ; when it begins to decline, 337 ; effects of the cultivation of language upon, 337 338 ; of criticism, 338 ; its St. Martin's Summer, 339 ; the imaginative fades into the critical, in all literatures, 330 37 2
Poets, effect of political transactions upon, 62 ; what is the best education of, 73 ; are bad critics, 76 327 328 ; must have faith in the creations of their imaginations, 328 ; their creative faculty, 354
Poland, contest between Protestantism and Catholicism in, 326 330
Pole, Cardinal, 8
Police, Athenian, 34 French, secret, 119 120
Politeness, definition of, 407
Politian, allusion to, i 279
Political convulsions, effect of, upon works of imagination, 62 ; questions, true method of reasoning upon, 47 50
Polybius, 395
Pondicherry, 212 ; its occupation by the English, 60
Poor (the), their condition in the 16th and 19th centuries, 173 ; in England and on the Continent, 179 182
Poor-rates (the), lower in manufacturing than in agricultural districts. 146
Pope, his independence of spirit, 191 ; his translation of Homer's description of a moonlight night, 338 ; relative "correctness" of his poetry, 338 Byron's admiration of him, 351 ; praise of him, by Cowper, 351 ; his character, habits, and condition, 404 ; his dislike of Bentley, 113 ; his acquaintance with Wycherley, 381 ; his appreciation of the literary merits of Congreve, 406 ; the originator of the heroic couplet, 333 ; his condensation in consequence of its use, 152 ; his testimony to Addison's conversational powers, 366 ; his Rape of the Lock his best poem, 394 ; his Essay on Criticism warmly praised in the Spectator, 394 ; his intercourse with Addison, 394 ; his hatred of Dennis, 394 ; his estrangement from Addison, 403 ; his suspicious nature, 403408; his satire of Addison, 409 411 ; his Messiah translated into Latin verse by Johnson, 175
Popes, review of Ranke's History of the, 299
Popham, Major, 84
Popish Plot, circumstances which assisted the belief in, 294 298
Popoli, Duchess of, saved by the Earl of Peterborough, 116
Port Royal, its destruction a disgrace to the Jesuits and to the Romish Church, 333
Portico, the doctrines of the school so called, 441
Porto Carrero, Cardinal, 94 98 Lewis XIV.'s opinion of him, 104 ; his disgrace and reconciliation with the Queen Dowager, 121
Portugal, its retrogression in prosperity compared with Denmark, 340
Posidonius, his eulogy of philosophy as ministering to human comfort, 436
Post Nati, the great case in the Exchequer Chamber, conducted by Bacon, 387 367 ; doubts upon the legality of the decision, 387
Power, political, religions belief ought not to exclude from, 303
Pratt, Charles, 13 Chief Justice, 86 ; created Lord Camden, and intrusted with the seals. 91
Predestination, doctrine of, 317
Prerogative royal, its advance, 485 ; in the 16th century, 172 ; its curtailment by the Revolution, 170 ; proposed by Bolingbroke to be strengthened, 171 ; see also Crown.
Press, Milton's defence of its freedom, 262 ; its emancipation after the Revolution, 530 ; remarks on its freedom, 169 270 ; censorship of, in the reign of Elizabeth, 15 ; its influence on the public mind after the Devolution, 330 ; upon modern oratory, 150
Pretsman, Mr., 225
Prince, The, of Machiavelli, general condemnation of it, 207 ; dedicated to the younger Lorenzo de Medici; compared with Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, 013.
Printing, effect of its discovery upon writers of history, 411 ; its inventor and the date of its discovery unknown, 444
Prior, Matthew, his modesty compared with Aristophanes and Juvenal, 352
Prisoners of war, Barêre's proposition tor murdering, 490-495.
Private judgment, Milton's defence of the right of, 202 Mr. Gladstone's notions of the rights and abuses of, 102 103
Privileges of the House of Commons, change in public opinion in respect to them, 330 See also Parliament.
Privy Council, Temple's plan for its reconstitution, iv. 04; Mr. Courtenay's opinion of its absurdity contested, 5 77 Barillon's remarks upon it, 7
Prize compositions necessarily unsatisfactory, 24
Progress of mankind in the political and physical sciences, 271 277 ; in intellectual freedom, 302 ; the key of the Baconian doctrine, 430 ; how retarded by the unprofitableness of ancient philosophy, 430 405 ; during the last 250 ; years, 302
Prometheus, 38
Prosperity, national, 150
Protector (the), character of his administration, 248
Protestant nonconformists in the reign of Charles I., their intolerance, 473
Protestantism, its early history, 13 ; its doctrine touching the right of private judgment, 104 ; light which Ranke has thrown upon its movements, 300 301 ; its victory in the northern parts of Europe, 314 ; its failure in Italy, 315 ; effect of its outbreak in any one part of Christendom, 317 ; its contest with Catholicism in France, Poland, and Germany, 325 331 ; its stationary character, 348 349
Protestants and Catholics, their relative numbers in the 10th century, 25
Provence, its language, literature, and civilization in the 12th century, 308 309 ; its poets the teachers of Petrarch, 85
Prussia, king of, subsidized by the Pitt and Newcastle ministry, 245 ; influence of Protestantism upon her, 339 ; superiority of her commercial system, 48 49
Psalnianazur, George, 185
Ptolemaic system, 229
Public opinion, its power, 168
Public spirit, an antidote against bad government, 18 ; a safeguard against legal oppression, 18
Publicity (the), of parliamentary proceedings, influence of, 108 ; a remedy for corruption, 22
Pulci, allusion to, 279
Pulteney, William, his opposition to Walpole, 202 ; moved the address to the king on the marriage of the Prince of Wales, 210 ; his unpopularity, 218 ; accepts a peerage, 219 ; compared with Chatham, 93
Pundits of Bengal, their jealousy of foreigners, 98
Punishment, warning not the only end of, 404
Punishment and reward, the only means by which government can effect its ends, 303
Puritanism, effect of its prevalence upon tlie national taste, 302 347 ; the restraints it imposed, 300 ; reaction against it, 307
Puritans (the), character and estimate of them, 253 257 ; hatred of them by James I, 455 ; effect of their religious austerity, 109 Johnson's contempt for their religious scruples, 411 ; their persecution by Charles I., 451 ; settlement of, in America, 459 ; blamed for calling in the Scots, 405 ; defence of them against this accusation, 405 ; difficulty and peril of their leaders, 470 ; the austerity of their manners drove many to the royal standard, 481 ; their position at the close of tlie reign of Elizabeth, 302 303 ; their oppression by Whitgift, 330 ; their faults in the day of their power and their consequences, 307 368 ; their hostility to works of the imagination, 340 347
Puritans and Papists, persecution of, by Elizabeth, 430
Eym, John, his influence, 407 Lady Carlisle's warning to him, 478 ; his impeachment ordered by the king, 477
Pynsent, Sir William, his legacy to Chatham, 63
Pyramid, the Great, Arab fable concerning it, 347 ; how it looked to one of the French philosophers who accompanied Napoleon, 58
"Pyrenees (the), have ceased to exist," 99
Q.
Quebec, conquest of, by Wolfe, iii.
Quince, Peter, sense in which he uses the word "translated," 405 406
Quintilian, his character as a critic, 141 142 ; causes of his deficiencies in this respect, 141 ; admired Euripides, 141
R.
Rabbinical Learning, work on, by Rev. L. Addison, 325
Racine, his Greeks far less "correctly" drawn than those of Shakspeare, 338 ; his Iphigenie an anachronism, 338 ; passed the close of his life in writing sacred dramas, 300
Raleigh, Sir Walter, i 36 ; his varied acquirements, 96 ; his position at court at the close of the reign of Elizabeth, 364 ; his execution, 400
"Rambler" (the), 190
Itamsav, court painter to George III., 4L
Ramus, 447
Ranke, Leopold, review of his History of the Popes, 299 349 ; his
qualifications as an historian, 299 347
Rape of the Lock (the), Pope's best poem, 394 ; recast by its author, 403 404
Reader, Steele's, 403
Reading in the present age necessarily desultory, 147 ; the least part of an Athenian education, 147 148.
Reasoning in verse, Drvden's, 300 308
Rebellion, the Great, and the Revolution, analogy between them, 237 247
Rebellion in Ireland in 1840, 473
Reform, the process of, often necessarily attended with many evils, 13 ; its supporters sometimes unworthy, 13
Reform Bill, 235 ; conduct of its opponents, 311
Reform in Parliament before the Revolution, 539 ; public desire for, 541 ; policy of it, 542 131 ; its results, 54 50
Reformation (the), Milton's Treatise of, 204 ; the history of the Reformation much misrepresented, 439 445 ; party divisions caused by it, 533 ; their consequences, 534 ; its immediate effect upon political liberty in England, 435 ; its social and political consequences, 10 ; analogy between it and the French Revolution, 10 11 ; its effect upon the Church of Rome, 87 ; vacillation which it produced in English legislation, 344 ; auspices under which it commenced, 313 ; its effect upon the Roman court, 323 ; its progress not effected by the event of battles or sieges, 327
Reformers, always unpopular in their own age, 273 274
Refugees, 300
Regicides of Charles L, disapproval of their conduct, 240 ; injustice of the imputations cast on them, 240 247
Regium Donum, 170
Regulating Act, its introduction by Lord North, and change which it made in the form of the Indian government, 35 52 03; power which it gave to the Chief Justice, 67
Religion, national establishment of, 100 ; its connection with civil government, 101 ; sey.; its effects upon the policy of Charles I., and of the Puritans, 108 ; no disqualification for the safe exercise of political power, 300 ; the religion of the English in the 10th century, 27 31 ; what system of, should be taught by a government, 188 ; no progress made in the knowledge of natural religion, since the days of Thales, 302 ; revealed, not of the nature of a progressive science, 304 ; injurious influence of Louis XIV. upon, iii. 04; of slavery in the West Indies, 311 313
Remonstrant, allusion to Milton's Animadversions on the, 204
Rent, 400
Representative government, decline of, 485
Republic, french, Burke's character of, 402
Restoration (the), degenerated character of our statesmen and politicians in the times succeeding it, 512 513 ; low standard of political morality after it, 512 ; violence of party and low state of national feeling after it, 525 : that of Charles II. and of Lewis XVIII. contrasted. 283 284; its effects upon the morals and manners of the nation, 367 308
Retrospective law, is it ever justifiable? 403 404 400 ; warranted by a certain amount of public danger, 470
"Revels, Athenian," scenes from, 30
Review, New Antijacobin (the). See Antijacobin Review.
Revolution (the), its principles often grossly misrepresented, 235 ; analogy between it and the "Great Rebellion," 237 247 ; its effect on the character of public men, 520 ; freedom of the press after it, 530 ; its effects, 530 ; the fruit of a coalition, 410 ; ministerial responsibility since, 531 ; review of (Mackintosh's History of, 251 335
Revolution, the French, its history, 440-513; its character, 273 275 ; warnings which preceded it, 440 441 50 340 427 428 ; its social and political consequences, 10 11 205 200 532 534 430 ; its effects on the whole salutary, 40 41 67 ; the excesses of its development, 41 44 ; differences between the first and the second, 515 ; analogy between it and the Reformation, 10 11 Dumont's views upon it, 41 43 44 40; contrasted with the English, 40 50 08, 70
Revolutionary tribunal, (the). See Tribunal.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 126
Rheinsberg, 150
Rhyme introduced into English plays to please Charles II., 349
Richardson, 298
Richelieu, Cardinal, 338
Richmond, Duke of, 107
Rigby, secretary for Ireland, 12
Rimini, story of, 74
Riots, public, during Grenville's administration, 70
Robertson, Dr., 472 215 Scotticisms in his works, 342
Robespierre, 340 ; analogy between his followers and those of Kniperdoling, 12 420 470 480 ; false accusations against, 431 ; his treatment of the Girondists, 473 474 ; one of the Committee of Safety, 475 ; his life attempted, 489 ; the division in the Committee, and the revolution of the ninth Thermidor, 497 499 ; his death, 500 ; his character, 501
Robinson, Sir Thomas, 228
Rochefort, threatening of, 244
Rochester, Earl of, 307 114 335
Rockingham, Marquess of, his characteristics, 73 ; parallel between his party and the Bedfords, 73 ; accepts the Treasury, 74 ; patronizes Burke, 75 ; proposals of his administration on the American Stamp Act, 78 ; his dismissal, 88 ; his services, 88 89 ; his moderation towards the new ministry, 93 ; his relation to Chatham, 102 ; advocated the independence of the United States, 100 ; at the head of the Whigs, 232 ; made First Minister, 235 ; his administration, 23(i, 237 ; his death, 237
Rockingham and Bedfords, parallel between them, 73
Sir Thomas, 273 Uohillas, description of them, 29 ; agreement between Hastings and Stirajah Dowlali for their subjugation, 30 31
Roland, Madame, 43 452 453 473
Homans (the), exclusiveness of, 413 410 ; under Diocletian, compared to the Chinese, 415 416
Romans and Greeks, difference between, 287 ; in their treatment of woman, 83 84
Roman Tale (a), fragments of, 119 ; game, called Duodeeim Scriptæ, 4 ; note,; name for the highest throw on the dice, 13 ; note.
Home, ancient, bribery at, 421 ; civil convulsions in, contra-ted with those in Greece, 189 190 ; literature of, 347 349
Rome, Church of, its encroaching disposition, 295 296 ; its policy, 308 ; its antiquity, 301 ; see also Church of Home.
Hooke, Sir George, his capture of Gibraltar, 110 ; his fight with a French squadron near Malaga, 110 ; his return to England, 110
Rosamond, Addison's opera of, 361
Roundheads (the), their literature, 234 ; their successors in the reign of George I. turned courtiers, 4
Rousseau, his sufferings, 365 Horace Walpole's opinion of him, 156
Rowe, his verses to the Chloe of Holland House, 412
Roval Society (the), of Literature, 20-29.
Royalists (the), of the time of Charles I., 257 ; many of them true friends to the Constitution, 483 ; some of the most eminent formerly in opposition to the Court, 471
Royalists, Constitutional, in the reign of Charles I., 471 481
Rumford, Count, 147
Rupert, Prince, 493 ; his encounter with Hampden at Chalgrove, 493
Russell, Lord, 526 ; his conduct in the new council, 96 ; his death, 99
Russia and Poland, diffusion of wealth in, as compared with England, 182
Rutland, Earl of, his character, 411 412
Ruyter, Admiral de, 51
Rymer, 417
S.
Sacheverell. Dr., his impeachment and conviction, 130 362 121
Sackville, the Earl of, (16th century,) 36 261
Sackville, Lord George, 13
Sadler, Mr., his Law of Population reviewed, 214 249 ; his style, 214 215 270 305 306; specimen of his verse, 215 ; the spirit of his work, 216 217 220 270 305 ; his objections to the Doctrines of Malthus. 217 218 222 228 244 271 272 ; answer to them, 219 221 ; his law stated, 222 ; does not understand the meaning of the words in which it is stated, 224226, 278 279 ; his law proved to be not true, 226 227, 231 238 280295; his views injurious to the cause of religion, 228 230 ; attempts to prove that the increase of population in America is chiefly owing to immigration, 238 239 245 249 ; refutes himself, 239 240 ; his views upon the fecundity of the English peers, 240 241 298 304 ; refutation of these arguments, 241 243 ; his general characteristics, 249 ; his Refutation refuted, 268 306 ; misunderstands Paley's arguments, 273 274 ; the meaning of "the origin of evil," 274 278 ; and the principle which he has himself laid down, 295 298
St. Denis, 484
St. Dennis and St. George-in-the Water, parishes of, imaginary lawsuit between, 100
St. Ignatius. See Loyola.
St. John, Henry, his accession to power in 171 130 141 ; see also Bolingbroke, Lord.
St. John, Oliver, counsel against Charles I.'s writ for ship-money, 457 464 ; made Solicitor-General, 472
St. Just, 466 470 474,475,498, 500
St. Louis, his persecution of liberties, 421
St. Maloes, ships burnt in the harbor of, 244
St. Patrick, 214
St. Thomas, island of, 381 383
Saintes, 510
Sallust, characteristics of, as a historian, 404 400 ; his conspiracy of Catiline has rather the air of a clever party-pamphlet, than of a history, 404 ; grounds for questioning' the reality of the conspiracy, 403 ; his character and genius, 337
Salmasius, Milton's refutation of, 248
Salvator Rosa, 347
Samson, Agonistes, 215
San Marino, visited by Addison, 340
Satire, the only indigenous growth of Roman literature, 348
Savage, Richard, his character, 180 ; his life by Johnson, 187 214
Savile, Sir George, 73
Savonarola, 316
Saxony, its elector the natural head of the Protestant party in Germany, 328 ; its persecution of the Calvinists, 329 ; invasion by the Catholic party in Germamy 337
Schism, cause of, in England, 334
Schwellenberg, Madame, her position and character, 283 284 297
Science, political, progress of, 271 279 334
Scholia, origin of the House of, 59
Scotland, cruelties of James II. in, 300 311 ; establishment of the Kirk in, 322 159 ; her progress in wealth and intelligence owing to Protestantism, 340 ; incapacity of its natives to hold land in England even after the Union 300
Scots (the), effects of their resistance to Charles I., 400 401 ; ill feeling excited against them by Bute's elevation to power, 39 40 ; their wretched condition in the Highland, and Fletcher of Saltoun's views upon it, 388 389
Scott, Major, his plea in defence of Hastings, 105 ; his influence, 100 ; his challenge to Burke, 114
Scott, Sir Walter, 435 ; relative "correctness" of his poetry, 338 ; his Duke of Rockingham (in "Peveril"), 358 Scotticisms in his works, 342 ; value of his writings, 428 ; pensioned by Earl Grey, 201
Seas, Liberty of the, Barêre's work upon, 512
Sedley, Sir Charles, 353
Self-denying ordinance (the), 490
Seneca, his work "On Anger," 437 ; his claims as a philosopher, 438 ; his work on natural philosophy, 412 ; the Baconian system in reference to, 478
Sevajee, founder of the Mahratta empire, 59
Seward, Mr., 271
Sforza, Francis, 280
Shaltesbury, Lord, allusion to, 208 13 ; his character, 81 89 ; contrasted with Halifax, 90
Shakspeare, allusion to, 208 30 ; one of the most "correct" poets, 337 ; relative "correctness" of his Troilus and Cressida, 338 ; contrasted with Byron, 359 Johnson's edition of, 417 199 342 ; his superlative merits, 345 ; his bombast, 301 ; his fairies' songs, 304
Shaw, the Lifeguardsman, 357
Shebbeare, Bute's patronage of, 40
Shelburne, Lord, Secretary of State in Chatham's second administration, 91 ; his dismissal, 100 ; heads one section of the opposition to North, 233 ; made First Lord of the Treasury, 237 ; his quarrel with Fox, 239 ; his resignation, 241
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 257 350
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 389 ; his speech against Hastings, r. 121 ; his encouragement to Miss Burney to write for the stage, 273 ; his sarcasm against Pitt, 210
Sheridan and Congreve, effect of their works upon the Comedy of England, 295 ; contrasted with Shakspeare, 295
Ship-money, question of its legality, 157 ; seq.
Shrewsbury, Duke of, 397
Sienna, cathedral of, 319
Sigismund of Sweden, 329
Silius Italicus, 357
Simonides, his speculations on natural religion, 302
Sismondi, M., 131 ; his remark about Dante, 58
Sixtus V., 321
Skinner Cyriac, 202
Slave-trade, 259
Slavery in Athens, 189 ; in Sparta, 190 ; in the West Indies, 303 ; its origin there, 301 305 ; its legal rights there. 305 310 ; parallel between slavery there and in other countries, 311 ; its effects upon religion, 311 313 ; upon public opinion and morals, 311 320 ; who are the zealots for, 320 321 ; their foolish threats, 322 ; effect of, upon commerce, 323 325 ; impunity of its advocates, 325 32G; its danger, 328 ; and approaching downfall, 329 ; defended in Major Moody's report, 361 373 371 ; its approval by Fletcher of Saltoun, 388 389
Smith, Adam, 286
Smollett, his judgment on Lord Carteret, 188 ; his satire on the Duke of Newcastle, 191
Social contract, 182
Society, Mr. Southey's Colloquies on, reviewed, 132
Society, Royal, (the), of literature, 20-29; its absurdity, 20 ; dangers to be apprehended from it, 20-23; cannot be impartial, 21 22 ; foolishness of its system of prizes, 23 21 Dartmoor the first subject proposed by it for a prize, 21 31 ; never published a prize composition, 25 ; apologue illustrating its consequences, 25 29
Socrates, the first martyr of intellectual liberty, 350 his views of the uses of astronomy, 152 ; his reasoning exactly the reasoning of Paley's Natural Theology, 511 303 ; his dialogues, 381
Soldier, citizen, (a), different from a mercenary, 61 187
Somers, Lord Chancellor, his encouragement of literature, 337 ; procures a pension for Addison, 338 ; made Lord President of the Council, 362
Somerset, the Protector, as a promoter of the English Reformation, 452 ; his fall, 396
Somerset, Duke of, 415
Sonnets, Milton's, 233 Petrarch's, 93 95
Sophocles and the Greek Drama, 217
Soul, 303
Soult, Marshal, reference to, 67
Southampton, Earl of, notice of, 384
Southcote, Joanna, 336
Southern and Northern countries, difference of moral feeling in, 285
Southey, Robert, review of his Colloquies on Society, 132 ; his characteristics, 132 134; his poetry preferable to his prose, 136 ; his lives of Nelson and John Wesley, 136 137 ; his Peninsular War, 137 ; his Book of the Church, 137 ; his political system, 140 ; plan of his present work, 141 ; his opinions regarding the manufacturing system, 146 ; his political economy, 151 ; seq.; the national debt, 153 156 ; his theory of the basis of government, 158 ; his remarks on public opinion, 159 160 ; his view of the Catholic claims, 170 ; his ideas on the prospects of society, 172 ; his prophecies respecting the Corporation and Test Acts, and the removal of the Catholic disabilities, 173 ; his observations on the condition of the people in the 16th and 19th centuries, 174 ; his arguments on national wealth, 178 180 ; review of his edition of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 250 ; see also Bunyon.
South Sea Bubble, 200
Spain, 488 ; review of Lord Mahon's War of the Succession in, 75 ; her state under Philip, 79 ; her literature during the 16th century, 80 ; her state a century later, 81 ; effect produced on her by bad government, 85 ; by the Reformation, 87 ; her disputed succession, 88 91 ; the Partition Treaty, 92 93 ; conduct of the French towards her, 93 ; how affected by the death of Charles, 98 ; seq.; designation of the War of the Spanish Succession, 338 ; no conversions to Protestantism in, 348
Spanish and Swiss soldiers in the time of Machiavelli, character of, 307
Sparre, the Dutch general, 107
Sparta, her power, causes of its decline, 155 ; note; defeated when she ceased to possess, alone of the Greeks, a permanent standing army, Mr. Milford's preference of over Athens, 181 ; her only really great men, 182 ; characteristics of her government, 183 184 ; her domestic institutions, 184 185; character of some of her leading men, 185 ; contrasted with Athens, 186 187 ; slavery in, 190
Spectator (the), notices of it, 385389, 397
Spelling of proper names, 173
Spencer, Lord, First Lord of the Admiralty, 277
Spenser, 251 252 ; his allegory, 75
Spirits, Milton's, materiality of them, 227
Spurton, Dr., 494
Spy, police, character of, 519 520
Stafford, Lord, incident at his execution, 300
Stamp Act, disaffection of the American colonists on account of it, 78 ; its repeal, 82 83
Stanhope, Earl of, 201
Stanhope, General, 115 ; commands in Spain (1707), 125 126
Star Chamber, 459 ; its abolition, 468
Staremberg, the imperial general in Spain (in 170 125 128
States, best government of, 154
Statesmanship, contrast of the Spanish and Dutch notions of, 35
Statesmen, the character of, greatly affected by that of the times, 531 ; character of the first generation of professed statesmen that England produced, 342 348
Steele, 366 ; his character, 369 Addison's treatment of him, 370 ; his origination of the Tatler, 374 ; his subsequent career, 384 355, 401
Stephens,.Tames, his Slavery in the British West Indies reviewed, 303 330 ; character of the work, 303 304 ; his parallel between their slave laws and those of other countries, 311 ; has disposed of the arguments in its favor, 313
Stoicism, comparison of that of the Bengalee with the European, 19 20
Strafford, Earl of, 457 ; his character as a statesman, 460 ; bill of attainder against him, 462 ; his character, 454 ; his impeachment attainder, and execution, 468 ; defence of the proceedings agains him, 470
Strawberry Hill, 146
Stuart, Dugald, 142
"Sublime" (the). Longinus on, 142 Burke and Dugald Stewart on, 142
Subsidies; foreign, in the time of Charles II., 523
Subsidizing foreign powers, Pitt's aversion to, 231
Succession in Spain, war of the, 75 ; see also Spain.
Sugar, its cultivation and profits, 395 390 403
Sujah Dowlah, Nabob Vizier of Oude, 28 ; his flight, 32 ; his death, 85
Sullivan, Mr., chairman of the East India Company, his character, 265 ; his relation to Clive, 270
Sunderland, Earl of, 201 Secretary of State, 302 ; appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 399 ; reconstructs the ministry in 171 413
Supernatural beings, how to be represented in literature, 69 70
Superstition, instance of, in the 19th century, 3Ü7.
Supreme Court of Calcutta, account of, 45
Surajah Dowlah, Viceroy of Bengal, his character, 231 ; the monster of the "Black Hole," 232 ; his flight and death, 246 251 ; investigation by the House of Commons into the circumstances of his deposition, 28
Surinam, the Maroons of, 386
Sweden, her part in the Triple Alliance, 41 ; her relations to Catholicism, 329
Swift, Jonathan, his position at Sir William Temple's, 101 ; instance of his imitation of Addison, 332 ; his relations with Addison, 399 ; joins the Tories, 400 ; his verses upon Boyle, 118 119
Swiss and Spanish soldiers in the time of Machiavelli, character of, 307
Sydney, Algernon, 525 ; his reproach on the scaffold to the sheriff's, 327
Sydney, Sir Philip, 36
Syllogistic process, analysis of, by Aristotle, 473
T.
Tacitus, characteristics of, as a writer of history, 406 408 ; compared with Thucydides, 407 409 ; unrivalled in h is delineations of character, 407 ; as among ancient historians in his dramatic power, 408 ; contrasted, in this respect, with Herodotus, Xenophon, and Plutarch, 408 409
Tale, a Roman, Fragments of, 119
Talleyrand, 515 ; his fine perception of character, 12 ; picture of him at Holland House, 425
Tasso, 353 354 ; specimen from Hoole's translation, 334
Tatler (the), its origination, 373 ; its popularity, 380 ; change in its character, 384 ; its discontinuance, 385
Taxation, principles of, 154 155
Teignmouth, Lord, his high character and regard for Hastings, 103
Telemachus, the nature of and standard of morality in, 359 ; iii. Off-62.
Telephus, the hero of one of Euripides' lost plays, 45 ; note.
Tempest, the great, of 170 359
Temple, Lord, First Lord of the Admiralty in the Duke of Devonshire's administration, 235 ; his parallel between Byng's behavior at Minorca and the king's behavior at Oudenarde, 238 ; his resignation of office, 30 ; supposed to have encouraged the assailants of Bute's administration, 42 ; dissuades Pitt from supplanting Grenville,69; prevents Pitt's acceptance of George III.'s offer of the administration, 72 ; his opposition to Rockingham's ministry on the question of the Stamp Act, 79 ; quarrel between him and Pitt, 89 90 ; prevents the passage of Fox's India Bill, 240 247
Temple, Sir William, review of Courtenay's Memoirs of, 1 115 ; his character as a statesman, 3 7 12 13 ; his family, 13 14; his early life, 15 ; his courtship of Dorothy Osborne, 16 17; historical interest of his love-letters, 18 19 22 23 ; his marriage, 24 ; his residence in Ireland, 25 ; his feelings towards Ireland, 27 28 ; attaches himself to Arlington, 29 30 ; his embassy to Munster, 33 ; appointed resident at the court of Brussels, 33 ; danger of his position, 35 ; his interview with DeWitt, 36 ; his negotiation of the Triple Alliance, 39 41 ; his fame at home and abroad, 45 ; his recall, and farewell of De Witt, 47 ; his cold reception and dismissal, 48 49; style and character of his compositions, 49 50 ; charged to conclude a separate peace with the Dutch, 56 ; offered the Secretaryship of State, 58 ; his audiences of the king, 59 60; his share in bringing about the marriage of the Prince of Orange with the Lady Mary, 60 ; required to sign the treaty of Nimeguen, 60 ; recalled to England, 61 ; his plan of a new privy council, 04, 76 79 ; his alienation from his colleagues, 95 90 ; his conduct on the Exile Question, 97 ; leaves publie life, and retires to the country, 98 ; his literary pursuits, 99 ; his amanuensis, Swift, 101 ; his Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning, 105 108 ; his praise of the Letters, 107 115 ; his death and character, 113 115
Terentianus, 142
Terror, reign of. See Deign of Terror.
Test Act (the), 270
Thackeray, Dev. Francis, review of his Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, etc., 194 250 ; his style and matter, 194 195 ; his omission to notice Chatham's conduct towards Walpole, 218
Thales, 302
Theatines, 318
Theology, characteristics of the science of, 302 300
Theramenes, his tine perception of character, 12
Thrale, Mrs., 389 ; her friendship with Johnson, 200 207 ; her marriage with Piozzi, 210 217 ; lier position and character, 270 ; her regard tor Miss Burney, 270
Thucydides, his history transcribed by Demosthenes six times, 147 ; character of the speeches introduced into his narrative, 152 388 389; the great difficulty of understanding them arises from their compression, 153 ; and is acknowledged by Cicero, 153 ; lies not in the language but in the reasoning, 153 ; their resemblance to each other, 153 ; their value, 153 ; his picturesque style compared to Vandyke's, 380 ; description of it, 388 ; has surpassed all rivals in the art of historical narration, 389 ; his deficiencies, 390 ; his mental characteristics, 391 393 ; compared with Herodotus, 385 ; with Tacitus, 407 409
Thurlow, Lord, sides against Clive, 292 ; favors Hastings, 107 117 121 130 ; his weight in the government, 107 235 ; becomes unpopular with his colleagues, 237 ; dismissed, 241 ; again made Chancellor, 247
Ticked, Thomas, Addison's chief favorite, 371 ; his translation of the first hook of the Iliad. 405408; character of his intercourse with Addison, 407 ; appointed by Addison Undersecretary of State, 415 Addison intrusts his works to him, 418; his elegy on the death of Addison, 421 ; his beautiful lines upon Holland House, 423
Timlal, his character of the Karl of Chatham's maiden speech, 210
Tinville, Fouquier, 482 489 503
Toledo, admission of the Austrian troops into, 170 110
Toleration, religious, the safest policy for governments, 455 ; conduct of James IL as a professed supporter of it, 304 308
Tories, their popularity and ascendancy in 171 129 ; description of them during the sixty years following the Devolution, 141 ; of Walpole's time, 200 ; mistaken reliance by James II. upon them, 310 ; their principles and conduct after the Devolution, 332 ; contempt into which they had fallen (1754), 220 Clive unseated by their vote, 227 ; their joy on the accession of Anne, 352 ; analogy between their divisions in 1704 and in 1820, 353 ; their attempt to rally in 1707, 302 ; called to office by Queen Anne in 1710, 382 ; their conduct on occasion of the tirst representation of Addison's Cato, 391 392; their expulsion of Steele, from the House of Commons, 390 ; possessed none of the publie patronage in the reign of George L, 4 ; their hatred of the House of Hanover, 2 4 15 ; paucity of talent among them, 5 ; their joy on the accession of George III., 17 ; their political creed on the accession of George I., 20 21 ; in the ascendent for the tirst time since the accession of the House of Hanover, 313; see Whigs.
Tories and Whigs after the Devolution, 530
Tortola, island of, 362 ; its negro apprentices, 374 376 ; its legislature, 377 ; its system of labor, 379
Torture, the application of, by Bacon in Peacham's case, 383 394 ; its use forbidden by Elizabeth, 393
Mr. Jartline's work on the use of it, 394 ; note.
Tory, a modern, 132 ; his points of resemblance and of difference to a Whig of Queen Anne's time, 132 133
Toulouse, Count of, compelled by Peterborough to raise the siege of Barcelona, 117
Toussaint L'Ouverture, 366 390
Townshend, Lord, his quarrel with Walpole and retirement from public life, 203
Townshend, Charles, 13 ; his exclamation during the Earl of Bute's maiden speech, 33 ; his opinion of the Rockingham administration, 74 Chancellor of the Exchequer in Pitt's second administration, 91 Pitt's overbearing manners towards him, 95, 96; his insubordination, 97 ; his death, 100
Town Talk, Steele's, 402 Tragedy, how much it has lost from a notion of what is due to its dignity, 20
Tragedies, Dryden's, i. 360 361. Trainbands of the City (the), 479 480 ; their publie spirit, 18 Transubstantiation, a doctrine of faith, 305
Travel, its uses, 420 Johnson's contempt for it, 420 ; foreign, compared in its effects to the reading of history, 42G, 427
"Traveller" (the), Goldsmith's, 1
Treadmill, the study of ancient philosophy compared to labor in the, 441
Treason, high, did the articles against Strafford amount to? 462 ; law passed at the Revolution respecting trials for, 328 Trent, general reception of the decisions of the council of, 32 Trial of the legality of Charles I.'s writ for ship-money, 457 ; of Strafford, 468; of Warren Hastings, 126
Tribunals, the large jurisdiction exercised by those of Papal Rome, 314
Tribunal, Revolutionary, (the), 496 501
Triennial Bill, consultation of William III. with Sir William Temple upon it, 103
Triple Alliance, circumstances which led to it, 34 38 ; its speedy conclusion and importance, 41 45 Dr. Lingard's remarks on it, 42 43 ; its abandonment by the English government, 49 ; reverence for it in Parliament,
Truth the object of philosophy, history, fiction, and poetry, but not of oratory, 150
Tudors (tlie), their government popular though despotic, 16 ; dependent on the public favor, 20 21 ; parallel between the Tudors and the Caesars not applicable, 21 ; corruption not necessary to them, 168
Turgot, M. 67 ; veneration with which France cherishes his memory, 298 427
Turkey-carpet style of poetry, 199
Turner, Colonel, the Cavalier, anecdote of him, 501
Tuscan poetry, Addison's opinion of, 360
U.
Union of England with Scotland, its happy results, 160 ; of England with Ireland, its unsatisfactory results, 160 ; illustration in the Persian fable of King Zohak, 161
United Provinces, Temple's account of, a masterpiece in its kind, 50
United States, happiness in, its causes, 39 40 ; growth of the population of, 238 239 245 249 ; their prejudices against negroes, 368 369
Unities (the), in poetry, 341
Unity, hopelessness of having, 161
University, the London, essay upon, 331 360 ; objections to. 331 ; their unreasonableness, 332 ; the necessity of the institution, 333 334 ; religious objections, 334 335 337 ; its great advantages, 335 ; its locality, 336 ; objections on that ground, 338 389 ; refutation of them, 339 ; its freedom from the radical defects of the old universities, 359 ; its future, 360
Universities, their principle of not withholding from the student works containing impurity, 351 352 ; change in tlie relations to government of Oxford and Cambridge in Bute's time, 37 ; their jealousy of the London University, 331 348 ; religious differences in, 338 ; their moral condition, 339 340 ; their glorious associations, 341 ; radical defects of their system, 342 ; their Wealth and Privileges, 343 344 ; character of their studies, 344 ; objected to by Bacon and others, 345 ; evils of their system of education, 354 ; their prizes and rewards, 355 ; idleness of their students, 355 35 ; character of their graduates, 357 ; their fitness for real life, 358 359
Usage, the law of orthography, 173
Uses, statute of, 37
Usurper (a), to obtain the affection of his subjects must deserve it, 14 15
Utilitarians, 5 8 50 52 55 07, 78 79 ; their theory of government criticised, 92 131 ; their mental characteristics, 92 ; the faults of their philosophy, 93 123130; its inutility, 79 87 90 ; their impracticability, 100 ; the inaccuracies of their reasoning, 119 120 ; their summum barium, 123 ; their disingenuousness, 130 131
Utility, the key of the Baconian doctrine, 430
Uti. edit, the treaty of exasperation of parties on account of it, 135 130 ; dangers that were to be apprehended from it, 137 ; state of Europe at the time, 130 ; defence of it, 139 141
V.
Vandyke, his portrait of the Earl of Strafford, 454
Yausittart. Mr., Governor of Bengal, his position, 9 ; his fair intentions, feebleness, and inefficiency, 9
Varela's portrait of James II., 251
Vattel, 27
Vega, Garcilasso de la, a soldier as well as a poet, 81
Vendôme, Duke of, takes the command of the Bourbon forces in Spain (1710), iii 127
Venice, republic of, next in antiquity to tin- line of the Supreme Pontiff's, 300
Venus, the Roman term for the highest throw on the dice, 13 ; note.
Verona, protest of Lord Holland against the course pursued by England at the Congress of, 413
Verres, extensive bribery at the trial of, 421
Verse, occasional, 350 ; blank, 300 ; reasoning in, 300
Versification, modern, in a dead language, 212
Veto, by Parliament, on the appointment of ministers, 487 ; by the Crown on aets of Parliament, 488
"Violet Crown, city of," a favorite epithet of Athens, 30 ; note.
"Vicar of Wakefield" (the), 159 161
Vigo, capture of the Spanish galleons at. 170 108
"Village, Deserted" (the), Goldsmith's, 162 103
Villani, John, his account of the state of Florence in the 14th century, 276
Villn-Vieiosa, battle of, 171 128
Villiers, Sir Edward, 412
Virgil not so "correct" a poet as Homer, 337 ; skill with which Addison imitated him, 331 Dante's admiration of, 329
Vision of Judgment, Southev's, 145
Voltaire. the connecting link of the literary schools of Lewis XIV. and Lewis XVI., 355 Horace Walpole's opinion of him. 155 ; his partiality to England, 412 294 ; meditated a history of the conquest of Bengal, 214; his character, and that of his compeers, 294 ; his interview with Congreve, 407 ; his genius venerated by Frederic the Great, 100 ; his whimsical conferences with Frederic, 176 ; seq.; compared with Addison as a master of the art of ridicule, 370 377 ; his treatment by the French Academy, 23 ; failed to obtain the poetical prize,
W.
Wages, effects of attempts by government to limit the amount of, 362 ; their relations to labor, 383 385 400
Waldegrave, Lord, made first Lord of the Treasury by George II., 242 ; his attempt to form an administration, 243
Wales, Frederic, Prince of, joined the opposition to Walpole, 208 ; his marriage, 209 ; makes Pitt his groom of the bedchamber, 216 ; his death, 222 223 ; headed the opposition, 7 ; his sneer at the Earl of Bute, 20
Wales, Princess Dowager of, mother of George 111 18 ; popular ribaldry against her, 42
Wales, the Prince of, generally in opposition to the minister, 208
Wall, Mr., Governor of Goree, 318
Waller, Edmund, his conduct in the House of Commons, 303 ; similarity of his character to Lord Bacon's, 38 5 386
Walmesley, Gilbert, 177
Walpole, Sir Horace, review of Lord Dover's edition of his Letters to Sir Horace Mann, 143 ; eccentricity of his character, 144 145 ; his politics, 146 ; his affectation of philosophy, 149 ; his unwillingness to be considered a man of letters, 149 ; his love of the French language, 152 ; character of his works, 156 158 ; his sketch of Lord Carteret, 187
Walpole, Sir Robert, his retaliation on the Tories for their treatment of him, 136 ; the "glory of the Whigs," 165 ; his character, 166 ; seq.; the charges against him of corrupting the Parliament, 171 ; his dominant passion, 171 173; his conduct in regard to the Spanish war, 173 ; his last struggle, 178 ; outcry for his impeachment, 179 ; formidable character of the opposition to him, 175 206 ; his conduct in reference to the South Sea bubble, 200 ; his conduct towards his colleagues, 202 205 ; found it necessary to resign, 217 ; bill of indemnity for witnesses brought against him, 218 ; his maxim in election questions in the House of Commons, 473 ; his many titles to respect, 416 417
Walpolean battle, the great, 165 426
Walsingham, the Earl of (16th century), 36
Wanderer, Madame D'Arblay's, 311
War, the Art of, by Machiavelli, 306
War of the Succession in Spain, Lord Mahon's, review of, 75 112 ; see Spain.
War, in what spirit it should be waged, 187 188 ; languid, condemned, 495 Homer's description of, 356 357 ; descriptions of by Silius Italicus, 357 ; against Spain, counselled by Pitt and opposed by Bute, 29 ; found by Bute to be inevitable, 32 ; its conclusion, 37 ; debate on the treaty of peace, 49
War, civil. See Civil War.
Ward, John William, Lord Dudley, 288
Warburton, Bishop, his views on the ends of government, 122 ; his social contract a fiction, 182 ; his opinion as to the religion to be taught by government, 188
Warning, not the only end of punishment, 464
Warwick, Countess Dowager of, 411 412 ; her marriage with Addison, 412
Warwick, Earl of, makes mischief between Addison and Pope, 469 ; his dislike of the marriage between Addison and his mother, 411 ; his character, 412
Watson, Bishop, 425
Way of the World, by Congreve, its merits, 403
Wealth, tangible and intangible, 150 152 ; national and private, 153 180 ; its increase among all Masses in England, 180 187 ; its diffusion in Russia and Poland as compared with England, 182 ; its accumulation and diffusion in England and in Continental states, 182
Wodderburne, Alexander, his defence of Lord Clive, 292 ; his urgency with Clive to furnish Voltaire with the materials for his meditated history of the conquest of Bengal, 294
Weekly Intelligencer (the), extract from, on Hampden's death, 405
Weldon, Sir A., his Story of the meanness of Bacon, 407
Wellesley, Marquis, his eminence as a statesman, iv. 05; his opinion as to the expediency of reducing the numbers of the Privy Council, 05; l'itt's friendship for him, 205
Wellington, Duke of, 90 357 408 409 420 ; l'itt's estimate of him, 290 "Wellingtoniad" (the), an imaginary epic poem, 158 171
Wendover, its recovery of the elective franchise, 443
Wesley, John, Southey's life of, 137 ; his dislike to the doctrine of predestination, 170
West Indies (the), slavery in, 303 330 ; its origin and legal condition there, 303 310 ; state of religion in, 311 313 ; state of manners, 314 310 ; public opinion in, 315 317 318 319; despotic character of the inhabitants, 320-322; commerce of, 323 325 ; character of the proprietors, 320-329; slavery in, approaching its end, 328 329 ; their system of cultivation, 378 381 403
Westminster Hall, 42 ; the scene of the trial of Hastings, 124
Westphalia, the treaty of, 314 338
Wharton, Earl of, lord lieutenant of Ireland, 371 ; appoints Addison chief secretary, 371
Wheler, Mr., his appointment as Governor-General of India, 54 ; his conduct in the council, 57 02, 74
Whigs (the), their unpopularity and loss of power in 171 130 ; their position in Walpole's time, 20 207 ; their violence in 1679, 299 ; the king's revenge on them, 301 ; revival of their strength, 304 ; their conduct at the Devolution, 319 320 ; after that event, 330 ; doctrines and literature they patronized daring the seventy years they were in power, 332 Mr. Courtenay's remark on those of the 17th century, 272 ; attachment of literary men to them after the Devolution, 337 ; their fall on the accession of Anne, 351 301 ; in the ascendant in 170 Queen Anne's dislike of them, 381 ; their dismissal by her, 381 ; their success in the administration of the government, 381 ; dissensions and reconstruction of the Whig government in 1717, 430 ; enjoyed all the public patronage in the reign of George I., 4 5 ; acknowledged the Duke of Newcastle as their leader, 8 ; their power and intiuence at the close of the reign of George II., 10 ; their support of the Brunswick dynasty, 15 ; division of them into two classes, old and young, 72 ; superior character of the young Whig school, 73 ; see Tories.
Whig and Tory, inversion of the meaning of, 131
Whigs and Tories after the Devolution, 530 ; their relative condition in 171 130 ; their essential characteristics, 2 ; their transformation in the reign of George I., 3 ; analogy presented by France, 4 ; subsidence of party spirit between them, 5 ; revival under Bute's administration of the animosity between them, 38
Whitgift, master of Trinity College, Cambridge, his character, 353 ; his Calvinistic doctrines, 175177; his zeal and activity against the Puritans, 330
Wickliffe, John, juncture at which he rose, 312 ; his intiuence in England, Germany, and Bohemia, 313
Wieland, 341
Wilberforce, William, travels upon the Continent with Pitt, 242 ; opposes Fox's India bill, 245 240 ; reelected to Parliament, 249 ; his efforts to suppress the slave-trade, 209 ; his intimate friendship with Pitt, 287 297 ; his description of Pitt's speech against Hastings, 120
Wilkes, John, conduct of the government with respect to his election for Middlesex, 535 ; his comparison of the mother of George III. to the mother of Edward 111 , 42 ; his persecution by the Grenville administration, 56 ; description of him, 56 ; his North Briton, 56 ; his committal to the Tower, 56 ; his discharge, 57 ; his Essay on Woman laid before the House of Lords, 511; tights a duel with one of Lord Bute's dependents, 60 ; flies to France, 60 ; is works ordered to be burnt by the hangman, and himself expelled the House of Commons, and outlawed, 60 ; obtains damages in an action tor the seizure of his papers, 61 ; returns from exile and is elected for Middlesex, 100 ; compared to Mirabeau, 72
Wilkie, David, recollection of him at Holland House, 425 ; failed in portrait-painting, 319
William III., low state of national prosperity and national character in his reign, 529 ; his feeling in reference to the Spanish succession, 102 ; unpopularity of his person and measures, 101 ; suffered under a complication of diseases, 101 ; his death, 102 ; limitation of his prerogatives, 103 ; compact with the Convention, 320 ; his habit of consulting Temple, 103 ; coalition which he formed against Lewis XIV. secretly favored by Home, 339 ; his vices not obtruded on the public eye. 392 ; his assassination planned, 394 Addison's Lines to him, 333 ; reference to him, 67
Williams, Dean of Westminster, his services to Buckingham, and counsel to him and the king, 411 416
Williams, John, his character, 139 270 ; employed by Hastings to write in his defence, 139
Williams, Sir William, his character as a lawyer, 378 ; his view of the duty of counsel in conducting prosecutions, 378
Wimbledon Church, Lord Burleigh attended mass at, 6
Windham, Mr., his opinion of Sheridan's speech against Hastings, 122 ; his argument for retaining brands in the impeachment against Hastings, 123 ; his appearance at the trial, 12S; his adherence to Burke, 136
Wine, excess in, not a sign of ill-breeding in the reign of Queen Anne, 367
"Wisdom of our ancestors," proper value of the plea of, 272
Wit, Addison's compared with that of Cowley and Butler, 375
Witt, John de, power with which he governed Holland, 32 ; his interview with Temple, 36 ; his manners, 36 37 ; his confidence in Temple and deception by Charles' court, 47 ; his violent death, 51
Wolfe, General, l'itt's panegyric upon, 213 ; his conquest of Quebec and death, 244 ; monument voted to him, 244
Woman, source of the charm of her beauty, 74 ; her different treatment among the Greeks and the Romans, 83 85 ; in the middle ages, 85 ; and among civilized nations generally, 33 35
Women, as agricultural laborers, 394 395
Women (the) of Dryden's comedies, 356 ; of his tragedies, 357 358
Woodfall, Mr., his dealings with Junius, 38
Wordsworth, relative "correctness" of his poetry, 338 Byron's distaste for, 352 ; characteristics of his poems, 356 362 ; his egotism, 82
Works, public, employment of the public wealth in, 155 ; publie and private, comparative value of, 155
Waiting, grand canon of, 76
Wycherley, William, his literary merits and faults, 368 ; his birth, family, and education, 369 370 ; age at which he wrote his plays, 370 371 ; his favor with the Duchess of Cleveland, 372 373 ; his marriage, 376 ; his embarrassments, 377 ; his acquaintance with Pope, 381 383 ; his character as a writer, 384 387; his severe handling by Collier, 599 ; analogy between him and Congreve, 410
X.
Xenophon, his report of the reasoning of Socrates in confutation of Aristodeinus, his political economy, 149 ; his presentation of the Spartan character, 185 ; his style, 393 ; his mental characteristics, 393 394 ; contrasted with Herodotus, 394 ; with Tacitus, 403
Y.
York, Duke of, 62 ; anxiety excited by his sudden return from Holland, 94 ; detestation of him, 94 ; revival of the question of his exclusion, 96
York House, the London residence of Bacon and his father, 408 432
Yonge, Sir William, 205
Young, Dr., his testimony to Addison's colloquial powers, 366
Z.